Husband-and-wife stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall teamed up again for the
1947 film noir
Dark Passage (DP,
not to be confused with our favorite noir magazine,
The Dark Pages). I could have sworn that Philadelphia-born author
David Goodis had originally titled this novel
The Dark Road after Warner
Bros. snapped up the movie rights for Bogie and Baby, giving it the more
suspenseful title
Dark Passage; does anyone here know for sure? On a recent
TCM Friday Night Spotlight on noir authors, film historian
Eddie Muller explained that many of these suspense writers had to suffer the
slings and arrows of seeing their books “chopped up and channeled as B-movies
before they ever got A-list recognition, but Goodis did it backwards with
DP, his first crime novel
. It was serialized in
The
Saturday Evening Post, and then Warner Bros. snapped it up for Bogart and
Bacall for the silver screen." Nice work if you can get it! Goodis was touted as the new Dashiell Hammett, writing pulps and radio
serials in the 1940s.
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| Author David Goodis hard at work |
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Travel tip: If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to hide inside a huge prison drum! |
Goodis was apparently one of those maverick types
who had his own ideas about what he wanted to write and how to go about
it—imagine that, writers with minds of their own! Back in the day, filmmakers
didn’t always know what to make of quirky types like Goodis, but he was
nevertheless prolific with novels such as
The Blonde on the Street Corner
and
Street of No Return (both from 1954);
The Moon in the Gutter
and
The Burglar (both from 1953), and
Cassidy’s Girl (1951). Goodis eventually returned to Philly to take care of his ailing
brother, spending the 1950s writing paperback originals with moody, broody plots
focusing on troubled protagonists who couldn’t win for losing. Somehow, I get
the feeling Goodis wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who faced each day with a
smile on his face and a jaunty tune on his lips—but whether or not that was
true, Goodis sure could write. In fact, nowadays, a first edition of the 1946
hardcover of
Dark Passage is now valued at more than $800!
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| 4th floor, framed fugitives from justice, everybody off! |
The DVD’s
absorbing documentary featurette suggests that Bogart and Bacall’s participation
in the star-studded Committee for the First Amendment, which was intended to
defend colleagues called before HUAC, might have been among the reasons that
DP wasn’t as big a hit as the real/reel-life couple’s earlier
screen collaborations. However, I suspect that audiences past
and
present may have found
DP harder to cozy up to because instead of
the cool, wisecracking, insolent-yet-playful Bogart and Bacall of
To Have and Have Not and
The Big Sleep, this film version of Goodis’
novel presents a more melancholy, vulnerable Bogart and Bacall—which, in my
opinion, is not at all a bad thing, just unexpected from this star team at that
time! That Bogart & Bacall chemistry is still there, but it’s sweeter, as if
they’d decided to let their collective guard down and allow tenderness to take
over. Instead of the cocksure Bogart character we all know and love,
DP
protagonist Vincent Parry is wary, fearful, fumbling in his attempts to clear
himself of his wife’s murder, escaping the cops like he escapes from prison in
the film’s opening scenes. Vincent has few allies, but the ones he has are at
least willing to help. There’s Irene Jansen (Bacall), whose father had died in
prison after being framed for murder. Irene has been following Vincent’s case
during his trial, and she ends up in a position to help hide him while he does
his best to prove his innocence.
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| You realize this means an angry letter to the Times! |
Then there’s Sam, the cab driver (Tom D’Andrea
from
Pride of the Marines; Night and Day; Humoresque). Sam is cynical,
yet he’s basically a kind, lonely soul, as are many characters in
DP.
Sam suggests that Vincent should go to back-alley plastic surgeon Dr. Walter
Coley (Houseley Stevenson from
Sorrowful Jones; Crime Doctor; Native Land).
Dr. Coley may have been kicked out of his practice for being ahead of his
time, but like others in
DP, he too got a bum rap and is also a
decent guy. The proof is in the pudding: Vincent’s operation went so well that
he now looks like Humphrey Bogart! Isn’t 1940s medicine wonderful? Wasn’t
Vincent lucky to get comrades like Irene and Sam and Dr. Coley? If only they
didn’t have to keep their secrets so close to the vest, they could put together
a support group; how about Wrongly Accused Protagonists Anonymous?
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| Meet Dr. Coley, brilliant hush-hush plastic surgeon to the wrongfully accused! Highly recommended by Sam the Lonesome Cab Driver! Free cigarettes for new customers! |
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Trippiest face-lift ever! Lauren Bacall can blow our minds anytime!
|
1947 seemed
to be The Year of the Subjective Camera, between
DP’s first
hour shot from Bogart’s viewpoint, and Robert Montgomery doing the same in
Lady in the Lake, using the technique
throughout the film. Unlike
Lady…, DP’s plastic
surgery gimmick provides a good plot reason for the audience not to initially
see Bogart’s face, though we frequently hear that unmistakable Bogart voice to
make up for it. It may take a while before they actually get Bogart out of his
bandages as Vincent Parry, but on the positive side, we also get to see more of the lovely
Lauren Bacall as Irene, as well as all those great spellbinding Warner Bros. character actors in lieu of Bogie. The tenderness between
Irene and Vincent is palpable. There isn’t an uninteresting face or a bad
performance in the bunch, with standout performances from Bogart and Bacall and
a superb array of character actors. In addition to D’Andrea and Stevenson,
there’s Rory Mallinson
(Cry Wolf; Nora Prentiss; Possessed) as Parry’s
musician friend; and the ever-dependable Bruce Bennett
(The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre; Mildred Pierce; Mystery Street).
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A kiss isn't just any old kiss with
Bogart and Bacall as Irene and Vincent! |
The man I love to hate most in
DP is cheap hood Clifton Young, a
former
Our Gang star (oh, the irony!). As the villainous Baker, the
adult Young grew up to have an oily grin and a cleft chin that looks like it got
lost on the way to Cary Grant’s face by mistake; you might also see Young on TCM,
where he was a hoot in the hilarious
“So You Want To…” shorts.
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Vincent gets the drop on would-be blackmailer Clifton Young!
To think he was such a cute little tyke in Our Gang! |
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Director Delmer Daves has a cameo as
Irene's late wrongly-accused dad! |
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| The Hates of Rapf—Madge Rapf, Dangerous Dame! |
And the woman
I love to hate in DP? None other than the wonderful Agnes
Moorehead, with a resume ranging from The Mercury Theatre with Orson Welles, to
stage and screen, including four Oscar nominations (Hush…Hush, Sweet
Charlotte; Johnny Belinda; Mrs. Parkington; The Magnificent Ambersons); and
scene-stealer Endora on TV’s Bewitched! Moorehead steals the film
as Madge Rapf, the kind of woman who won’t join any club that would have her as
a member. Madge is some piece of work: she’s a stylish dame who goes out of her
way to spread stress and misery wherever she goes. Sticking her nose into
everyone’s business, Madge manages to lure people to her and push them away at
the same time, and if she can’t have you, she’ll make damn sure nobody else can
have you, even if that means murder! With her delivery dripping honey one
minute and venom the next (especially in her climactic scene with Bogart), the
commanding presence of the quicksilver Moorehead and her unconventional yet
undeniably striking good looks ensure that you can’t take your eyes off her
whenever she’s onscreen.
If you’re
looking for a tight mystery plot, this ain’t the place! While
DP
has many suspenseful moments, it’s primarily a character study and a mood piece
about loneliness, redemption, and starting over, with a strong undercurrent of
postwar paranoia, all underscored beautifully by Franz Waxman’s stirring music
(with contributions by an uncredited Max Steiner. I love the use of “Too
Marvelous for Words” as Vincent and Irene’s song). The bus station scene is a
touching example of this. Incidentally, that lady at the bus depot, Aunt Mary,
is Mary Field from
Ball of Fire (as Miss
Totten);
The Dark Corner (as the
eavesdropping movie ticket-taker);
Wonder Man
(as the
stenographer)
; and
Ministry of Fear (as avant-garde artist Martha Penteel)! Mary’s so
versatile, bless her!
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| Vincent's pal George Fellsinger, young man with a horn! |
But the reactions of people who meet protagonist Vincent with with his post-op
face and new name, “Allan Linnell,” are
so suspicious I wondered if
writer/director Delmer Daves (who cameos as the photo of Irene’s doomed dad.
His real-life kids have bit parts, too) was indicating that Parry was really
projecting his own paranoia onto the people around him. His new name in
particular makes people look at him like he just dropped in from the planet
Neptune: “Linnell? That’s a very unusual name.” What’s so freakin’ unusual
about it?! What, it’s not blandly Anglo-Saxon enough? I wonder if
singer/songwriter John Linnell from
They Might Be Giants
(one of Team B’s favorite bands) ever had to field such absurd questions? But
I digress…
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| Madge shows her true colors! |
Even when
DP drops the subjective camera style so we can see Bogart in all his
glory, the visuals are striking thanks to Sid Hickox’s moody black-and-white
photography. That said, I recently saw a colorized still of Moorehead as Madge,
and I must admit it looked pretty darn impressive! With the emphasis on Madge’s
love of all things orange, I can imagine a partly-colorized version
a la Sin
City, with everything black-and-white except Madge’s orange clothes and
belongings!
The Lodger, perhaps? Speaking of
Hitchcock,
DP and Hitch’s 1958 classic
Vertigo might make
an interesting double feature since they share themes of loss, loneliness, new
identities and fresh starts as well as a San Francisco setting. (That could
also work for another San Francisco film I like,
Impact, but
that’s a blog post for another time!) If you want to see a softer side of Bogart
and Bacall, DP is well worth watching. You may also enjoy the DVD’s fun and
interesting extras, like the original theatrical trailer (for me, the hyperbole
of movie trailers of that era is part of their charm) and “
Slick Hare,”
one of the Bugs Bunny cartoons that affectionately lampoon Bogart; it’s been
claimed that Bogart liked to pal around with the animators at Warner Bros.’
“Termite Terrace” and he actually did his own voice work for
Slick Hare
and
8-Ball Bunny!
Nevertheless, Director of Photography Sid Hickox had plenty of
innovative visual techniques in glorious black-and-white. I particularly liked
the use of the glass floor when Vincent discovers a dead body (I won’t say who);
a tip of the hat to Alfred Hitchcock’s
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| Baby, you're smokin'! |
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| Oh, no! George, Vincent's only friend, has clearly played his last song! |
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After all the agita Irene and Vincent have been through, they deserve a happy ending!
Good luck, you crazy kids! |
According to
Wikipedia, the TV series
The Fugitive became a hit in 1963—and Goodis
took the producers to court, considering the show had many elements in common
with Dark Passage. In 1963, ABC television began airing the
television show
The Fugitive, the story of Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongfully convicted
of murdering his wife. Kimble subsequently escapes and begins a long search for
the "one-armed man", the person he believes to be the real killer. For that
matter, the whole case was originally inspired by real-life
Dr. Sam Sheppard, who’d been accused of murdering
his pregnant wife. It just goes to show that there’s nothing new under the sun,
in fiction or real life!
