List Price: $19.98 Our Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
DVD Dark Passage
This gimmicky film noir stars Humphrey Bogart as an escaped criminal who undergoes plastic surgery and holes up at the home of Lauren Bacall's character while healing and preparing to prove his innocence. If you can last through the first half-hour of this thing--which is shot entirely from the subjective view of Bogart's bandaged face, which we don't see until later--you might find ample reason in the stars' performances to stick around for the conclusion. But director Delmer Daves (A Summer Place) tests a viewer's endurance with such an obvious, attention-getting ploy. The least of the Bogart-Bacall vehicles (The Big Sleep,To Have and Have Not, Key Largo). --Tom Keogh
Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent Parry, an architect wrongly convicted of his wife's murder. Parry escapes from prison and a manhunt ensues. Luckily for Parry, Lauren Bacall takes him in. Meanwhile, he manages to have plastic surgery to change his appearance and he tries to clear his name. Agnes Moorehead, as one of Parry's wife's friends, turns out to be the killer. She's also dangerously insane. Interesting but improbable.
Together Again!
Or do you prefer "In Danger As Violent As Their Love"? They were the taglines used to advertise this movie. DARK PASSAGE (1947) features the third pairing of Humphrey Bogart with Lauren Bacall. Their first movie together was `To Have and Have Not,' a Howard Hawks' war film from 1944 that is now mainly remembered as their first joint film appearance. Their second was another Hawks' film (the 10-minute documentary on the dvd tells us Hawks had a bit of a thing for Bacall before Bogart muscled in.) THE BIG SLEEP (1946) was a nifty crime thriller adapted from a Raymond Chandler novel that starred Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe.
Apparently by 1947 Hawks realized that a top actor trumps a top director and he was out of the picture. DARK PASSAGE is helmed by Delmer Daves, a writer ("Petrified Forest," "Queen Kelly") turned director who specialized in thinking man action movies like the tense "3:10 to Yuma" and the ground-breaking "Broken Arrow." DARK PASSAGE, which at this late date looks like little more than an opportunity to capitalize on the Bogart/Bacall sizzle, does some ground-breaking of its own. Perhaps a little too much ground was broken. DARK PASSAGE uses a then cutting edge handheld camera and real locations (San Francisco) to brilliantly leave Bogart off camera for forty minutes - the film is shot from his character's point of view - and then masks him up with post-plastic surgery bandages for another twenty.
Bogart plays Vincent Parry, a San Quentin escapee who'd been serving life for the murder of his wife. Lauren Bacall is Irene Jansen, a young woman who believes in him. The subjective camera gimmick that dominates the first half of the movie loses its edge quickly and becomes tiresome. Why would you have a Bogart movie if you weren't going to SHOW him until the movie is more than half over? In any event, the movie comes to its senses at about the one hour mark, takes the bandages off and (finally) puts Bogart and Bacall together in a soft focus two-shot for The Kiss. Gathering momentum quickly, the movie rather abruptly send the Bogart character out into the typical urban night of neon signs, wet streets and all-night diners.
Familiar territory for Bogart and his fans, and as might be expected he manages to tie up the loose ends without breaking much of a sweat. The uninitiated may find things wrap up a little too quickly and easily, but those who enjoy basking in the reflected glow of the Bogart/Bacall romance should be satisfied enough.
Interesting Bogart...
This is a little different for Bogart and Bacall, but I found it quite interesting and worth the watch for sure. The premise of the movie dictates that you don't see Bogart's face till quite a ways into the movie, and it's very interesting to see the movie work with that angle. Overall, I think that even weaker movies by Bogart and Bacall are great! This may not be non-stop intensity, but it's still exciting.
Yes, it's true: you can virtually see Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall falling for each other in this Howard Hawks variation on Casablanca but adapted from--as legend has it--Ernest Hemingway's self-declared "worst novel." (The story goes that Hawks told Hemingway he could make a movie of the author's least work, and Hemingway gave him the rights to this story.) The script by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman actually makes this one of Hawks's and Bogart's most interesting and often exciting films. Bogart plays a boat captain who reluctantly agrees to help the French Resistance while wooing chanteuse Bacall. Hoagy Carmichael, wry at the piano, adds a delicious accent to an already wonderful mood. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
John Huston (The Maltese Falcon) directed this smart thriller about a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who holds a number of people hostage in a hotel in the Florida Keys during a tropical storm. Humphrey Bogart is the returning war veteran who takes on the villains, and Lauren Bacall is on hand as one of the people on the wrong end of Robinson's gun. Somewhat similar in tone to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (which also featured Bogart and Bacall), this moody movie captures a certain despair offset by the bond between individuals united by common purpose. Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for her part as Robinson's alcoholic girlfriend. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Edward G. Robinson - Lauren Bacall Director(s): John Huston DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
Still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood's official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing "gunsel" played by Elisha Cook Jr. It's an action movie of sorts, at least by... More Info about this DVD Director(s): John Huston DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $13.99YOU SAVE $5.98!
Buy it
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $8.98YOU SAVE $6!
Buy it
