Tag: film noir

The Top Five Film Noirs Starring Humphrey Bogart

I meant to write and post this back during Noirvember, but I got distracted, and then I forgot.

Humphrey Bogart is my favorite actor. He made some incredible films in his storied career (including my all-time favorite, Casablanca), and more than a few of them were film noirs. More than just about any actor of the classic period, his name is (arguably) the one most associated with noir. So I thought it would be fun to do a Top Five favorite noirs starring Bogart.

high sierra movie poster

5.  High Sierra (1941)

Bogart wasn’t always the big star we know him as today. He spent the better part of a decade as a supporting player, often billed as a gangster or heavy. High Sierra changed that. He was lucky to get that role, as both Paul Muni and George Raft had been offered it first, and director Raoul Walsh didn’t think he was leading man material.  But writer John Huston thought Bogart was perfect for the role, and eventually Walsh relented. Huston would, that very same year, cast Bogart in his film The Maltese Falcon (more on that in a minute).

With this film he hasn’t quite left the gangster mold; he plays Roy Earle, a guy who’s just gotten out of prison and is already set for his next score. He’s holed up in a cabin in the mountains with three other guys and a girl, just waiting for the right time to rob a ritzy hotel. The girl (played by the always great Ida Lupino) will lead to trouble. Bogart is still perfecting his world-weary, cynical, but ultimately sentimental character, but he’s still terrific as Earle.  Lupino is great too, and Walsh’s direction is quite wonderful. 

the maltese falcon poster

4. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

If High Sierra made Bogart a star, then The Maltese Falcon solidified it. Based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, this film is often considered the first truly great film noir. Bogart plays Sam Spade, a tough, cynical private eye who is hired by a woman (Mary Astor) who may not be who she claims to be and may not actually want what she claims to want. 

What she really wants is the titular object, which is a mythical, jewel-crusted statue of a bird that was supposedly gifted to the Holy Roman Emperor hundreds of years ago but has been lost to time. While trying to find the bird, Spade will run across a number of eclectic and strange people, including ones played by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. 

The plot is complicated, the cast is perfect, and John Huston’s direction (it was his directorial debut) is fantastic.

in a lonely plac eposter

3. In a Lonely Place (1950)

This is probably the least noirish film on the list and quite possibly Bogart’s best performance. Based on the excellent novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, Bogart plays a troubled screenwriter with a penchant for violence who hasn’t written a hit movie in years. One night he takes a girl home with him, then changes his mind and kicks her out.  The next morning she finds herself dead, and he finds himself a suspect. Through this he’ll meet his neighbor Laura (a magnificent Gloria Grahame), and they’ll fall in love, but she’ll never quite be sure he didn’t kill that girl.

Bogart’s performance is heartbreaking. The script is full of great lines like, “I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, and I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Just a magnificent movie.

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02. Key Largo (1948)

Bogart and Lauren Bacall met on the set of To Have and Have Not (1944) and fell in love and stayed together until he died in 1957. They made four films together (three of them are absolute bangers, and the fourth one isn’t bad – one of the others almost made it to this list, and the other is #1).

Directed by John Huston (his second film on this list), Key Largo includes an incredible cast (including Thomas Gomez, Lionel Barrymore, and Edward G. Robinson).  Bogart plays Frank McCloud, a former soldier who stops by Key Largo to visit with his dead comrade’s father (Barrymore) and widow (Bacall) but gets stuck when a hurricane rolls in. Also stuck with them are a few gangsters awaiting a car full of cash that they’ll trade for counterfeit bills.  

The hurricane and the gangsters make for a pot of dangerous soup that’s ready to boil. This boasts a classic Bogart performance. He’s smart and tough, witty and sensitive. He and Bacall work magic together, and Barrymore is great as the father who doesn’t take any crap. But it is Robinson who steals the show. He gets one of the all-time great introductory scenes and remains awesome throughout.

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01. The Big Sleep (1946)

I think this was the first film noir I ever watched. Based on the fantastic book by Raymond Chandler, Bogart plays Phillip Marlowe, a private eye hired by an old man over some blackmail scheme involving his youngest daughter (Martha Vickers in a small but oh-so-memorable role). Quickly things turn complicated, convoluted, and murderous (director Howard Hawks famously phoned Raymond Chandler over who killed a certain chauffeur, and Chandler didn’t actually know the answer). But the plot isn’t really the point. 

The Big Sleep is all about its mood, its characters, and the way it makes you feel. Bacall is the older daughter and potential love interest. It is a blast watching her flirt with Bogart and become the femme fatale. Everyone flirts with Bogart in this movie. The two sisters, the cab driver, the bookstore clerk—hell, I’d flirt with him if I were in this movie. It is the perfect noir and an absolute blast to watch.

Well, there you have it, my favorite Humphrey Bogart film noirs. Do you have a favorite? Do you disagree with my picks? Honestly, if I wrote this tomorrow I’d probably have different picks. But this was fun.  I’ll try to do more of these when I can.

Blackout Noir: Blackout (1957)

murder by proxy

A broke and down American, Casey Morrow (Dane Clark), is quietly getting drunk by himself. He’s approached by a beautiful heiress named Phyllis Brunner (Belinda Lee). She says she’ll pay him $500 to marry her. A smart man would immediately think something is fishy, but film noirs aren’t filled with smart men. He accepts, and she plies him with more drinks. He awakes the next morning in a strange apartment owned by Maggie Doone (Eleanor Summerfield). She says she found him last night stumbling about, dead drunk, so she took him in and let him crash. She’s an artist and has a painting of Phyllis on an easel.

They are alerted by the newspapers that Phyllis’ father was brutally murdered last night with a fireplace poker. Casey finds blood on his coat. He has no memory of what happened to him after Phyllis made her offer and gave him some more drinks.

Blackout (also known as Murder By Proxy) is a tidy little British b-noir, directed by Hammer stalwart Terrence Fisher.

The police will naturally suspect Casey, as Mr. Brunner was quite rich, and as he’s now married to Brunner’s only child, he’ll take control of the estate. The police will never believe Casey’s story of how Phyllis propositioned him on her own, so naturally, he takes it upon himself to try and find out what really happened.

It is here that what starts out as a rather excellent film turns a little more pedestrian. Casey will track people down and ask a lot of questions and get far too many easy answers. Because this is a film noir, we know that Phyllis has something to do with it. He’ll figure that out too, but also because this is a noir, he’ll keep falling for her act. Guys in noirs always get suckered in by a beautiful dame. It is such a shame too because Maggie is clearly the better woman, and she falls in love with him the moment she takes him in that first night.

The detective work never quite thrills or travels down new paths for this sort of thing, but it is still quite entertaining. I am reminded of Terrence Fisher’s work in numerous Hammer Horror films. Those weren’t typically great, but they were sturdily made and enjoyable enough. So it is here. It is a very good film. It doesn’t quite reach great status, but if you are a fan of film noir, I wouldn’t miss it.

Noirvember: Cairo Station (1958)

cairo station

Cairo Station is a film that’s been popping up in my feeds and suggestion lists for a while now. The story sounded interesting, and that black and white poster with the train running above a man and woman covered in oil is a good one, but something about it kept making me put off watching it. Somehow, I think the fact that it was an Egyptian film put me off of it. That’s weird because I’m a fan of foreign films; I dedicate an entire month to them in February. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Egyptian film. I’m not super familiar with Middle Eastern or African cinema either. 

I want to know more about their culture and cinema, but it also feels a little daunting to dive in. It feels a little like work, and I’m lazy, so I put it off. But finally this week I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did, as it turned out to be a terrific film.

It is a little slow in the going. For the first fifteen minutes or so, it sets up its stories and its characters. I almost turned it off around then. I couldn’t quite get a grip on it. It is a film full of people. It lives at the titular train station, and it follows the hustle and bustle of numerous people working there. The main focus is on Qinawi (Youssef Chahine, who also cowrote and directed the picture), a poverty-stricken young man with a lame foot. He becomes obsessed with Hannuma (Hind Rostom), a beautiful young woman who sells cold drinks to train passengers. She’s engaged to Abu Siri (Farid Shawqi), a robust, fiery man who is attempting to organize all the train workers into a union. 

There is a lot of politics in the film. It deals with these poor workers trying to survive. But because it is set at a train station, we get glimpses of all sorts of classes. It is a microcosm of Egypt at this time. I think, in part, this is why it took me a minute to climb into the film. In some ways the film is universal; the working class struggles everywhere, but in other ways it is a very Egyptian film, set in a very particular moment in their history. 

Qinawi’s obsession with Hannuma is sexual in nature. His handicap and poverty cause him to be mocked by most women. But while his lame foot makes it difficult for him to get around, he’s still a man in the prime of his life. He still has desires. Hannuma is beautiful and boisterous, full of life. She’s flirty and sexual. She’s also nice to Qinawi, which makes him think he has a chance. That goes into some dark territory, which I won’t spoil, and it makes Qinawi more of an anti-hero than a sympathetic character.

It is shot like a classic noir with stark black and white photography emphasizing the shadows and grit of the train station. It feels like a politically tinged melodrama with sharp edges. It may have taken me a long while to finally watch the film, and it took me a little while to get into it, but once it had me in its clutches I sank right in.

Blackout Noir: Black Angel (1946)

black angel

A man goes to see his ex-wife on their anniversary. She refuses to see him. She has the doorman turn him away. She still refuses even when he’s sent up a fancy brooch. As he’s walking out, another man comes into the hotel asking to see the woman. He’s let up with no problem. The first man goes to a bar and gets drunk. Later, a third man comes to the hotel and is let up to see the woman. He finds her lying on the floor dead. While there he hears someone sneak out. He notices that the brooch she was holding in her hand when he first came in is now missing.

Black Angel was directed by Roy William Neill, who is best known for directing most of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone. It is a loose adaptation of a novel of the same name by Cornell Woolrich. I was twenty minutes into it before I realized I had seen it before.

The first man is called Martin Blair, and he’s played by Dan Duryea. The guy who found her dead is Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), he’s a married man who was having an affair with the dead lady. But things turned sour, and she was blackmailing him to conceal the affair. The cops figure that’s the motive and arrest him. He’s convicted and sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

Kirk’s wife, Catherine (June Vincent), believes her husband to be innocent and starts her own investigation into the matter. She’ll eventually connect with Martin, and he’ll tell her about the second guy, the one he saw entering the dead woman’s room. That guy is Marko, and he’s played by Peter Lorre, so you automatically know he did it. Catherine and Martin know he did it, too, but they have to prove it. They figure that proof is in a safe inside his upstairs office at the club he owns. They get a gig there as a lounge act.

It is all nicely done, and there are a couple of good and tense scenes with Peter Lorre, but it never quite connected with me. This was Duryea’s first starring role, and he’s good in it. He’s a washout and a drunk who finally sobers up when he meets Catherine. Finding her husband’s killer gives him purpose, and he naturally falls in love with her, which gives him even more purpose. But she’s still in love with her husband. That creates a bit of drama. Peter Lorre is always good, but he’s not given a lot to work with here.

It is a fine movie and worth watching if you are a fan of film noir.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIII Blu-ray Review

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I’ve talked about these film noir sets from Kino Lorber on multiple occasions. I’m always surprised they keep making them. I’m always surprised there are that many film noirs to release. But I love them just the same. I hope they keep making them forever.

This set includes a mostly great spy thriller, a surprisingly thoughtful thriller with a mentally ill killer, and a really rather good remake of a Hitchcock film.

You can read my full review here.

Mysteries in May: So Evil My Love (1948)

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I watched this movie five days ago, and I have to admit I had to read the entire Wikipedia synopsis to remember what had happened. My mind was completely blank on the plot details. You would think that would mean I didn’t like it, but the opposite is true – I liked it a lot. I guess I’ve just slept since then.

So Evil My Love is a twisty film noir set in Liverpool during the Victorian era (Wikipedia says this subgenre of Victorian noirs is called Gaslight Noirs, and I just love that). Ray Milland stars as Mark Bellis, and Ann Todd plays Olivia Harwood. They meet on a boat returning from the West Indies. He is a rapscallion and a thief; she’s the widow of a missionary.

He’s sick on the boat with malaria, and she nurses him back to health. When they land in Liverpool, he charms her into letting him stay at her boarding house. A romance ensues.

He learns she’s got a rich friend and talks her into asking the rich lady for money. Then she becomes the rich lady’s paid companion. Meanwhile, Bellis is attempting burglary and stepping out with another woman. He pushes Olivia into blackmailing her friend.

It is less of a mystery and more of a naive woman being beguiled by a lecherous older man. The stuff between Bellis and Olivia is golden. The first act is a real treat. But when the plot turns to her rich friend and all those shenanigans, it becomes a bit of a bore. Thankfully, it turns a corner towards the end and creates a completely satisfying closing.

Well worth checking out.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXV Blu-ray Review

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I’ve reviewed so many of these sets I don’t know what else to say about them. This one has three films from Republic Pictures directed by John H. Auer, whom I’d never heard of before.

The films are The Flame (1947) a melodramatic Double Indemnity-esque caper with too many characters and a couple of blondes I couldn’t tell apart. City That Never Sleeps (1953) is a docu-style drama filled with loads of interesting characters and some terrific noir cinematography. Hell’s Half Acre (1953) is an exotic noir set on the mean streets of Honolulu.

They are all pretty good, actually, and you can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.

The Tall Target (1951)

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There are loads of different types of film noirs but The Tall Target might just have the strangest subject matter of them all – protecting Abraham Lincoln from an assassination attempt (no not that one, but a different one. On a train. One that kind of, sort of really happened.)

It is pretty great, too. Dick Powell stars as a copper who thinks the President is going to get killed in Baltimore on a stop he’s making to speechify before he gets inaugurated.

It is a good little mystery with some great noir photography. You can read my full review here.

Noirvember: Odd Man Out (1947)

odd man out poster

Sometimes people suggest that The Third Man which was directed by Carol Reed and stars Orson Welles in a pivotal role was also secretly directed by Welles. Or that at the very least Welles gave Reed plenty of advice. The Third Man indeed contains the types of skewed camera angles and shrewd use of shadows and light that Welles so loved, but anyone suggesting that Carol Reed was incapable of such things has apparently never watched Odd Man Out. For it contains many such moments and it came out three years before The Third Man.

Odd Man Out stars James Mason as Johnny McQueen, an Irish Nationalist leader who becomes wounded after a botched robbery attempt. The film follows along as his friend and the police scour the city looking for him, while continually checking back on him as he hides out in an air raid shelter, a local pub, and finally an artist’s residence.

What is remarkable about the film (besides the filmmaking itself which is brilliant) is how much the film makes us care about all of these characters. Johnny is a criminal. He commits that robbery for the money, not out of desperation or need (there are political motivations, but the film never delves into what they are). He kills a man while fleeing the crime scene. While the film shows him remorseful for that act it never once lets us forget it. But it also makes us feel and care for him as a person.

Thematically the film delves deep into that question as to how we are as a society to deal with and react to a criminal – a fugitive from justice.

A couple of elderly women see Johnny fallen on the street. They think he has been hit by a truck. They take him in and attempt to patch him up. But once they realize he has been shot, and thus who he is, they change. They are no longer helping a wounded man but are aiding and abetting a criminal.

A priest asks for information about Jonny’s whereabouts. He won’t protect him from the police but would like to hear his confession. A local street hood tries to sell his hiding place to the highest bidder. An artist wants to paint him as he dies. Johnny’s girl Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan) will do anything to save him, even risk her life.

The film takes us through all of these interactions with great care and style. It doesn’t so much judge these characters as it asks us to ponder their dilemmas. Shot in stark black and white it makes great use of its sets, its location settings, shadows, and lights. It is breathtaking to look at. It is the sort of film that makes you think maybe Orson Welles learned a thing or two from Carol Reed.

It made for the perfect conclusion to Noirvember.