Tag Archives: Bogart

The Big Sleep [1946)

If you’ve seen Mulholland Drive, you know the pleasure which being confused can bring.  Where is that confounded plot?  Yes, that is exactly what can happen here if you are not paying strict attention.  This film is notorious for being convoluted.  Perhaps the assertion is unfair.  Unlike Finnegans Wake, there is actually a plot (complete with characters) here, yet you must hold on tight to come out with any specific sense of what has just transpired.

In some ways The Big Sleep is similar to Hitchcock’s Vertigo in that both films seem to be buoyed along primarily by their mood and tone.  Whether it was specifically the doing of Faulkner (one of three screenwriters here) or not, the dialogue is perhaps the best ever written.  Inextricable from the razor-sharp repartee are the talents of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  An underappreciated addition to this grand concoction of Howard Hawks is the contribution of Martha Vickers.  This was perhaps the only significant film role of her acting career (which also included television), but it is one for the ages!

Bogart, for his part, is stellar in his versatility.  His “undercover” stint at Geiger’s book shop is hilarious!  Dorothy Malone has a short-yet-incendiary part as the proprietress of Acme Bookstore.  She would go on to win an Oscar for best supporting actress by way of Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956).  Even as late as 1992 she was making an impact on the film world (in Basic Instinct).

But it is Bogart who gives one of his greatest performances as the truth-seeking, street-smart Philip Marlowe.  Passion drives Marlowe to “soldier on” just as much as justice.  Bogart is the supreme example of insubordination gone right.  His fierce independence is infused into the character of Marlowe to stunning effect.  Bogart won’t quit.  Howard Hawks makes the whole thing seem real by having Marlowe shake with fear near the climax.  All we needed was a glimpse of his humanity to truly appreciate the insouciant superman we’ve been following.

-PD

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To Have and Have Not [1944)

Was you ever stung by a dead bee?  Their sting can’t possibly be as piquant as 19-year-old Lauren Bacall in this classic.  Humphrey Bogart would agree.  It was Bacall’s first film and the beginning of a “beautiful friendship.”  Their on-screen charisma here is both impossibly cute and sweltering (the latter due to Bacall’s sultry acting).

Walter Brennan can’t stop talking about dead bees (or stop talking in general).  His performance is magnificent.  The sub-plot involving Brennan’s character Eddie and Bogart’s Capt. Morgan (rum, anyone?) is truly touching.  Bogart plays the tough-yet-compassionate friend to the old alcoholic Eddie.  It is an underdog story and we are glad to see someone looking after the unfortunate Eddie.  It is significant that the novel upon which this film is loosely based was written by Hemingway, yet Eddie seems to bear a slight resemblance to Lennie from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.  To round out the American literature lesson, William Faulkner is credited as one of the two screenwriters.

Of additional note (no pun intended) is the acting, singing, and playing of Hoagy Carmichael.  There are such fantastic musical moments herein.  One wonders whether Tom Waits was inspired by the songs from this film (and by Carmichael in general).  We must also remember that Ian Fleming envisioned 007 as looking like Carmichael.  His presence in this film adds immensely to the whole.

The direction of Howard Hawks is stunning, though deftly “invisible.”  We believe the events are actually happening.  Though it is Hollywood through and through, there might be a case made for Hawks’ own neorealism at this time when Rossellini was about to release the seminal  Roma città aperta (the epitome of cinematic veritas). 

-PD

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Action in the North Atlantic [1943)

Where to start…  This is a time capsule from another world and, most of all, a damn good film.  It might be argued that this picture proves a certain fallibility of the French auteur theory, but only insofar as director Lloyd Bacon never having been canonized like, for instance, Howard Hawks.  Sure…this is a propaganda film, but it’s hard to argue with gentle optimism.  We were even allies with Russia (Soviet Union) back then!

I hadn’t seen a Raymond Massey performance in a long while and it was good to remember his excellent acting skills.  Bogart is great the whole way through, but what else would you expect?  Ruth Gordon does a fine job in her small role as Massey’s wife.  Not many female roles here as the majority of the film is at sea during wartime (in the 1940s).  Julie Bishop is likewise lovely as Bogart’s new bride (though we see very little of her too).

The ensemble acting is really remarkable and vivid…particularly aboard the oil tanker at the start of the film.  Dane Clark has a strange role–a sort of “doubting Thomas” who finally sees the light of patriotism.  Truly, this film is not just American propaganda, but also proto United Nations perception management.  But like I said, this was a different age and the whole thing comes off as quite the opposite of heavy-handed.

Alan Hale, Sr. is pretty hilarious the whole way through as O’Hara:  the guy who never shuts up.  To be fair, none of these salty dogs ever shut up.  Only Bogart and Massey retain any sense of distinguished cool.

Of particular note are the action sequences.  What a huge undertaking!  This is truly a movie which gives a glimmer as to the breadth at issue in WWII.  The aerial shots of the maritime convoy are astounding!  Amid all of this bombast I failed to notice Robert Mitchum’s one line appearance, but if Wikipedia claims it’s so then it must be.  Ha!

The specific topic of recruitment (as per propaganda) is for the U.S. Merchant Marine and their Academy.  Like I said, none of it is too terribly offensive to logical thought.  Of particular interest is the dialogue of the German U-boats.  All of it is in German and without subtitles.  We also hear different tongues throughout the film (such as Russian).  No “foreign” character is ever made to speak English.

Speaking of mixed messages…Wikipedia also credits Raoul Walsh and Byron Haskin with directing this film.  Now what the heck is that all about?  No wonder Lloyd got the auteurist shaft!

 

-PD

 

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Across the Pacific [1942)

Spies, spies; every where, Nor any secret to glean.  Je t’aime… moi non plus. 

“Picasso is Spanish, me too. Picasso is a genius, me too. Picasso is a communist, me neither.”  Ah, Dalí.  Only a man who enjoyed roasted grapefruits as an appetizer would have the twisted wit to turn Western logic upon its head.

Coleridge.  Gainsbourg.  Bogart.  Indeed, the albatross was heavy round the necks of all at this time…not least for John Huston.  We begin with détournement and continue with dérive.

Dear Mr. Huston didn’t even get the chance to complete this film before having his work taken over by Vincent Sherman.  This was truly an age of war.  Hot war.

The original film premise was to depict a Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor…until the Japanese actually did just that.  Oops!  And so it was rewritten to focus on the Panama Canal Zone.  A sabotage incident (which would have likewise sparked off American mass involvement) is the linchpin of our drama.

Sydney Greenstreet once again plays a slippery character (and what is more, referred to again as “the fat man”).  It wouldn’t be too long before Greenstreet’s soubriquet was transposed onto the plutonium bomb which destroyed Nagasaki.  This was no coincidence.

After arriving in Panama Bogart continues his work for Army intelligence by meeting with A.V. Smith (Charles Halton).  On Smith’s desk, conspicuously in plain view, is a calendar and the date:  Dec. 6, 1941.  Time is of the essence.

Bogart’s character is named Rick.  His pal Lee Tung Foo is called Sam.  Sound familiar?

Yes, just two months after Across the Pacific, Casablanca would be released with Bogart as another Rick and Dooley Wilson as Sam the piano player.  Greenstreet had been “the Fat Man” the previous year in The Maltese Falcon (also directed by Huston).  That film had likewise starred Mary Astor who appears in Across the Pacific as Alberta Marlow.  Bogart would go on to play Philip Marlowe in Howard Hawks’ masterful version of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946).  It all gets a bit confusing, doesn’t it?  Let’s just call it the fog of noir, shall we?

To keep accounts straight…we should remember that Casablanca was directed not by Huston, but by Michael Curtiz.

Reentering the atmosphere of film criticism proper…this is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, but not the juggernaut that some Bogart outings came to be.  It is perhaps most of interest as the precipice which our star occupied just before Casablanca.  Though it is less known than The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep (among many other Bogie films), it is well-worth watching.

 

-PD

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Key Largo [1948)

By 1948, John Huston had honed his craft.  This may not be as highly-esteemed a movie as The Maltese Falcon, but it has several dimensions more depth.  The whole thing is a situation (meant in the philosophical sense). It reminds me most of Hitchcock’s minor masterpiece Lifeboat.  There is also a bit of Rope in this film which never leaves the Hotel Largo once all the major players are inside (save for the end which, like Lifeboat, takes us into the wine-dark sea).

There is something of Frank Capra in the touching scene where Bogie relates the death of the hotel patron’s son in the recently-ended war (a bit like Meet John Doe in the whole tone of it).  Perhaps, however, a more accurate comparison is to the heart-wrenching tenor of Anatole Litvak’s Out of the Fog.  It is interesting how Huston sets up Bogart’s character to be a hero, but surprises await.

Edward G. Robinson’s emergence from the bathtub is such an iconic film moment…smoking that cigar, a glass of brandy (perhaps) on the tub’s edge…a man worried about nothing…slipping into his silk bathrobe.  Robinson is fantastic as the cruel Johnny Rocco…most of all because Robinson’s depiction has such depth.  This is, after all, a man who we will shortly see is afraid of storms (to his credit, it is a proper hurricane).

This whole film is (for most of the movie) a very strange role for Bogart.  It is as if he were being thrust back into the days when he had to play second fiddle to actors like Robinson.  The beautiful Lauren Bacall loses faith in Bogart’s character as he not only seems to cower, but also contradicts the idealism of her father-in-law (the father of her dead husband…a genuine war hero).

It is no wonder Claire Trevor won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her work in this film.  When her alcoholic character is baited into singing a song from her long-gone heyday we are again gifted a one-of-a-kind film moment:  a pathetic has-been warbling out of pitch and just wanting a couple fingers of scotch.  It is, strangely enough, this point at which Bogart regains his cajones and pours the drink which Robinson would withhold on account of her shabby performance.  Bacall regains her faith and apologizes to Bogie.

I don’t want to spoil the ending.  [Now ain’t I nice?]  This is a must-see film and it only further adds to the Bogart legend which has been built upon his performances in more well-known films.  Sail on Bogie!

 

-PD

 

 

 

 

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The Maltese Falcon [1941)

Bogart is our “three day stubble” hero–our five-o’clock shadow warrior.  “Tough without a gun,” said Raymond Chandler.  Indeed, Bogart as Sam Spade herein disarms a couple of gun-wielding punks through his ingenuity alone.  Quick movements.  Think fast.

In a tough profession one must roll with the punches.  Bogie’s partner is murdered?  Life must go on.  Extra space on the signage?  Put my full name:  Samuel Spade.

Yes, Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) is indispensable.  John Huston turns in an astounding film for a first-time director.  But the whole enterprise is carried by Humphrey.

There is a reason why Huston was slighted by the French New Wave and Bogart was not.  Huston was not at all a bad director.  It was just that the discrepancy became clear when the brilliant Bogart was placed at the disposal of Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray.  One needs only watch another juggernaut debut (Breathless by Godard) to see the esteem which Bogie accrued with the French film culture which would give intellectual validity to American films previously considered mere pulp entertainment.

 

-PD

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