Moonrise, Borzage's most admired film of the forties, has been compared with the films of the French poetic-realists for its dark psychological themes and the fatalism which permeates the action and the mise-en-scene. The story is of a young man (Dane Clark) who has suffered a lifetime of rejection in his small southern town because his father was hanged for murder. Plagued by fears of his own “bad blood,” he is eventually driven to commit murder himself, and is then unable to live with his guilt either in the town or in the claustrophobic swamplands surrounding it. He seeks the council of “Grandma” (Ethel Barrymore), who, living on a hill far above town, knows something about free will. Though it departs from the spiritual love stories for which Borzage is known, Moonrise is a would-be film noir that is softened considerably by Borzage's impressionistic treatment, and his concern with redemption through love.