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Showing posts with label Humphrey Bogart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humphrey Bogart. Show all posts
Jul 5, 2023
Watching Classic Movies Podcast: Bogie, Bacall, and The Hollywood Home Front Trilogy with Martin Turnbull
Sep 8, 2021
On Blu-ray--Chain Lightning (1950) with Humphrey Bogart and Eleanor Parker
I’ve watched the test pilot drama Chain Lightning (1950) a few times since I first saw it via the home edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival, the most recent viewing on a new Blu-ray release from Warner Archive. I haven’t connected with the film; the story is uninspiring, the script is flat, and the airborne action offers moderate thrills. However, I keep coming back to it, because of my fascination with its leads Humphrey Bogart and Eleanor Parker.
The tagline for Chain Lightning proclaims it as being “With that special brand of Bogart romance.” As much as that is typical marketing language that you would expect to see on a movie poster, Bogart does offer an unusual romantic perspective. In a film landscape where men rarely showed vulnerability, especially when it came to women, Bogie was all about being open-hearted and showing it.
While he wasn’t best known as a great screen lover, Bogart was a partner in some of the most moving screen romances. His pairing in three films with real-life love Lauren Bacall is the most legendary, with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942) a close second. As he was in those partnerships, Bogie is vulnerable with Parker here, he lets you see him pine for her. The film is too weak, and his other screen matches too legendary for their romance to endure as one for the ages, but it is yet another example of how well Bogart could communicate his emotions and his willingness to be emotionally raw.
Parker is equally good at subtly, but effectively communicating vulnerability and conflict. It’s perplexing that she wasn’t a bigger star, because no matter what material she had, she always dove right into the emotions of her character and drew the audience into her character’s world. Bogart is one of her better screen partners, because they have equal courage in laying themselves open.
As I found the action and the plot lacking in Chain Lightning, this was what held my attention. The story of Matt Brennan (Bogart), a World War II pilot who test flies an experimental jet has its moments of excitement and tension, but I don’t know that I would have watched it more than once without the relationship between Brennan and Jo Holloway (Parker) a former WWII love coming back into his life.
There were other elements here that I found pleasing though. Raymond Massey gets the self-absorbed determination of his aviation tycoon just right. It’s also a pleasure to watch Bogart alone in the cockpit during his test pilots. He’s known for his way with a line, but in observing him in silence for long stretches, you can see how skilled he was as a physical actor as well. I was riveted watching his varied reactions to his dangerous mission.
Special features on the disc include the cartoon Bear Feat and the goofy Joe McDoakes short So You Want to Be an Actor.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review.
Aug 12, 2016
On Blu-ray: Bogie and Bacall on Blu-ray, To Have and Have Not (1944)
With the release of To Have and Have Not (1944), all four of the films Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart made together are now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.
I've never been able to convince myself to pay much attention to the plot of To Have and Have Not. It's always been a movie of exciting sensations to me. Watching nineteen-year-old Bacall blow everyone away with her super sleek cool (the nervous teenager fooled them all by pinning her shaking chin low to her chest, thus inventing her trademark sultry look). Watching Bogie watch Bacall, and wondering how much of it is acting, because the legend of them falling in love in real life during production is the film's main claim to fame. Listening to Hoagy Carmichael's eternally hip crooning as a piano player in a Martinique bar; the perfect sexy soundtrack to this mesmerizing banter and flirtation.
Under Bogie and Bacall's romantic spell, the rest of the film becomes a spectacle to me too. I tend to remove myself from the mechanics of it all, and enjoy the careful visual composition of a group of hoods gathered around a dim table lamp, or the tightly-coiled Dolores Moran trying to convince Bogie to help her cause and get her man out of a jam. Even the dialogue comes at me in pieces, witty moments, great passages, elements that do make a coherent whole, though I don't feel the need to enjoy them that way.
The script has an interesting pedigree. The title is practically the only thing to survive Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway's novel. It was written by another Nobel winner, William Faulkner, but director Howard Hawks lays claim to the most memorable passages, like that legendary exchange between Bogie and Bacall where Ms. Lauren encourages him to "put your lips together and blow."
As well-made as Hawks' film is, it is the dance between these mesmerizing leads that makes it memorable. There's the timing, like the way Bogie waits a beat before reacting to that memorable line about whistling. He takes a moment to marvel at her eroticism before letting out a low, luxurious whistle. There is also a physical poetry to the pair, in the way they move around each other with curiosity and excitement or how Bacall's hair swoops down in a rippling curtain as she leans towards him for a kiss.
To cleanse the pallet there is Walter Brennan as Eddie, Bogie's sidekick, a dipsomaniac who is a tragically lost figure, though he's there for comic relief. His scenes, and the musical interludes where Bacall sings, grab more attention than the more serious business of smuggling and saving the resistance that is meant to drive the action. That story is well-crafted, but in the end, Bogie and Bacall provide all the action you need.
Special features on the disc include a brief documentary about the production and Bacall and Bogart's romance, a Lux Radio Broadcast episode featuring the pair, a trailer for the film and the amusing Merrie Melodies short Bacall to Arms (1946) which pokes fun at the sultry pair.
Other Bogey and Bacall Blu-rays I have reviewed:
Dark Passage (1947), The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948)
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Jul 8, 2016
On Blu-ray: Bogie and Bacall in Dark Passage (1947)
The four film partnership between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall worked because the growing affection they felt for each other off-screen translated so well to the characters they played. That love is most evident in Dark Passage (1947), which despite all its bitterness and hard edges is also an intensely romantic film. Joining The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948), this Bogie and Bacall noir is now also available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.
Bogart is Vincent Parry, a recently escaped convict on the run. Once Vincent gets free from prison, he hitches a ride, only to be exposed when the car radio reports the man hunt. Acting in panic, he knocks out the now suspicious young man (Clifton Young, a former Little Rascal and still looking it) who has picked him up. As Vincent deals with the fall-out, a mysterious young woman insists that he get in her station wagon and she safely transports him to her apartment.
Her name is Irene Jansen (Bacall) and she thinks that Vincent may be innocent of killing his wife, just as her own convicted father was years ago. Determined that not another man should suffer a wrongful conviction, she dedicates herself to saving the bewildered Vincent. Her efforts are stymied by persistent beaux wannabe Bob (Bruce Bennett) and the high strung Madge (Agnes Moorehead), who coincidently has a lot to do with Vincent's dilemma.
Dark Passage is perhaps best remembered for its extensive use of point-of-view camera. For the first forty minutes of the film everything you see is through Vincent's eyes. You don't even get a full look at his face until an hour into the action. This segment is filmed with remarkable smoothness by what was at the time a newly-developed handheld camera.
Though a gimmick like point-of-view can be an awkward distraction, it is an asset here, because you get to watch Bacall's character falling hard for Vincent and she is beautifully effective. The actress has long had a reputation for being a tough, if essentially friendly dame. Here she demonstrates how tender she could be.
While the Bogart and Bacall chemistry sizzled in all four of their films, in Dark Passage they are at their most intimate. It made me think about the passages in Lauren Bacall's 1978 autobiography By Myself, where she describes the development of her romance with Bogart. You get the feeling that she saved him from despair and that resonates in the film as well.
The Blu-ray debut of the film looks gorgeous, with sharp, clean images. Dark Passage is famous for its liberal use of San Francisco location shots, and that aspect of the film is now particularly striking. The restoration also made me more aware of the complexity of the sound and what an important role it played in building tension and telling the story during the point-of-view scenes.
Special features include a trailer for the film, the Bugs Bunny cartoon short Slick Hare (1947), and Hold Your Breath and Cross Your Fingers a TCM-produced featurette about the making of the film, which includes interviews with Leonard Maltin, Robert Osborne and Bogart biographer Eric Lax.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Mar 25, 2016
Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948) on Blu-ray
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Warner Archive has released yet another pair of essentials on Blu-ray: the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall classics The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948). These films capture the famous twosome at their best, and with casts of supporting actors so colorful that they are constantly in danger of being upstaged. Both discs have a sharp, clean picture; where image is concerned, these are two of the most successful of the studio's recent Blu-ray releases.
The Big Sleep is notorious for having such a complex plot that even Raymond Chandler, author of the source novel, didn't know who did what in his richly corrupt noir. Where the movie is concerned, it certainly didn't help that a couple of scenes that could have clarified the action were cut from the final film.
I've watched this noir for years though, and I find that I care less about those details with each viewing. This is a film not so much to understand, but to experience. When dialogue inspires prickles of pleasure as it does here, you're more focused on the moment and less concerned with deciphering the big picture.
The Big Sleep is drenched in sex. It's steamy and seedy with unchecked desires. Even hound dog-faced private eye Philip Marlowe (Bogart) finds himself the target of constant, hungry female attention.
It begins literally in heat, as private eye Marlowe meets with his new client, General Sternwood in a sweltering greenhouse. Propped up in a wheelchair, he is a dying man who is resigned to experiencing pleasure by proxy. He is played by Charles Waldron, a mesmerizing actor who would soon die himself. This scene sets up the amoral tone of the film, where the pursuit of pleasure is destructive, but irresistible. Sternwood complains that the flesh of orchids is too much like that of humans and compares himself to a baby spider, living on heat. You can almost smell the rot, and it is strangely alluring.
While the banter between Bogie and Bacall is one of the supreme delights of this movie, and movies in general, they are nearly overcome by a fascinating supporting cast. In addition to Waldron, there's nineteen-year-old Dorothy Malone as a boldly erotic bookstore employee; Elijah Cook Jr. in a quiet performance that is both sinister and sympathetic and Martha Vickers, who nearly steals it all as the General's thumb-sucking nymphomaniac daughter Carmen.
Special features include the 1945 pre-release version of the film, a comparison of the 1945 and 1946 edits, a trailer and an introduction by film preservationist Robert Gitt.
Key Largo is a sharper-eyed film than The Big Sleep. Instead of drifting through an erotic, gritty dream, it builds upon the more recognizable frustrations of real life. There are the human losses of World War II, the pain of racism, struggles with addiction and the fear of being lonely and aimless.
Though Bogart had a tough guy image, here is one of many cases he was actually cast as a pacifist, more interested in defusing a dangerous situation, and only resorting to violence as a last resort. He is Frank McCloud, an ex-GI checking in on Nora Temple (Bacall) and James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), the widow and father of a former war buddy, at their Key Largo hotel. The weary veteran seems uncertain of what to do with his life, but determined to approach his remaining days with honor and compassion. His dreams of peace are stalled when gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), his dipsomaniac moll Gaye (Claire Trevor) and a band of hoods take over the off-season hotel as they wait to complete a smuggling operation by sea.
Rocco is an odd character; he's terrifying, but the people around him seem to see through the bluster, at least a bit. He's big and beefy, and clearly willing to use his gun, but McCloud easily talks him out of an act of violence, and Papa Temple and Nora take turns attacking him, too angry and violated to be intimidated by this self-absorbed bully. Even his fellow hoods sometimes seem unimpressed with the mobster, either because they've seen it all, or they don't value their lives enough to care.
The pathetic, but tender Gaye is the only one who seems truly frightened of Rocco, and it's because he reinforces her own fears that she is worthless. Trevor is most deserving of the Academy Award she won for this role. Her heartbreak is visceral; she knows she's made too many wrong turns and she still cares. She's not yet hardened enough to stop wishing she could go back in time.
John Huston's direction is sharp and tense, but also oddly sentimental. He is just as likely to pull close to a tender moment as he is a moment of peril. That mix of emotions heightens the suspense; just as your heart swells for someone, there is a moment of danger, and it is more terrifying because you have been given a reason to care.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copies of the films for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Dec 20, 2009
Quote of the Week
The only point in making money is, you can tell some big shot where to go.
-Humphrey Bogart
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