Dark Passage

Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947) Soapish film noir with "Bogey and Baby" that manages to have a few interesting things to recommend it, amidst some howler material.

The story isn't much: Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart, eventually), convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from San Quentin, and is able to make his way back to San Francisco with the help of Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall), a rich-girl painter who knows all about Parry's case—because her own father was falsely accused of murdering her mother.

Small damn world.

Irene gives Parry a place to crash, and a change of clothes. Then, making his way to Frisco to meet an old buddy, his cab-driver gives him a line on a disgraced plastic surgeon, who's not adverse to doing last-minute surgeries at 3 a.m. It takes Parry a week to heal, which he does at Irene's—something he didn't want to do, but seeing as his buddy was murdered and all...

Grave-eye view of a post-op Bogart finding his musician-buddy dead.

Wait a minute! If you hadn't said that yet, what kept you? It would appear that San Francisco (nice location work, by the way) is the smallest town in America, as everybody knows everybody else and their business, besides. While convalescing at Irene's, Parry becomes aware that the place is being watched by a couple people, a potential blackmailer (Clifton Young) and Madge (Agnes Moorehead), the buttinsky friend of Irene's who used to go out with Bob (Bruce Bennett), Irene's current beau, but was also old friends with the Parry's back in the day. As Bogart would say, "Everything's starting to look nice and cosy..."

When the bandages come off, we get to see The Man with Bogart's Face, but before then, all we're allowed to see of Parry was his picture in the paper, or his face in shadow. Daves employed a technique not much used in movies—the first-person subjective camera, so we see everything from Parry's point-of-view; there's a lot of people speaking right at us throughout the first part of the movie and answered back by Bogart's disembodied voice. Daves pulls off some miraculous inter-cutting between location-work and studio set-ups (in a moving car, yet!), and it's interesting to see how he gets himself out of jams of timing and transitions. He also employs an interesting angle every now and again, like the vantage point of a murder scene...from below the floor!

There's a lot to quibble about (did I mention the plastic surgery only takes an hour?), but any excuse to see Bogart-Bacall together again, and to see another of Agnes Moorehead's unabashedly demonstrative performances. Those are enough reasons to give Dark Passage a watch.

Here's looking at you looking at me, kid.
Subjective POV of Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage

Sahara (1943)

Sahara *(Zoltan Korda, 1943) Columbia Pictures propaganda film (based on "an incident" in a Russian screenplay) disguised as a war-time action picture. Humphrey Bogart stars as Sgt. Joe Gunn,** a cranky old Yank in a clanky old tank, the LuluBelle, who, making his way back to a friendly base, gathers together a rag-tag crew of Allies (French, British, Australian, South African, Italian and Sudanese) in North Africa. Voted in charge of the make-shift troop, he makes priorities—keep LuluBelle running, find water, deal with the Nazi troops nearby, stay alive. Along the way, through the collective effort, manage to sustain a stronghold against a large Nazi desert-troop. Filmed in the California desert, it still feels like rough duty for the actors amid the sand, the flies and the sweat. Director Korda and multiple screenwriters, including John Howard Lawson and Sidney Buchman keep the surprises and the intrigue sustained through the entire picture, while promoting brotherhood and cooperation between the lines.

Bogart really has the least interesting part, but he excels at being the crux of the movie and meriting being the guy to whom all eyes turn. It's an effective, oddball role. Of all the films with people of obvious ethnicity pulling together whether in American or Japanese war films, Sahara succeeds brilliantly, betraying neither the prejudices of the period, nor moving too far into caricature. The movie even takes a stab at trashing the "master race" theories of the Nazi's.

Amidst the water retrieval methods and the tense negotiations and full-on battle scenes featuring big guns and deceiving trench-warfare, the stranded Allies still have time to compare cultures and rememberances of home. "The things you learn in the Army," says a smiling Texan to the Sudanese in conversation.

There's your recruitment headline right there.

* Not to be confused (as if it could be) with the 1983 Brooks Shields vehicle, or the 2005 Clive Cussler adaptation with Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz.

** Presumably Luger being too German, and Beretta to be used in a 70's cop show and Joe Rifle...sounding as dumb as Joe Gunn, frankly.