Classic Films in Focus: SABRINA (1954)

After her breakout success in Roman Holiday (1953), Audrey Hepburn cemented her image as a charming romantic heroine with Sabrina (1954), in which she plays a beautiful ingenue who pines for affection from a wealthy, older man. Along with its love story, Sabrina offers a very tame exploration of upstairs downstairs concerns unfolding in a world of extravagant power and privilege, but few people come to the movie looking for thoughtful class analysis. Instead, Sabrina offers the irresistible appeal of Hepburn herself and the love triangle created by William Holden and Humphrey Bogart as the two brothers who both fall for her. As its "once upon a time" opening makes clear, Sabrina is a modern fairy tale, a Cinderella story about a chauffeur's daughter and a New York prince, and if fairy tale romance is what you seek then this picture certainly delivers. I enjoy Sabrina mainly because of Hepburn's powerful charisma as its star, but I'm not romantic enough to ignore its various flaws.

Hepburn plays the title character, who grows up on the estate of the fabulously wealthy Larrabee family where her father (John Williams) serves as the chauffeur. From childhood Sabrina has yearned for the younger of the two Larrabee sons, the feckless playboy, David (William Holden). He finally pays attention once she returns, all grown up, from two years at cooking school in Paris, even though she arrives just before his intended marriage to a socialite whose family interests will merge beautifully with the Larrabee empire. Elder brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart), eager for the match and its financial benefits, decides to intervene by courting Sabrina himself, but he ends up falling in love with her for real, much to his dismay.

I admit that I'm always bothered by the frequent decision to pair Hepburn with much older men, and it spoils some of my enjoyment, even if the leading man is as fine an actor as Humphrey Bogart (or Cary Grant or Fred Astaire). There's no ignoring the 30 year difference between Hepburn and Bogart in Sabrina; Bogart looks every year of it, especially when contrasted with the much younger Holden, who seems like a better match in spite of his bad habits. That said, Bogart's performance is still a Bogart performance, full of world weariness and lost chances that make Linus a sympathetic character even though he spends most of the movie deceiving Sabrina about his intentions. Holden is having a lot more fun as the younger brother, just like the baby of such a family would, but we know his track record with wives ought to be a warning about his ability to change for Sabrina. Neither brother is really a perfect match, but they're the only contenders on offer, since Sabrina apparently managed to spend two full years in Paris with only an elderly baron for company.

A fairy tale, however, isn't really about the princes; Sabrina Fairchild is the one we're meant to care about, and Hepburn is radiantly lovely in the role, full of wistful yearning and ardent feelings even after her transformative time in Paris. She comes back with sufficient sense of irony to name her pet poodle David but is still naive enough to fall for him all over again the minute she sees him. Once she returns to New York, Sabrina appears to advantage in beautiful clothes that suit Hepburn perfectly, but I like her just as much in the simple black outfit that she wears to Linus's office near the end. Like many other Cinderella heroines, Sabrina is motherless but enjoys the devotion of almost every member of the household, among whom we find familiar character actors like Ellen Corby and Nancy Kulp. Their enthusiasm for Sabrina's cause provides a nudge in case we need help overlooking her willingness to disrupt David's marriage, but they seem just as happy with Linus as long as Sabrina gets her promotion to American princess. Since Sabrina always maintains her romantic innocence, she never comes across as a Becky Sharp sort of opportunist, ready to hook either rich brother for the bank account he embodies, but I do wonder how a handsome young gardener or stable groom might have altered the course of this story.

Sabrina netted Oscar nominations for Hepburn as Best Actress and for Billy Wilder as Best Director, along with three additional nominations and a win for Best Costume Design, so there was no shortage of love for the picture from the Academy. Although she's best remembered for movies like Funny Face (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964), I particularly like her more dramatic performance in Wait Until Dark (1967), which brought her fifth and final nomination for Best Actress. For a more age appropriate romance with Humphrey Bogart, see him in The African Queen (1951) with that other iconic Hepburn, Katharine, or find Audrey and William Holden reunited for another round in Paris When It Sizzles (1964). Sabrina got the remake treatment in 1995 with Julia Ormond in the title role and Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear as the smitten brothers, but you're better off with the original.

Classic Films in Focus: THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS (1947)

Director Peter Godfrey's modern Gothic offers two iconic stars - Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck - as its leads, which is reason enough to see The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) in spite of its flaws. Bogart, who played heavies off and on throughout his career, is back on the dark side as a painter who finds artistic inspiration by murdering his wives, while Stanwyck is unusually naive as his current wife and next intended victim. Supporting performers include Nigel Bruce as an atrociously incompetent doctor and Ann Carter as Bogart's beguiling daughter, while Alexis Smith is particularly memorable as a predatory seductress who might be getting more than she expects by tempting Bogart's unhinged artist to leave his wife for her. Bogart, Stanwyck, and Smith all give fine performances, but the film suffers from a lack of suspense that undermines its chilling premise.

Stanwyck plays Sally, who becomes the second wife of painter Geoffrey Carroll (Bogart) after his first wife dies. Sally doesn't suspect that her predecessor's demise was murder, and Geoffrey goes to great lengths to hide his crimes even as he contemplates a second disposal to make way for wife number three. Goaded by the offers of the beautiful Cecily (Alexis Smith), Geoffrey intends to make Sally another victim of his maniacal need for a new muse to drive his work. Geoffrey's young daughter, Bea (Ann Carter), eventually reveals some of his secrets, and Sally realizes the truth about her husband, but her revelation might come too late to save her from his murderous schemes.

The two leads are the chief attraction here, though both are somewhat out of their element. Humphrey Bogart never looks like an artist, but he does make for a credible killer, and it's great fun to watch his Geoffrey come unhinged whenever his secrets are threatened. By the end of the film he has gone right off the rails, justifying his actions with a horrifically sexist assertion that his art is more important than any woman's life. The simmering intensity that Bogart exemplifies works well for dangerous, unstable characters, and his performance here provides a parallel to his more celebrated work in The Petrified Forest (1936), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Stanwyck, normally a tough cookie and occasionally up for murder herself, here has an ingenue's role, and one of the film's frustrations is that we expect a Stanwyck character to be smarter. Stanwyck plays Sally as loyal, kind, and unsuspecting, which is what the role seems to demand of her, but it's not as good a part as the actress deserves, and Alexis Smith has the meatier role as the scheming Cecily. Stanwyck would get a much better chance to play an imperiled wife in the 1948 film, Sorry, Wrong Number, showing what she could do with a part more suited to her talent.

While the casting issues cause some obvious problems, the chief complaint about The Two Mrs. Carrolls is its inability to generate suspense. The film shows us up front that Geoffrey murders his first wife, creating dramatic irony for the audience as we wait for Sally to catch up. This approach can work well in a narrative, depending on how the unfolding events are handled as the protagonist learns the truth, but Sally stays in the dark so long that we wonder if she's paying attention. When she does finally figure it out there's a flood of information dumped into the last act so rapidly that we don't have time to savor Sally's discoveries. Even the reveal of the gruesome portrait of Sally as an Angel of Death - which ought to be a major moment - seems rushed. We see it briefly and then it's gone as Sally rushes on to the next piece of evidence. Great Gothic thrillers, whether literary or cinematic, use the slow build of rising suspicion and horror to drive the plot and the heroine forward to the inevitable confrontation with the villain. One has only to compare this movie's poisoned milk scenes with the one in Suspicion (1941) to see how differently a really suspenseful film handles the same concept. The 1940s, in fact, saw a host of excellent Gothic thrillers appear in the wake of Rebecca (1940) and the Jane Eyre inspired boom that followed, and it's a shame that The Two Mrs. Carrolls falls short in comparison with its sister films.

In spite of its failures, classic movie buffs will want to see The Two Mrs. Carrolls because it's the only picture to pair Bogart and Stanwyck. It's also worth seeing for fans of Ann Carter, the child star who so memorably plays the young protagonist of The Curse of the Cat People (1944). Peter Godfrey directs Alexis Smith again in The Woman in White (1948), which continues the Gothic trend, as does Cry Wolf (1947), which has Godfrey directing again for Stanwyck. For more of Smith and Bogart in a tale of murderous marriage, try Conflict (1945). Most of the Warner Bros. films are available as DVD on demand from the Warner Archive, including The Two Mrs. Carrolls.

75 Years in CASABLANCA (1942)

It's December 1941 when Ilsa walks into Rick's Cafe Americain. "In all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world," he complains, "she walks into mine." It is not, however, simply chance, since Rick's Cafe occupies a border space between European chaos and American safety. Through that space Ilsa and her freedom fighter husband, Victor Laszlo, must journey if they are to continue the work of the resistance and survive. It's hard to believe that the story of Casablanca (1942) unfolds exactly 75 years ago this month, especially now, when we seem to be experiencing the history that the ignorant are doomed to repeat. Its message is suddenly seen not in the rearview mirror of nostalgia but up ahead of us, and terrifyingly close. There has never been a better time to visit this film again, but we have to look beyond the sentimental romance and consider the darker warnings that Casablanca sounds.

We generally celebrate Casablanca as a love story, albeit one with a triangular, adulterous twist. Even Lauren Bacall focused on that element in her recorded introduction to a video release of the picture; it's hard sometimes to get past the soft light on Ingrid Bergman's face and the wounded expression on Bogart's as they gaze at each other. There's "As Time Goes By" and that iconic scene with the plane. There are lines like "Here's looking at you, kid." These elements are an important part of the movie's appeal, but they're also the sweetness that helps us take our medicine. The film knows that. As Rick says, "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Around and behind the romance, Casablanca sounds an alarm about the chaos threatening to overtake the world, about the danger of being complacent or refusing to stick your neck out for anyone. Rick and Louis both start the film as morally ambivalent characters; while they don't become perfect men, they do ultimately figure out what side they need to be on and how to commit to the fight. As in any time of crisis, there are men who look only to profit from the misery of others, and there are those, like the Nazis, who are eager to command and destroy. Parasites, profiteers, and strongmen thrive on the collapse of civilization, at least in the short term. Ugarte and Ferrari hope to make fortunes on the letters of transit. The pickpocket warns of vultures even as he makes off with the wallets of the unsuspecting. Major Strasser looks to impose Nazi order on a supposedly neutral space and crush Laszlo's resistance. Indifference, selfishness, and outright cruelty abound.

At the same time, we are presented with evidence of the decency and spirit of innocent people trapped in this dangerous situation. Even at his most jaded, Rick stocks his cafe with refugee employees, including Carl and Sascha. He helps the young Bulgarian couple after the girl comes to him for advice about surrendering to the sexual coercion of Louis. There are other moments of humanity in the bar; they seem like minor scenes, but they reinforce the message we are meant to understand. Carl speaks kindly to the elderly couple who practice their English and hope for a better life in America. Yvonne rediscovers her love of country. Of course, Victor Laszlo embodies the noblest, most courageous values of the force for good. He has been captured, imprisoned, tortured, pursued, and threatened with all the fury of the Reich, yet he prevails with dignity and determination. He does not compromise with evil. The scene in which he leads the cafe patrons in singing "La Marseillaise" remains powerful even after 75 years. It is a moment of protest, courage, and hope in the face of unfathomable horror. That, to me, is the very heart of Casablanca and what it means.

Although the film was made after the United States entered the war, the original play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, was written before that, when the country had retreated into an isolationist position and left critical allies like Great Britain and France to face the onslaught alone. One wonders what Americans thought would happen once the Nazis and Japanese finished their march across the rest of the world. The events of Casablanca unfold in the last days of Americans' collective slumber. As Rick laments, "I bet they're asleep in New York. I bet they're asleep all over America." They would be rudely awakened on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. They would be fully conscious by the time Casablanca arrived in theaters in late 1942 and early 1943. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 1944. By the time people saw Casablanca  they could really understand the message it had to share; they were in the thick of the war and fighting for real. They knew that they, like Rick and Louis, would have to make a stand. They hoped for leaders like Victor Laszlo to show them the way.

It's important to remember that many of the supporting players who helped make Casablanca had personal stakes in its story well before Pearl Harbor. There are very few Americans in the cast. Conrad Veidt and his Jewish wife had escaped Germany in the 1930s because his very public opposition to the Nazis made him a target. (Read this wonderful tribute to Veidt on Birth.Movies.Death for more about his life and devotion to the Allied cause.) He played Nazi villains in Hollywood to highlight the danger they posed. S.Z. Sakall was a Hungarian Jew who fled Hungary for Hollywood in 1940; all three of his sisters died in Nazi concentration camps. (Paula's Cinema Club offers this excellent post about Sakall's life and work.) The film's director, Michael Curtiz, was also a Hungarian, although he had left Europe in the 1920s. Paul Henreid, an Austro-Hungarian, strongly opposed the Nazis and became a US citizen in 1941, while fellow Austro-Hungarian Peter Lorre, who was Jewish, left his acting career in Germany after 1933 and fled to the United States. Even Madeleine Lebeau, who played Yvonne, fled her native France as the Germans invaded. (The last surviving member of the cast, she died in May of this year. You can read her New York Times obituary here.) They were immigrants and refugees who knew too well the nature of the threat the world was facing.

These are things we can ponder as we watch Casablanca in December 2016, with the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor also happening this month. In this late age we again find fascism and authoritarian rule on the rise. Around the world, desperate refugees seek to escape war and chaos while the vultures gather to pick over their bones. Disinformation and self-interest keep many blind to the dangers we face, especially in the United States, which once prided itself on being a beacon for democracy, a light in the dark of a troubled world. People are in danger. Freedom is in peril. The basic human rights of millions, both at home and abroad, are being denied. Already we find ourselves facing the same choice as Rick, whether to stick our necks out or look out only for ourselves. We must look to the real world's Victor Laszlos for inspiration. I hope that for you, and for all of us, it will be the beginning of beautiful friendships with like-minded souls. In the meantime, we'll always have Casablanca.

Classic Movies for Courage

It's easy to think that art doesn't matter in the face of fear and oppression, but sometimes art can change the world, whether for better or for worse. Charles Dickens secured the future of Christmas with A Christmas Carol, while Leni Riefenstahl shored up Hitler's regime. Uncle Tom's Cabin helped to galvanize the North before the Civil War, and The Birth of a Nation (1915) helped to resurrect the KKK. Art can move the needle toward darkness or light. Mostly, though, I like to think that art works as a force for good in the world, especially over the long haul. In the last week I have seen Anne Frank's face and quotations from her diary all over social media, while Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is likely to stay stuck in my head for months to come. The power of art to console and inspire is more important than ever, and that means that films matter more than ever, too. We have to keep watching them and talking about what they mean, just as writers need to keep writing and painters need to keep painting and poets need to keep giving voice to the voiceless. We have to be consumers and supporters of art, and we have to be thoughtful critics of it, too, because what art says matters. Just watch The Monuments Men (2014) or Woman in Gold (2015) if you need a reminder of art's importance in times of global upheaval.

I'm thinking a lot about World War II right now (can't imagine why) and the great films that helped people in America and abroad through a dark time in global history. There were filmmakers who dared to challenge or even laugh at power when they knew the risk they ran. There were directors, writers, and actors who brought hope and resolution to the Allied cause, with stories about the soldiers in the field and the families left at home. There were even morale boosters, shot in Technicolor and filled with song, to give anxious people a respite from their fears. Sometimes people needed a shot of courage, and sometimes they needed an escape. Sometimes they needed to be reminded of what they were fighting to preserve.

If you need some classic films for courage right now, here are half a dozen I'd like to suggest. Feel free to add some of your own favorites in the comments section below.

1) THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) - I can think of no more powerful cinematic statement against hatred and war than Chaplin's daring comedy, which laughs at Hitler even as the outcome of the war is far from decided. Comedy is often an early target of authoritarian governments because power hates to be laughed at and mocked. Chaplin's final speech is a defining moment in film history and well worth hearing now:

"I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way."

2 ) TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942) - I never tire of this Jack Benny and Carole Lombard comedy, which also dares to mock Hitler in the midst of the war. Director Ernst Lubitsch provides a brilliant mix of laughs and pathos, and you'll remember plenty of Benny's gags, but the rendition of Shylock's soliloquy will stick with you for the rest of your life. Lombard gave her life for the war effort, dying in a plane crash on a war bonds tour before the release of the film, but her performance here survived to inspire millions.

3) CASABLANCA (1942) - Sure, you've seen Humphrey Bogart make sad eyes at Ingrid Bergman a dozen times, but dig this Best Picture winner out of your DVD pile and watch it again. Some people become heroes by degrees, even if they thought they didn't care. There's even hope for Claude Rains' inscrutable Louis. 

4) MRS. MINIVER (1942) - This Best Picture winner focuses on a family in England during the Blitz, proving that daily life has to go on even during the worst of times. Audiences responded to it immediately; it won six Oscars in all and was nominated for another half dozen. Today we can watch it as an example of courage under fire, even for those who aren't holding a gun. Sure, it makes people weep, but sometimes tears can be cathartic, and it's good to cry for other people's suffering. Empathy is a powerful force for good.

5) THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1943) - Need a break from your anxiety, just for a little while? Servicemen and audiences at home loved Fox's morale boosting musicals, often starring adorable Alice Faye and the one and only Carmen Miranda. This one has everything, including Benny Goodman and his orchestra, but if you need more spiritual sunshine there's THAT NIGHT IN RIO (1941) and WEEKEND IN HAVANA (1941).

6) FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP (1944) - I'm not a fan of war movies in general, since they tend to be all boy affairs, but I like this patriotic depiction of USO entertainers doing their bit to keep up morale. Kaye Francis, Martha Raye, Carole Landis, and Mitzi Mayfair head to the front with Jimmy Dorsey and other stars. If this one makes you feel better go for seconds with HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN (1944).

Bonus: If you're up to handling the thorniest questions of social justice, prejudice, and bitter division, try Alfred Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT (1944). It might not make you feel better, but it will definitely give you a lot to consider. The ensemble cast is terrific, but Tallulah Bankhead gives the best performance of her film career.

Be well, friends, and keep courage alive wherever you find it.

Classic Films in Focus: DARK PASSAGE (1947)

Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947) is the third picture to pair Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who had become Mr. and Mrs. Bogart in 1945, after their steamy introduction to one another and the world in To Have and Have Not (1944). Dark Passage is not as celebrated as that first film or The Big Sleep (1946), but it represents another opportunity to see the couple heat up the screen with their legendary chemistry. In spite of its emphasis on the romance between its two leads, the movie takes a deeply cynical view of the justice system and provides enough murder and mystery to satisfy film noir fans.

Bogart stars as Vincent Parry, who escapes from San Quentin after being wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife. He gets unexpected help from Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall), a sympathetic and very attractive young woman. Irene hides Vincent in her car and then her apartment as the cops search for him all over San Francisco. With a new face molded by an eccentric plastic surgeon (Houseley Stevenson), Vincent sets out to learn who framed him for the killing of his wife and his friend, George (Rory Mallinson), who turns up dead just after Vincent makes his escape. His efforts are complicated by Madge (Agnes Moorehead), a former acquaintance who testified against him in court, and by a cheap crook (Clifton Young) who hopes to blackmail Vincent and Irene.

The movie opens with the unusual and not entirely successful gimmick of making the camera show Vincent's perspective rather than Vincent himself, a trick also used the same year in Lady in the Lake (1947). It takes more than a third of the movie for us to get our first real glimpse of Bogart. The justification is that it takes that long for Vincent to look like Bogart, since he has to have the plastic surgery to hide his identity from the cops, but it still seems like a long time to run with this approach. It also delays the signature banter and sexual sparks that fly between Bogart and Bacall, which is why most people watch the movie in the first place. Once we finally have the leading man in the camera's view, the movie picks up, and the two stars get their much anticipated scenes together.

When Bogart and Bacall aren't busy with their romance, Dark Passage turns its attention to darker themes, namely the total absence of justice in a system that treats innocent men as killers and lets guilty people get away. The rotten characters, played with malevolent energy by Agnes Moorehead and Clifton Young, use that broken system for their own benefit, and only poetic justice ever catches up with them. Sympathetic characters immediately side with Vincent, even if they don't know anything about him. Irene knows from personal experience that the law is good at going after the wrong guy; her own father died in prison under similar circumstances, and she has followed Vincent's case from the beginning. Vincent also gets understanding assistance from a cab driver (Tom D'Andrea) who arranges the appointment with the plastic surgeon and doesn't even expect anything in return. Vincent quickly realizes that it's up to him to figure out who really murdered his wife and his friend, since the cops are only interested in catching him, but even when he gets the answer he can't fix a system that never looks beyond the easiest, most obvious suspect.

For the fourth and final pairing of Bogart and Bacall, see Key Largo (1948). Bogart, a noir icon, plays more hard-boiled characters in High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and In a Lonely Place (1950). Catch Bacall's solo appearances in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Shootist (1976), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). For more from Delmer Daves, try Destination Tokyo (1943), Broken Arrow (1950), and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Don't miss Agnes Moorehead in Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Jane Eyre (1943); the actress had a long and successful career before she stepped into her most famous role on the television series, Bewitched.

Classic Films in Focus: THE BIG SLEEP (1946)

Humphrey Bogart successfully steps into the gumshoes of detective Philip Marlowe in Howard Hawks' adaptation of The Big Sleep (1946), but in 1945 the top brass at Warner Brothers were far more concerned about Lauren Bacall, as the extensive revisions that preceded the film's release prove. It's not that the original 1945 cut of the picture and the final version are all that different; it's just that the tinkering labors to put Bacall in the best possible light, both literally and figuratively. The studio's effort paid off; Bacall, by then Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, got her career back on track after bad reviews in Confidential Agent (1945), and noir fans got a picture for the ages, with the perfectly paired leads trading zippy quips and stepping around corpses as coolly as they pour themselves drinks. As obvious as The Big Sleep is when it comes to top noir picks, the movie deserves its elevated spot in the genre pantheon, not only because of Bogart and Bacall but because of writers like Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, and Leigh Brackett, as well as a seriously deranged Martha Vickers as one of the worst kid sisters in cinematic history.

The story opens when Bogart's Marlowe is hired by the elderly General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to shake off a blackmailer targeting his wild younger daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers). Marlowe immediately suspects that some other funny business is afoot when the older daughter, Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), pumps him for information but acts coy about her own interest in the blackmailer job, and she clearly knows a lot more than she's willing to say. Marlowe soon finds himself and Carmen tangled up in a murder scene, and more corpses follow, but the mystery keeps coming back to a missing man named Regan and casino owner Eddie Mars (John Ridgely).

The revisions play up the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall by giving them more lines and scenes together, although some of the changes are purely cosmetic in terms of making Bacall look as alluring as possible. More of the pair is certainly a plus, even if the cuts obscure important elements of the murder mystery plot. Bogart and Bacall fit with noir - and with each other - the way a bullet fits into the chamber of a gun. His Marlowe is smart and unsentimental, a guy who has been around the block enough to know when he's being had. Her Vivian is no debutante, either, with her gambling debts and her husky, come-on voice. Nobody ever declared her affection with such sullen resignation as Bacall's Vivian when she tells Marlowe, "I guess I'm in love with you." Marlowe falls for her even as he realizes that he can't trust her, but he correctly guesses that she's no femme fatale. If they never reach quite the level of smart-mouthed irresistible attraction that they share in To Have and Have Not (1944), they do smolder very enjoyably, especially during their conversational cat-and-mouse games.

It takes tremendous screen presence to distract our attention from such a couple, but the supporting cast is full of actors who give it their best shot. Martha Vickers plays Carmen as a crazy Lolita, so hopped up on drugs and booze she can't even walk, but dangerous nonetheless. An infantile femme fatale with her thumb in her mouth, Carmen puts the moves on every man she meets, including Marlowe. "You're cute," she tells him, but the way she says it makes the listener's blood run cold. Charles Waldron has one really wonderful scene up front that makes us wish we could see more of his character; his General Sternwood has no pity for himself and only wants a real man to sit with him a while and drink his liquor for him. Even the bit players go for broke; Elisha Cook, Jr. makes the most of his brief appearance as Harry Jones, and Sonia Darrin provides a marvelously nasty foil to Bacall as the heartless, calculating Agnes. Dorothy Malone is so good as the book shop girl that we wonder how Marlowe can resist, especially after she takes off her glasses, but Marlowe's wartime Los Angeles seems to be full of self-possessed, available girls, from Vivian Rutledge all the way down to the eager cab driver who trades innuendos with the amused detective. It's as if Raymond Chandler and Howard Hawks both long to raid a jar stuffed with tough cookies, with Marlowe as the unlikely embodiment of their shared masculine fantasy. At least it gives the young actresses plenty of material, and each of them contributes to the overall appeal of the film.

For more screen versions of Raymond Chandler's detective, see Murder, My Sweet (1944), Lady in the Lake (1947), and The Long Goodbye (1973). Bogart and Bacall went on to star together in Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), while Howard Hawks moved into Western territory with Red River (1948). Martha Vickers, sadly, did not become a great star, although she did become Mickey Rooney's third wife from 1949 to 1951. You can see more of her in The Man I Love (1947), Ruthless (1948), and Alimony (1949). Dorothy Malone, on the other hand, ended up winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Written on the Wind (1956), and she later appeared in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), Warlock (1959), and even Basic Instinct (1992).


  

A Tribute to Lauren Bacall

I'm not tough. In fact, I'm really kind of a powder puff, the type of person who apologizes at the drop of a hat and can be made to feel bad for months with just a sharp word or a reproving look. Maybe that's why I have always loved the tough dames of classic Hollywood; they exude strength and a "Hell if I care" attitude that I can only dream of having. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Lauren Bacall could all cut a man dead with one hard look. Today we lost Bacall, the last of the great noir dames, and the world seems a sadder place without her.

What can you say about an actress who was known as "The Look"? Whatever IT was, she had it in spades. From her very first picture, To Have and Have Not (1944), she was great, feeding Bogart seductive lines and that comeback stare. No wonder he fell hard. Every man on earth must have learned to whistle in 1944, even if he wasn't named Steve (which, by the way, Bogart's character wasn't). Bacall was launched into noir legend and the arms of Humphrey Bogart at the tender age of 19, but you would never have guessed how young she was from the way she carried herself on screen.

She went on acting for the rest of her life. She did voice work, earned an Oscar nomination, went forward, and aged well. She survived the loss of Bogart in 1957, remarried, divorced, raised three children, and wrote multiple memoirs of her life in Hollywood. She was tough, yes, but elegant, too, and into her 80s she was more beautiful than most people can ever hope to be.

Tonight the classic movie fan community - and the world at large - join her family in mourning the loss of Lauren Bacall, but I'm so grateful that she was with us for such a long time, to show us not only how to be tough and 20, but how to be great at every age.

Thanks for everything, Betty Joan Perske. We'll never forget you.

Classic Films in Focus: TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944)

Lauren Bacall got her introduction to Humphrey Bogart and the world with Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not (1944), which only vaguely resembles the novel by Ernest Hemingway but really exists as its own gloriously weird melange of Casablanca (1942), comedy, and film noir cool. Bogart and Bacall burn up the screen as jaded expatriates who fall for each other in the dangerous heat of Vichy Martinique, and their chemistry is as palpable to viewers today as it was to the wartime audiences who first watched Bacall teach Bogart how to whistle. Sexy and smart, even if it isn’t all that interested in its plot, To Have and Have Not sells its strange brew with knowing repartee, an exotic location, and Walter Brennan’s lovably daft obsession with the bite of a dead bee.

Bogart plays American fishing boat captain Harry Morgan, who has brought his boat and his alcoholic partner, Eddie (Walter Brennan), down from Key Largo to Nazi-occupied Martinique. There they eke out a living taking tourists out to fish while avoiding the local politics, even though their friend, Frenchy (Marcel Dalio), begs Harry to transport some resistance leaders wanted by the Vichy officials. When a beautiful but broke pickpocket named Marie (Lauren Bacall) arrives on the island and needs his help, Harry changes his mind about working for the resistance.

From the start there’s a lot of Casablanca being revisited here, from Bogart’s standoffish expatriate to the freedom fighters he inevitably decides to help. Instead of Dooley Wilson as Sam we get Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket, while Claude Rains’ morally ambivalent Captain Renault gets merged with Peter Lorre’s oily Ugarte in Dan Seymour’s creepy Captain Renard. The big difference is Lauren Bacall in place of Ingrid Bergman, but Bacall’s not too good girl changes the whole temperature of the picture; here is an angel already tarnished enough that Bogart doesn’t have to give her up to prove he’s an honorable guy. The resistance fighter’s wife, played by Dolores Moran, never gets the chance to choose Bogart over her heroic spouse because a jealous Marie is already on the scene, and Marie pointedly thwarts Madame de Bursac’s constant attempts to flirt with Harry.

In addition to the chemistry between the two fascinating leads, the picture gets its appeal from its crackling dialogue, in which Lauren Bacall generally has the last word. Marie always calls Harry “Steve,” while he calls her “Slim.” After they kiss for the first time, she tells him, “It’s even better when you help.” Later she says, “I’m hard to get, Steve, All you have to do is ask me.” It’s hard to believe that Bacall was only nineteen when she threw these lines at Bogart with her knowing look and been-there casual despair. Her world-weary youth makes a sharp contrast to Walter Brennan’s aging innocence as the perpetually thirsty Eddie. “Was you ever bit by a dead bee?” he asks everyone he meets, but only Bacall’s Marie has the perfect comeback to win him over.

To Have and Have Not launched Bogart and Bacall’s storied romance but also a series of costarring roles. See more of their onscreen heat in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Howard Hawks directed a slew of classic favorites, including Bringing Up Baby (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), and Rio Bravo (1959), but he earned his only career Oscar nomination for Best Director with Sergeant York (1941). See more of Walter Brennan in My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948), and Rio Bravo. Bogart is unforgettable in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca, and The African Queen (1951), but Bacall also has great solo roles in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Shootist (1976), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

Classic Films in Focus: THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)

Before The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942) made him a certified leading man, Humphrey Bogart often played heavies, but The Return of Doctor X (1939) takes him into even stranger territory as a villain who also happens to be one of the undead. This otherwise routine horror programmer directed by Vincent Sherman becomes something unique in the annals of Hollywood history thanks to Bogart’s performance, which shows him more at home in the horror genre than one might suspect. For fans of the iconic star or those interested in the evolution of the movie vampire, The Return of Doctor X merits a viewing, but its thrills mostly depend on the bizarre spectacle of the beloved Bogie in his ghoulishly pallid disguise.

Bogart plays Marshall Quesne, the mysterious assistant of the prominent blood specialist Dr. Flegg (John Litel). When a famous actress (Lya Lys) inexplicably recovers from being murdered, the doctor is consulted about the case by dogged reporter Walt “Wichita” Garrett (Wayne Morris) and junior physician Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan). A second murder deepens the plot, and the two young men begin to think that Dr. Flegg and his strange associate know more about the deaths than they’re saying. Their investigation uncovers the incredible truth but also endangers the life of Mike’s new love interest, Joan (Rosemary Lane), a pretty nurse whose blood type matches that of both of the murder victims.

Technically, Bogart’s character is just a supporting role, but his subsequent fame and his intense performance make him the player to watch. Wayne Morris is genial but rather mild as the reporter, especially in comparison to Lee Tracy, who plays the same type of character in the original Doctor X (1932). Although they make credible leads in other pictures, Dennis Morgan and Rosemary Lane just don’t have that much to do as the obligatory romantic pair, and they’re consistently less interesting than the creepy characters. Lya Lys has some effective scenes as the undead Angela Merrova, while John Litel really looks the part of the dangerously obsessed academic in his goatee and monocle, but from the moment he first turns up Bogart really steals the movie. We first see him, with his white-striped hair and deathly pallor, in full mad scientist garb, weirdly accompanied by a white rabbit cradled in the crook of his arm. He looks like the long-lost grandfather of Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd. In just a few moments on screen Bogart manages to convey both the menace and the pathos of his character, who describes both himself and the rabbit as “victims of circumstance.”

The specific circumstance that dictates Quesne’s fate makes The Return of Doctor X intriguing as a blend of the scientific hubris of Frankenstein and the bloodlust of Dracula. Dr. Flegg uses manipulation of the blood, plus his own invention of a synthetic substitute, to bring the dead back to life; unfortunately, his patients must have a constant supply of new blood to replenish their systems. Although the vampires of this story require transfusions rather than exposed necks, the murder victims end up drained of their blood just the same. While Angela and Quesne both have the pale faces, cold flesh, and strange manner typical of the 1930s screen vampire, their monstrosity is born of science, not the supernatural. Neither of them chooses to become what they are, yet they cling to their unnatural lives with grim determination. Later movies, like Near Dark (1987) and Blade (1998), would further explore the idea of vampirism as a matter of hematology, but in this picture the theme is yoked to the overreaching ambition of a scientist determined to play God. Near the end of the movie, Flegg, the Victor Frankenstein of this narrative, predictably laments, “My experiments have turned into madness. I’ve created a monster.” We understand that his intentions were the very best, but perhaps he ought to have expected this outcome when he chose a crazed scientist executed for child murder as his test subject.

The Return of Doctor X is only nominally a sequel to the 1932 film, Doctor X, which stars Lionel Atwill as the title character. The 1939 movie was the directorial debut of Vincent Sherman, who went on to make Mr. Skeffington (1944), Adventures of Don Juan (1948), and The Damned Don’t Cry (1950). See more of Humphrey Bogart’s heavies in The Petrified Forest (1936), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and The Oklahoma Kid (1939). Wayne Morris also stars with Bogart in Kid Galahad (1937) and with Dennis Morgan in Bad Men of Missouri (1941).

The Return of Doctor X is currently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant.

Strange Stuff on Warner Archive Instant

Last night I picked a double feature of freakish fare from the streaming catalog at Warner Archive Instant. I'm intentionally seeking out more obscure classic horror films in the hopes of getting a collection of reviews together by the fall of this year, but last night's movies were so unusual that it might take me a few days to figure out what to say about them in a full-length review format.

Now, Warner Archive Instant devotes a whole category to Mondo/Cult films, so they like the weird stuff, but these picks came from the regular Horror section. I don't know how long they'll stay in the current lineup, but if you want to revel in the bizarre spectacles described below then head on over to the Instant site and check them out there.

When Killer Iguanas Attack!

First up was The Show (1927), a Tod Browning silent starring John Gilbert, Lionel Barrymore, and Renee Adoree. The human actors are all great in this creepy melodrama set in a Budapest carnival, but they have a scene-stealing costar in the large iguana who stands in for a venomous Gila monster. Seriously, the iguana attack scene near the end was so funny I almost fell off the couch. My howls of laughter attracted the attention of the my daughter, who then wanted to see the scene for herself. We ended up replaying it twice. Watching Lionel Barrymore locked in a closet with an angry iguana is one of those priceless moments of movie-watching only a classic film fan can really appreciate. The rest of the movie is menacing, tragic, and possessed of a weirdness typical of Browning's sensibility, but the iguana scenes are the ones you'll remember.

The Demon Bogart of Fleet Street?

My next feature was The Return of Doctor X (1939), which really doesn't have anything to do with the original Doctor X (1932) but does offer the one and only appearance of Humphrey Bogart in a horror movie. Through the whole movie I kept wondering, "Why is Humphrey Bogart dressed up like Sweeney Todd?" Actually, that question ought to be, "Why is Sweeney Todd dressed up like Humphrey Bogart?" since Bogart did it almost 70 years before Johnny Depp. I'm not the first person to notice the resemblance, either. Jim Emerson posted about it in 2007, when Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street made its debut in theaters. If you have ever wondered what Bogie would look like as a pale-faced, blood-lusting vampire, here's your chance to find out. The Return of Doctor X is by no means a great movie, but I had a lot of fun watching it, and Bogart's first appearance - cuddling a bunny?! - is quite the spectacle.

Now that you know I'm on the prowl for unusual or lesser-known horror classics, feel free to send me some suggestions! In the meantime, I'll be checking out The Cyclops (1956), The Hypnotic Eye (1960), and Frankenstein 1970 (1958) on the Warner site.

Classic Films in Focus: THE OKLAHOMA KID (1939)

Given its focus on the settling of Oklahoma and the founding of Tulsa, The Oklahoma Kid (1939) almost certainly has its fans in the Sooner State, but for the most part this Warner Bros. Western is a fairly routine oater, with plenty of stock characters and plot elements to amuse the matinee crowd. It does, however, boast a very unusual pair of lead actors in James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, who don cowboy hats and spurs to fight it out as the free-spirited Oklahoma Kid and his scheming nemesis, Whip McCord. Classic movie fans will find that combination hard to resist, if only because of curiosity, and the picture also offers solid supporting performances from favorites like Donald Crisp and Ward Bond. It’s by no means one of the great Westerns, but The Oklahoma Kid has enough going for it to make it worth seeing, even if it simultaneously proves that neither of its iconic stars is really cut out for the genre.

Cagney plays the footloose Oklahoma Kid, who finds his territory changing as Western expansion brings white settlers to the fertile Cherokee Strip. The Kid makes an enemy of Whip McCord (Bogart) and his gang by appropriating their stolen cash for himself, but things get personal when McCord frames an upstanding citizen, John Kincaid (Hugh Sothern), for murder, not knowing that Kincaid is the Kid’s estranged father. While the Kid’s brother, Ned (Harvey Stephens), and Judge Hardwick (Donald Crisp) try to use the law to free Kincaid, the Kid looks for a different kind of justice to bring McCord and his henchmen to account for their crimes.

Both Cagney and Bogart are great actors, but neither of them really looks at home on the range. They are much more credible as urban gangsters in their other movies together, like Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939), and in their films alone. It’s easy enough to imagine more familiar Western stars replacing them in The Oklahoma Kid and bringing more authenticity to their roles, but both performers give it their best effort. Bogart, an excellent heavy in The Petrified Forest (1936), knows how to seethe and look dangerous, even if his black outfit and oddly Victorian head of hair don’t quite suit him. Cagney plays the Kid as a typical Cagney character from this era, a mixture of menace and good humor, always occupying the vast gray area of moral territory. When he isn’t stealing things or getting into gunfights, he flirts with Ned’s girlfriend, Jane (Rosemary Lane), and sings Spanish lullabies to Mexican babies. We can believe in both the amiable Cagney and the dangerous one, even if we never quite buy the idea that he’s an actual cowboy.

The supporting players in The Oklahoma Kid prove more credible as denizens of the Western frontier, especially genre stalwart Ward Bond as a member of McCord’s outlaw gang. Donald Crisp, always reliable as a paternal authority figure, brings his usual gravitas to the role of Judge Hardwick, who likes the Kid even though they have very different views on civilization and the law. Rosemary Lane makes a pretty love interest for Cagney, although the idea of the Kid’s rivalry for her with his brother, Ned, goes mostly undeveloped, and Harvey Stephens has very little to do as Ned until the final scenes of the picture. Other familiar faces in the background include Charles Middleton, Arthur Aylesworth, and Trevor Bardette as residents of frontier Tulsa, along with the chronically uncredited Stuart Holmes in a brief appearance as President Grover Cleveland.

Lloyd Bacon, who directed The Oklahoma Kid, made a steady stream of pictures for Warner, including 42nd Street (1933), Marked Woman (1937), and Knute Rockne All American (1940). Bogart made another attempt at the Western with Virginia City (1940), while Cagney returned to the genre for Tribute to a Bad Man (1956), but it’s better to see them in their natural habitats first. You’ll find Rosemary Lane in Hollywood Hotel (1937), The Return of Doctor X (1939), and Trocadero (1944). Don’t miss the venerable Donald Crisp in the excellent Anthony Mann Western, The Man from Laramie (1955), although he is best remembered today for his fatherly roles in How Green Was My Valley (1941), Lassie Come Home (1943), and National Velvet (1944).

The Oklahoma Kid is now available on DVD from Warner Archive. Warner provided the reviewer with a free copy of the film, with no promise or expectation of a positive review.

Classic Films in Focus: MARKED WOMAN (1937)

The world of the gangster movie is largely a boys' club, where women exist only as victims or commodities and the mobsters' guns serve as constant reminders of their phallic power. In opposition to that trend we have director Lloyd Bacon's very effective Marked Woman (1937), which features Bette Davis as the leader of a group of women who fight back against the mob's control over their lives. Inspired by the real-life fall of mobster Lucky Luciano in 1936, Marked Woman is a film that took a lot of finesse to get by the censors, but it's an excellent example of a classic Warner Bros. gangster picture that also offers something different from the studio's better-known films.

Davis stars as Mary Dwight, one of five "hostesses" at a night club newly acquired by Johnny Vanning (Eduardo Ciannelli), a vicious crime lord. At first, Mary and her friends agree to play by Vanning's rules, and Mary even helps the mobster beat a murder charge prosecuted by a crusading assistant district attorney named David Graham (Humphrey Bogart). Later, Vanning murders Mary's innocent kid sister, Betty (Jane Bryan), and the devastated Mary leads the women in a dangerous bid to help Graham bring Vanning to justice for his crimes.

Of course the women are prostitutes. The movie calls them "hostesses" to placate the censors, but there's little doubt about their real occupation at the club. When Vanning first takes over, his speech to the assembled girls pointedly includes directions to soften up the suckers for the gambling tables by any means necessary, and later scenes show them cozying up to various men according to the management's orders. The seedy nature of their work contrasts with their beautiful clothes and attractive faces, but they are all tough survivors underneath, pragmatic and jaded enough to cover up Vanning's crimes and keep their mouths shut. The actresses who play the women are all very good at projecting those facets of their characters' personalities. Davis is the undisputed star, but Isabel Jewell is very good as the soiled Southern belle, Emmy Lou, and Lola Lane, Mayo Methot, and Rosalind Marquis all give solid performances, as well. In the most powerful scene in the film, the gangsters beat and mutilate Davis' Mary behind closed doors while the other girls (and the audience) shudder in horror at the sounds of screams and blows. When the door opens, we see only the girls' white-faced reaction shots as clues to the carnage inside. Davis proves her talent for dramatic transformation when she later appears bandaged and beaten in a hospital bed, the wrecked visage and copious gauze a result of her own decision to make the scene more realistic than Bacon and the make-up department had intended.

Bogart's role is comparatively small, although the film marks a reunion with Davis following their appearance together in The Petrified Forest in 1936. At least the part of David Graham put him on the other side of the law for a change. More importantly for Bogart, the film introduced him to Mayo Methot, whom he married in 1938, although the union would prove to be a train wreck that ended with divorce in 1945. Eduardo Ciannelli has a meatier part as the gangster boss, and he makes a truly horrifying villain. Jane Bryan is fresh-faced and sweet as Davis' kid sister, a perfect contrast to the streetwise group who avenge her tragic death.

You'll find plenty of more masculine gangster action in films like Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932). For more of Bogart and Davis, see Kid Galahad (1937) and Dark Victory (1939). Isabel Jewell is probably best remembered today for her performance as the unlikable Emmy Slattery in Gone with the Wind (1939). Look for Mayo Methot with Davis and James Cagney in Jimmy the Gent (1934). For more from Lloyd Bacon, try 42nd Street (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), and Brother Orchid (1940).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: KEY LARGO (1948)

One expects certain things from Bogart and Bacall: screen melting chemistry, sassy lines, the heady mix of cigarettes and sex appeal. We get these things in spades in pictures like To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), but Key Largo (1948) lacks that scintillating sizzle between its two stars, making the picture something of a disappointment for devoted fans of classic Hollywood's most iconic couple. Still, Key Largo has its charms, particularly for those who appreciate Edward G. Robinson, and the film makes an interesting counterpoint to The Petrified Forest (1936), which had made Humphrey Bogart a star.

When Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) arrives in Key Largo, there's a storm brewing both within and without the hotel he has come to visit. McCloud wants to fulfill a wartime obligation to a dead comrade, but in searching out the soldier's father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) he finds them facing more trouble than mere grief. It turns out that a group of gangsters has taken up residence in the hotel; their leader is the notorious Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), a former big man who plans to be big again, even if he has to leave Key Largo littered with bodies to do it. The arrival of a hurricane only makes matters worse, with the tension building as the gangsters and their hostages ride out the storm.

Bogart and Bacall are both restrained in this film; they don't deliver the tart one-liners and smoldering glances that mark their performances in their other pairings. Partly this is due to their characters: Bogart's McCloud is a man with too much honor to make eyes at his dead friend's wife, and Bacall is too good a wife to forget her fallen hero so easily. A steamy love affair would be unpatriotic at best, given the two characters' situations. As a result, their relationship on the screen plays out more like a cordial friendship than a romance. Director John Huston must have felt that the story required this approach, but still it leaves the viewer somewhat unsatisfied, given the mythic power of the stars' celebrated onscreen chemistry.

The heat and the excitement come from the other couple in Key Largo, Johnny Rocco and his faded flame, Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor). They make a nasty, pathetic pair; Rocco is clearly a sadist, and Gaye is just desperate enough to put up with everything that Rocco dishes out. In one particularly memorable scene, Rocco forces the alcoholic Gaye to sing for a drink and then denies her the coveted reward when he finds her performance lacking. Claire Trevor won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role, and she really is the most interesting person in the entire movie, a fuller, more complicated character than either of the more upright protagonists or the utterly loathsome Rocco. The moral ambiguity that defines her character from the beginning of the film evolves into something much more certain by the climax, but she's the only really dynamic character that Key Largo has to offer, and that gives her the viewer's sympathy and attention in a way that neither Bogart nor Bacall can command.

You might appreciate Key Largo more if you start by watching The Petrified Forest, the 1936 picture that proved to be Bogart's breakout role. In the earlier film, Bogart plays the gangster to Leslie Howard's world weary wanderer, while Key Largo has Bogart now in the Howard role to Robinson's thug. There's a kind of full circle vibe at work between the two pictures, with a number of other parallels - like the enclosed spaces in which they occur - helping to put them in dialogue with one another in some interesting ways. In Maxwell Anderson's original stage version of Key Largo, the McCloud character died, but Huston's version bears very little resemblance to the unsuccessful play. Still, there's a sense of fate that hangs over the screen version of McCloud, and one could easily imagine a different ending to the film. Seeing the climax of The Petrified Forest helps to sharpen the viewer's understanding of how Key Largo might have played out instead.

Edward G. Robinson makes a great bad guy, a role he played often during his long career. Johnny Rocco is one of his better performances in the gangster vein; watch the way he whispers lasciviously into Lauren Bacall's ear. If you enjoy Robinson's work, be sure to catch Little Caesar (1931), Double Indemnity (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). Claire Trevor earned additional Best Supporting Actress nominations for Dead End (1937) and The High and the Mighty (1954), but she also has memorable roles in Stagecoach (1939) and Murder, My Sweet (1944). Try Dark Passage (1947) for more of Bogart and Bacall, or see Bogart by himself in Dead Reckoning (1947) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). John Huston also directed several of Bogart's biggest films, but for contrast try The Asphalt Jungle (1950) or Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940)

As a piece of classic cinema history, They Drive by Night (1940) makes an excellent study in the different ways in which some of our most celebrated actors became certified stars. Raoul Walsh's dramatic noir film about truck-driving brothers launched twenty-two year old Ida Lupino into stardom and helped build the career of the forty-one year old Humphrey Bogart, perhaps the most notable late bloomer in Hollywood history. Although its split plot gives the picture something of a multiple personalities complex, They Drive by Night makes the most of its excellent cast and offers viewers a very exciting, if somewhat convoluted, ride in the dark.

Joe Fabrini (George Raft) and his brother, Paul (Humphrey Bogart), work long hours as truck drivers in California. Paul would just as soon take a regular job, but Joe, the dominant brother, yearns for independence and success. When an exhausted Paul is maimed after falling asleep at the wheel, Joe goes to work for an old friend, Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), to support himself and his brother, but Ed's devious wife, Lana (Ida Lupino), becomes obsessed with Joe. Even though Joe has already found love with another woman (Ann Sheridan), Lana hatches a twisted plan to win Joe for herself.

George Raft gets top billing, and the role of Joe is a noteworthy departure from his usual gangster type. A real straight arrow, Joe's only weakness might be his relentless desire to succeed on his own terms; he flatly rejects Lana's attempts at seduction and doesn't even drink, and his stand-up character attracts Ann Sheridan's frank, unsentimental heroine. Sheridan serves as a perfect foil to Lupino; where Lana Carlsen is needy, weak, and destructive, Sheridan's Cassie Hartley embodies feminine strength and support. Together they make a provocative variation on the usual good girl/bad girl dichotomy of film noir. Lupino, however, enjoys the best scenes in the picture, from her murderous moment with the automatic garage door sensor to her brilliantly deranged courtroom scene near the movie's end. Bogart has to take a backseat to most of this action revolving around Raft and the women, but he gives a very solid performance; Alan Hale, a go-to guy for loud, brassy characters, also has some excellent scenes as Lana's ill-fated spouse.

As a story, They Drive by Night proves less a straight road than a series of unexpected curves. At first, the plot focuses on the hard lives of truckers, promoting a pro-labor agenda and encouraging us to see Joe's independence as heroic. Later, it seems that Joe's refusal to work for a company was mere hubris, since his boss is a good guy who gives Joe every opportunity to do well, even though Joe only takes the job out of guilt over his brother's injury. The third act moves into the territory of women's melodrama with the love triangle between Raft, Lupino, and Sheridan, further supported by a subplot in which Paul's wife, Pearl (Gale Page), yearns to have a baby and rejoices in her husband's accident because it finally makes him stay at home. The mixed nature of the story has something to do with the fact that They Drive by Night is partly an adaptation of A.I. Bezzerides' 1938 novel, The Long Haul, and partly a remake of the 1935 film, Bordertown, which stars Paul Muni and Bette Davis in the Raft and Lupino roles.

Raoul Walsh went on to direct Bogart and Lupino in High Sierra (1941); he also directed the Cagney pictures The Roaring Twenties (1939) and White Heat (1949). For more of Ida Lupino, see The Man I Love (1947), Road House (1948), and On Dangerous Ground (1952). See George Raft in gangster mode in Scarface (1932) and Some Like It Hot (1959). You'll find Ann Sheridan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Kings Row (1942), and I Was a Male War Bride (1949). For more early Bogart, try The Petrified Forest (1936) and Dark Victory (1939). Alan Hale turns up in everything from Of Human Bondage (1934) and Stella Dallas (1937) to The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Destination Tokyo (1943). With nearly 250 film appearances to his credit, Hale is one of those character actors film buffs can hardly avoid, but he's always a pleasure to find.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)

The early 30s were the heyday of gangster pictures, with movies like The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932) heating up the screen. By the end of the decade the moral arbiters had become alarmed about gangster movies being a bad influence on the kids in the audience; therefore, pictures that featured gangster characters were supposed to show that the bad guys would always get their comeuppance in the end. Of course, the gangsters had died in the earlier movies, too, but they had always gone out with a bang. Director Michael Curtiz's Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) pays some lip service to moral rectitude in its juxtaposition of James Cagney's doomed criminal with Pat O'Brien's saintly priest; certainly, its shocking finale seems to support the attempt to strip crime of its glamor, but ultimately it undermines its own ending to give us yet another example of Cagney's brilliance at playing the seductive thug.

Cagney stars as Rocky Sullivan, who learns to become a career criminal in juvenile hall after getting caught in a youthful crime. His pal and accomplice, Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien), outran the cops that fateful day and grows up to be a Catholic priest in the same poor neighborhood where he and Rocky were kids. When Rocky gets out of his most recent stint in prison, he reunites with Jerry while horning his way into some crooked business schemes managed by his underhanded lawyer, James Frazier (Humphrey Bogart), and cohort Mac Keefer (George Bancroft). Jerry wants to save Rocky, but even more he wants to save the neighborhood kids from following Rocky's example, and when Rocky gets caught for the last time Jerry asks him to make a terrible sacrifice for the boys' benefit.

Cagney's appeal as Rocky is tremendous, and Pat O'Brien really doesn't have a chance against him with the audience's sympathies. The two of them are like those cartoons of the Faustian angel and devil on somebody's shoulders, and the angel is always the most obnoxious bore. It's easy enough to see that we're supposed to like Jerry Connolly better and that he obviously occupies the moral high ground, but Rocky is more fun every step of the way, and in the end Rocky even turns out to be the better man since the scope of his sacrifice is far beyond anything that Father Jerry will ever be asked to do. I side with the opinion that Rocky's final performance in the gas chamber is just that, although some people insist that it's meant to be ambiguous. The Dead End Kids might buy Father Jerry's story that Rocky went out yellow, but the audience, I think, is meant to know a wink at the Hays Code when they see one.

The supporting cast gives the movie additional depth and character. Ann Sheridan has great appeal as Rocky's love interest, and Bogart exudes sweaty cowardice as the two-timing lawyer. The Dead End Kids run amok like gritty boy versions of the cast of Annie; they had started out on Broadway in Dead End and come to Hollywood as a package deal; their first film appearance was a 1937 screen adaptation of the play, but they proved popular with audiences and made several subsequent films. Take time to appreciate Frankie Burke, the actor who plays Rocky as a boy; he really does a great job capturing the persona of a youthful Cagney.

Angels with Dirty Faces picked up three Oscar nominations, including nominations for Cagney and Curtiz, but it went home empty-handed. Cagney would eventually win his only Oscar for a very different role in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). For more of Cagney's great gangsters, see The Public Enemy (1931) and White Heat (1949). Bogart plays more bad guys in The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). For a change of pace, try one of Michael Curtiz's other 1938 films, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Curtiz actually earned two nominations for Best Director in 1939, one for Angels and one for the Claude Rains drama, Four Daughters (1938); even though he lost to Frank Capra for You Can't Take It with You (1938), that's still an impressive accomplishment. He would win the Oscar a few years later for directing the immortal Casablanca (1942).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

Few classic films are more iconic than The Maltese Falcon (1941). It occupies the same rarefied space reserved for The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Casablanca (1942), yet its mood and style set it apart from the lavish spectacles created by the first two films, while its razor sharp nastiness makes it a different picture entirely from the third, even though they share several of the same stars. The Maltese Falcon is also unique in its role as the first appearance of a wholly new kind of American film, the noir picture, even though its roots lie in the gangster movies and European expressionist films of the 1930s. As lean and wolfish as Sam Spade himself, The Maltese Falcon remains one of the most famous of all movies because each of its many parts works so perfectly that the whole does indeed become the stuff that dreams are made of.

Based very closely on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon presents the story of Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), a private detective in San Francisco who finds his latest case more trouble than he expected when his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), turns up dead. His attractive client (Mary Astor) offers Spade so many different names and half truths that getting to the bottom of Miles' murder requires getting involved with the mysterious lady's affairs right up to Spade's frequently imperiled neck. The whole seedy business boils down to a pack of thieves and a near mythical statue that all of them are willing to kill to possess.

Director John Huston penned the screenplay himself, and he wisely retained Hammett's grimly humorous lines and almost the entire plot of the original novel; this is really one of the most faithful adaptations of a literary work ever filmed for the big screen, and it says something about the slim elegance of Hammett's prose that such fidelity is even possible, even more that a faithful adaptation can simultaneously make for such outstanding cinema. Hammett's brilliant, jaded dialogue would come to epitomize noir cool, with lines like "Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer" and "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it." Naturally, there are a few changes. A subplot involving a girl in Gutman's retinue gets dropped, and the end of the film differs in some subtle but important ways. Oddly enough, Huston's ending is actually a little nicer than Hammett's, if one can call either ending "nice" at all.

Hammett had described his protagonist as "rather pleasantly like a blond Satan" in the novel, and of course Bogart is not blond, but he captures perfectly the balance of light and dark that make up Sam Spade's character. Spade is no hero, although he eventually tells Brigid O'Shaughnessy that he isn't as crooked as she might think, that being morally ambiguous is part of the job of being a private detective. He catches Miles' killer not because he liked Miles (he didn't), but because it's bad for business to let a job like that get by right under the detective's own nose. Spade lives a rough life and likes it that way as long as it pays well enough, and Bogart's devilish grin conveys his control over every ugly situation, particularly when he needles the tightly wound Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.) and dances his way around the questions of the local cops.

The rest of the cast give the performances of their careers here. Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, and Elisha Cook, Jr. make for as faithless and dishonorable a den of thieves as one could hope for; their chemistry as a group crackles with equal parts menace and humor. As the effeminate Joel Cairo, Lorre walks a very fine line, suggesting the sexual attraction Cairo feels for Wilmer but keeping it subtle enough to get by the censors. Hammett had been able to get away with more of that aspect of the character in the novel, but it takes a character actor as brilliant as Lorre to make it work on screen without tempting the fate of the censors' morally anxious editors. Effie Perine, played beautifully by Lee Patrick, might be the only really lovable character in the whole thing, which is precisely why Spade won't give her the time of day. Astor, Patrick, and Gladys George as Iva Archer make a fascinating trinity of the feminine types that populate the noir world, and it's no surprise that the bad girls outnumber the good ones two to one.

The Maltese Falcon earned three Oscar nominations in 1942, although it won nothing, and How Green Was My Valley (1941) carried away all of the honors instead. In retrospect, Huston couldn't have felt too bad about that, since the other film that lost to the sentimental family drama that year was Citizen Kane (1941). For more of Bogart's best films, see The Big Sleep (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and The African Queen (1951), the last two of which were also directed by Huston. Look for Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941), for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and in The Palm Beach Story (1942) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Don't miss Peter Lorre in M (1931) and Mad Love (1935), two early roles that helped to define the course of his macabre career. Elisha Cook Jr. turns up in all sorts of places, from Shane (1953) to Rosemary's Baby (1968), but he's great fun to watch in House on Haunted Hill (1959). You'll find Sydney Greenstreet in Christmas in Connecticut (1945) and The Woman in White (1948), but The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca are certainly his most memorable appearances on film.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.