During the 1950s, until the two famously fell out over the making of "Night Passage", Anthony Mann was James Stewart's favourite director. Their partnership is best remembered for the five so-called Mann/Stewart westerns, but they also made three non-westerns together, of which this is the second.
Thunder Bay is a Canadian city on the shores of Lake Superior, and there is a bay of the same name on the American side of Lake Huron, but the film is not set in either location, or for that matter anywhere in the Great Lakes. Instead it is set much further south in coastal Louisiana. The precise significance of the title is obscure, but it may be a reference to the fact that a storm features in one scene.
The action takes place in the year 1946. Steve Martin, an engineer, and his friend Johnny Gambi arrive in the small fishing port of Port Felicity in order to build an offshore oil drilling platform. They are not, however, popular with the local people. The main industry in the area is fishing, especially for shrimp, and the fishermen believe that any exploration for oil will put their livelihood at risk. (The word "shrimp" in American usage obviously denotes something far larger than it would in Britain. We would call what the fisherman catch "prawns" or "scampi"; "shrimp" refers to a similar, but much smaller, species of crustacean. Hence the expression "little shrimp" to mean a small person).
An added complication is the romance which grows up between Steve and Stella, the beautiful and intelligent daughter of one of the fishermen. Stella is better-educated than most of her fellow townspeople, and is one of the few with experience of the outside world, having worked in Chicago. She is, however, also one of the fiercest opponents of the oil drilling project, having been left with a deep distrust of the business community and of outsiders in general by an unhappy love-affair with a city-slicker type in Chicago.
One reviewer describes the conflict in this movie as "almost Marxian", but this strikes me as overstated. Marxists have normally seen the class struggle in terms of employer/employee relationships, something largely absent from this film. What we see here is the clash of big business against small business, Big Oil versus Little Shrimp. Rather surprisingly, at least from a modern perspective, the film generally takes the side of Big Oil. The shrimpers (with the exception of one who resorts to violence) are not exactly cast as the villains of the piece, but they are shown as Luddites, standing in the way of America's inevitable progress towards a golden industrial future. Steve, Johnny and their financial backer Kermit MacDonald are the good guys because they are on the side of that future. The only bad guys on the big business side are the faint-hearts in the company who threaten to cut off funding when Steve seems to be making slow progress in finding oil.
The special effects during the storm scene probably did look special in the early fifties, but today, in comparison with something like "The Perfect Storm", they are nothing much. What really dates the film, however, is its complacent assumption that it is in the public interest for big business to get whatever big business wants. Any environmental objections to its plans can simply be brushed aside or made to disappear as if by magic, as happens here. Rather improbably, Steve and Johnny not only strike oil but also discover a rich new source of shrimp, which ensures lasting wealth and prosperity for Port Felicity and removes any obstacle to the love of Steve and Stella.
The Mann/Stewart westerns include some excellent films such as "The Man from Laramie" and "The Naked Spur", which brought to the genre a new emphasis on the importance of character and a greater moral complexity than the old "white hats versus black hats" formula. Their non-western collaborations, however, are not always up to the same standard. I have never seen "The Glenn Miller Story", but "Strategic Air Command" is overlong and dull, and "Thunder Bay" is not a lot better, although it is at least shorter. This is not Stewart's best performance- at times he just seems to be going through the motions- and Dan Duryea seems a bit too abrasive as Johnny. There is not the same emphasis on well-developed characters as in the Mann/ Stewart westerns and the plot is really just a romantic comedy set against the background of the oil industry, although without very much humour. Any tension or conflict is allowed to evaporate by that magic ending. "Thunder Bay" looks very dated today, and not only by the fact that the scriptwriter used the name "Kermit" for a character who wasn't a talking frog. (Although in 1953 the Muppets only lay two years in the future). 5/10
Thunder Bay is a Canadian city on the shores of Lake Superior, and there is a bay of the same name on the American side of Lake Huron, but the film is not set in either location, or for that matter anywhere in the Great Lakes. Instead it is set much further south in coastal Louisiana. The precise significance of the title is obscure, but it may be a reference to the fact that a storm features in one scene.
The action takes place in the year 1946. Steve Martin, an engineer, and his friend Johnny Gambi arrive in the small fishing port of Port Felicity in order to build an offshore oil drilling platform. They are not, however, popular with the local people. The main industry in the area is fishing, especially for shrimp, and the fishermen believe that any exploration for oil will put their livelihood at risk. (The word "shrimp" in American usage obviously denotes something far larger than it would in Britain. We would call what the fisherman catch "prawns" or "scampi"; "shrimp" refers to a similar, but much smaller, species of crustacean. Hence the expression "little shrimp" to mean a small person).
An added complication is the romance which grows up between Steve and Stella, the beautiful and intelligent daughter of one of the fishermen. Stella is better-educated than most of her fellow townspeople, and is one of the few with experience of the outside world, having worked in Chicago. She is, however, also one of the fiercest opponents of the oil drilling project, having been left with a deep distrust of the business community and of outsiders in general by an unhappy love-affair with a city-slicker type in Chicago.
One reviewer describes the conflict in this movie as "almost Marxian", but this strikes me as overstated. Marxists have normally seen the class struggle in terms of employer/employee relationships, something largely absent from this film. What we see here is the clash of big business against small business, Big Oil versus Little Shrimp. Rather surprisingly, at least from a modern perspective, the film generally takes the side of Big Oil. The shrimpers (with the exception of one who resorts to violence) are not exactly cast as the villains of the piece, but they are shown as Luddites, standing in the way of America's inevitable progress towards a golden industrial future. Steve, Johnny and their financial backer Kermit MacDonald are the good guys because they are on the side of that future. The only bad guys on the big business side are the faint-hearts in the company who threaten to cut off funding when Steve seems to be making slow progress in finding oil.
The special effects during the storm scene probably did look special in the early fifties, but today, in comparison with something like "The Perfect Storm", they are nothing much. What really dates the film, however, is its complacent assumption that it is in the public interest for big business to get whatever big business wants. Any environmental objections to its plans can simply be brushed aside or made to disappear as if by magic, as happens here. Rather improbably, Steve and Johnny not only strike oil but also discover a rich new source of shrimp, which ensures lasting wealth and prosperity for Port Felicity and removes any obstacle to the love of Steve and Stella.
The Mann/Stewart westerns include some excellent films such as "The Man from Laramie" and "The Naked Spur", which brought to the genre a new emphasis on the importance of character and a greater moral complexity than the old "white hats versus black hats" formula. Their non-western collaborations, however, are not always up to the same standard. I have never seen "The Glenn Miller Story", but "Strategic Air Command" is overlong and dull, and "Thunder Bay" is not a lot better, although it is at least shorter. This is not Stewart's best performance- at times he just seems to be going through the motions- and Dan Duryea seems a bit too abrasive as Johnny. There is not the same emphasis on well-developed characters as in the Mann/ Stewart westerns and the plot is really just a romantic comedy set against the background of the oil industry, although without very much humour. Any tension or conflict is allowed to evaporate by that magic ending. "Thunder Bay" looks very dated today, and not only by the fact that the scriptwriter used the name "Kermit" for a character who wasn't a talking frog. (Although in 1953 the Muppets only lay two years in the future). 5/10