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.

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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.

Five Noir Things and The Maltese Falcon

maltese falcon

I’ve been a little remiss with my Noirvember postings, but I’m making up for it with this week’s Five Cool Things. I decided to write about nothing but film noir in this week’s edition. Films include To Have and Have Not, Cairo Station, Out of the Fog, Hell Drivers, Kansas City Confidential and The Maltese Falcon. You can read all about it here.

Now Watching: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

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The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Directed and written by John Huston
Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre

San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette, with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered.

Rating: 9/10

An absolute classic. I love this film. I’ve seen it many times. I’m hoping to do a Top Five Bogart in Film Noir list this month, so I’m watching as many of those as I can. This is often considered the very first film noir, and it is one of the very best. I don’t really have the bandwidth right now to do a full review, but since I watched it, I wanted to at least mention it.

It was the first film directed by John Huston and the first film Sydney Greenstreet ever played in. It made Bogart a star and set the template for untold detective stories to come. It is a terrific film and I higly recommend it.

Midnight (1934)

midnight movie poster

I’m thinking about doing a Top Five noir films starring Humphrey Bogart, so I did a little searching. The trouble with film noir is there are no real clear definitions. Unlike westerns or action films, the dividing lines between, say, a crime thriller and a film noir are pretty nebulous. So I wanted to make a list of all the noirs Bogart had starred in. One of the sites I found mentioned this film, so I gave it a watch.

I definitely would not call it a noir, so I’m not counting it for Noirvember, but I thought I’d talk about it a little bit anyway. Bogart was originally credited in eighth place, but the film was rereleased in 1949 as Call It Murder, after he’d become a star, and he then received top billing.

It is more of a morality play than a film noir or even a good movie. A woman kills her husband and is caught and convicted for it. There is speculation she’ll get off as she’s a woman and it was a crime of passion, but the foreman of the jury, Edward Weldon (OP Heggie), pushes for a guilty verdict and gets it. She’s sentenced to die.

There is some publicity and public support for the convicted woman, including from Weldon’s daughter, Stella (Sidney Fox.) She met Gar Boni (Bogart) at the trial, and in the ensuing weeks she’s fallen in love. I think he had some connection to the convicted girl, but I’m honestly not sure. He definitely is supportive of her not dying and convinces Stella to feel the same.

Anyway, the bulk of the film takes place on the day of the execution. Friends and family have gathered at Weldon’s house, and they spend a lot of time talking about the trial. He is unmoved. He stands by his decision to convict and notes that it was not his decision that she get the death penalty, but that is the law.

Before the film ends, something will happen to challenge that idea. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll probably figure it out before it actually happens. I know I did. There isn’t much to the filmmaking. It very much feels like a filmed play, which is pretty much what it is. There is no style to it. Nothing opens it up cinematically. They don’t even use a musical score, which is really weird. Music really does add so much to a film like this.

Bogart’s role is small but pivotal. He’s fine in it, but not particularly memorable. At this point in his career, he was playing a lot of heavies who were a long way from getting top billing. He’s really the only reason to watch this. Otherwise it would have been completely forgotten (and it’s hardly remembered despite his presence).

It’s funny because I have this idea of doing what I call “Now Watching” articles. The idea of those being that sometimes I watch a film but don’t really want to do a full review of it, but I would like to at least mention the watching. So I post the title of the film, the director and stars, and then a little synopsis. My review is typically just a couple of paragraphs, and then I’m done. It is a fun, fast way of keeping track of my movie watching while also reminding me of what I thought.

I had intended this to be one of those, and then I just kept writing. So I guess I’m calling this a full review 🙂

They Drive By Night (1940)

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Humphrey Bogart is my all-time favorite actor. He was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s golden age. But he didn’t start out that way. He actually languished for over a decade before becoming a star. He spent most of that time being billed third or fourth in gangster pictures. They Drive By Night helped push him into the spotlight. It was not a gangster picture, and while he was still third-billed the movie was a big hit and it showed off his range. A year later he’d star in The Maltese Falcon and the rest is history.

George Raft is the star of the picture. And Ida Lupino. The film is a mix between a social message movie and film noir. It’s pretty good.

You can read my full review here.

Murder Mysteries In May: Marlowe (1969)

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Phillip Marlowe is, perhaps, the quintessential hard-boiled detective. He is smart and tough. He has a moral code, but isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He works alone. He’s a hard drinker and plays chess by mail. It may take him a while, but he always solves his case. Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep is, perhaps, the quintessential cinematic depiction of the hard-boiled detective in film noir.

That character and Bogart’s portrayal of him, influenced countless detectives in countless movies throughout the 1940s and 1950s. But as the 1950s turned into the 1960s that hard-boiled film noir style was, well, going out of style.

In 1973 Robert Altman adapted Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye with Elliott Gould as Marlowe. Altman has a lot of fun throwing this 1930s detective into the wild 1970s. Gould plays him as a sort of Rip Van Winkle, a man who has awoke from a long sleep only to find himself in a world he no longer understands. He kind of wanders, mumbling through the whole film, while the entirety of the uninhibited 1970s California sprawls out before him. It is a fantastic movie.

Marlowe sits somewhere between Bogart in The Big Sleep and Gould in The Long Goodbye. It is very much set in the late 1960s. The skirts are short, the music psychedelic, there is ample use of split screen and hippies abound. But the story sticks pretty close to the classic mold.

James Garner plays Marlowe like, well, James Garner, with a smirk to his delivery and a tongue planted firmly in his cheek. He’s smooth and slick, and rather delightful.

The plot is adapted from Chandler’s novel The Little Sister and finds Marlowe being hired by a squeaky young girl from Kansas to find her brother, lost in the big city of angels. There are mobsters and television stars, murders with ice picks, a strip tease act from Rita Moreno, and Bruce Lee tearing up Marlowe’s office.

It doesn’t always work. At times it feels more like a schtick than a fully thought-out movie. Altman’s film never has that problem. I love me some James Garner and he mostly works for me here, but in the same way that the film sometimes feels like a schtick, his act doesn’t always work for Phillip Marlowe.

But it is a fascinating time capsule of a movie, trying to move the film noir forward, making it current for the times. It is also quite a bit of fun.

Barbie is the Pick of the Week

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My wife is obsessed with dolls. It began with our daughter when she was young. We’d buy her baby dolls, Monster High Dolls, My Little Pony Dolls, etc. and so forth, and yes we bought her lots of Barbie dolls. My wife always enjoyed playing dolls with our daughter (whereas I always tended to make them fight each other) and the obsession grew out of that.

My wife also enjoys sewing. She used to sew for herself and then when our daughter was born she’s make all sorts of cute dresses for her. But my daughter no longer likes dresses. She’s more of a cargo pants and sweatshirt girl these days. So, the wife started sewing for the dolls. At first, it was just a few dresses for fun and then it turned into something else.

She makes all sorts of amazing outfits for the Barbie dolls, then poses them and takes some really cool photos. She got herself an Instagram account and posts the best ones there. Apparently, there is a whole doll world on Instagram (called Dollstagram naturally) where fans create stories, and swap ideas and whatnot. It is all beyond me, but she loves it and I think that is awesome.

Naturally, we went to see the Barbie movie in the theaters. I gotta admit, I really enjoyed it. The film is clever and funny and it has something to say beyond “you should buy more dolls.” Some of its messaging is a little on the nose and that monologue everyone is talking about felt a little too preachy to my ears (though admittedly it is all true), but mostly it is quite good.

It came out on Blu-ray today in a variety of formats and versions and it is absolutely my Pick of the Week.

Also, out this week that looks interesting:

The Last Voyage of the Demeter: Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been adapted, remade, and reimaged a million times. What this film does is it takes one tiny part of the story (Dracula’s voyage from Carpathia to England) and makes an entire movie of it. Results are mixed.

Haunted Mansion: A Disneyland ride is turned into a kid-friendly, star-studded, and somewhat enjoyable movie.

Todd Browning’s Sideshow Shockers: The Criterion Channel is releasing three early films from Dracula (1931) director Tood Browning. The films are The Mystic (1925), The Unknown (1927), and Freaks (1932). I’ve only seen Freaks but it’s terrific.

The Way We Were (50th Anniversary Edition): Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand star in this Sydney Pollack-directed drama about two people in love who are driven apart by their political convictions.

The Walking Dead Complete Collection: This show should have been right up my alley. I love zombies. I’ve read (some of) the comics. I enjoyed the first season but found the second one a dreadful bore and couldn’t make it through the first half of the third season. I’m surprised it was so successful and launched so many spin-offs. Obviously, some folks love it and now you can have the entire series.

The Desperate Hours: Humphrey Bogart stars in this terrific crime flick as a desperate convict on the lam who hides out inside a house owned by Frederic March.

The Wicker Man: Best Buy recently announced that they will no longer be selling movies of any sort in their stores or online. With this package, they are going out with a bang. This classic horror film is being exclusively sold by Best Buy in a new 4K edition chocked full of extras.

31 Days of Horror: The Return of Dr. X (1939)

the return of dr x

One of the things I enjoy about watching old movies is being able to chart the rise (and sometimes fall) of some of my favorite stars. You can, of course, do that with modern stars, but you never know where they will wind up. With classic movie stars, you get the entire picture.

Humphrey Bogart is my all-time favorite actor. He stars in my all-time favorite movie, Casablanca, and a slew of other great films including The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The African Queen, and many more. For much of his career, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

But of course, he wasn’t always a star. While he became famous for playing roles in which he was something of a reluctant hero, in his early films he often played the heavy – gangsters and bad men. He was good at it too. I sometimes wonder where his career would have taken him if he’d never become the big star.

The Return of Doctor X was made towards the end of his gangster period and just two years before becoming a huge star with The Maltese Falcon in 1941.

Reportedly Bogart hated the film and refused to talk about it in interviews. I can kind of see why. It isn’t a good film. It is the only horror movie he ever made and it is decidedly different from anything else in his filmography.

But, it isn’t that bad. It is kind of fun, actually. And Bogart is terrific.

It is supposedly a sequel to Doctor X, a film we’ll talk about in a few days, but really it has nothing to do with that earlier movie.

Several people have recently been murdered and completely drained of their Type One blood. Ace reporter Walter Garrett (Wayne Morris) is on the case. His investigation leads him to Dr. Flegg (John Litel) who, as it turns out, has created a synthetic blood that he has used to bring life back to the dead.

For his first patient, he grabs a recently executed man, Dr. Maurice Xavier (Bogart, naturally), fake buries him, and brings him back to life. Then forces him to act as his assistant. Trouble is the synthetic blood doesn’t replicate itself and so Xavier must murder (and presumably drink, or inject) the victim’s blood in order to stay alive.

Bogart, sporting slicked-back black hair with a shock of white in it, is utterly creepy as Dr. X. His skin is made to look pale and his eyes are sunk in as to make him the living dead and he plays it like a man half-dead.

The story is very silly, and it plays up the comedy angle, with the reporter being a bit of a ham. It isn’t at all scary, nor actually very good, but there is a goofiness to it that I found enjoyable and Bogart really is quite good. So, not the film I’d point anyone toward to discover why Bogart is my favorite actor, but certainly one worth watching if you are a fan.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

dead men don't wear plaid poster

I first learned of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid inside a little video rental store. The VHS had a cool cover with Steve Martin on the front aiming a gun at the audience, a plaid outline behind him. This would be the late-ish 1980s and Steve Martin was a huge star. I was a young teen and loved Martin in movies like Three Amigos (1986), Roxanne (1987), and The Man With Two Brains (1983). I immediately picked the VHS up and talked my mother into renting it.

We took it home and I popped it in the VCR and pressed play. I was immediately disappointed. It was in black and white. I hated black-and-white movies. Or I thought I did. I’d never actually seen one. But black and white movies were old and old was bad. At least that’s what I thought back then anyhow.

I watched for maybe ten minutes then turned it off in disgust.

Many years later, when I learned that there are, in fact, many really great movies in black and white, I decided to give it another spin. I was definitely a classic movie fan by then, but just a beginner. I knew actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Vincent Price. I’d seen a few film noirs but was by no means an expert.

The film is a homage to the classic film noirs of the 1940s. Through trick editing, it intercuts the new story with clips from 19 classic films. It does this surprisingly well.

Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon a private investigator who is hired by Juliett Forest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the murder of her father. During the investigation, he comes across a large crowd of interesting characters, which is where the classic films come in.

Sometimes Reardon will call someone on the telephone and it will be Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep (or some other classic film star in a classic movie) who will answer. The dialog is cut as if Reardon is talking to Phillip Marlowe. Other times he’ll meet up with someone and it will be Veronica Lake in The Glass Key (or some other classic film star in a classic movie). In these instances, the film will sometimes use an extra dressed like the classic film actor, shot from behind, so that they can interact with Reardon in a more realistic way. It is all done cleverly and that makes it a really fun watch.

The great Edith Head (in her last film) did the costumes and she did an amazing job matching everything up. Ditto the lighting and staging and everything.

The film was co-written (with Steve Martin) by Carl Reiner, and it was directed by him as well. Reiner is a vaudevillian at heart and this is very much in Martin’s very silly stage (long before he started writing for the New Yorker and Broadway). I have to admit I’m not a big fan of that style of comedy. It is too jokey for me.

It is also a bit cringe. There is an ongoing joke where Reardon feels Juliet Forest’s up, caressing her breasts because they were knocked out of place during a scuffle. Or another time Reardon gives Juliet a kiss when she has passed out. There are quite a few dumb gags like that that play very differently now.

I am now a very big fan of classic movies and film noir in particular. I’ve seen more than half the films included inside this movie and so all of that stuff was really quite delightful. It is very well done; clearly, the filmmakers are very big fans of classic movies.

The Harder They Fall (1956)

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I friggin’ love Humphrey Bogart. In fact, he tops my Top 10 list of greatest actors. He played cold-blooded villains, cynical but good-hearted tough guys, down-on-his-luck schmucks, and romantic leads with the same grace and passion. It doesn’t hurt that he’s been in some of the greatest movies ever made. With a resume that includes Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, the Treasure of the Sierre Madre, and the African Queen it’s no wonder Bogart comes out as the actor starring in the most films on the AFI top 100 films list.

In fact, until now, I’ve loved all of the films I’ve ever seen starring Humphrey Bogart. I do my very best to catch any film in which he had a role. Being that he acted in some 74 movies during his career, I’ve still got a bit to go.

It was with great anticipation that I watch any Bogart film. You just can’t go wrong with a Bogie movie, I often say. Recently, I grabbed a worn-out VHS copy of his last film, The Harder They Fall. It pains me to say, but I can no longer claim that I’ve never seen a Humphrey Bogart picture that was less than wonderful.

It’s not that The Harder They Fall is a bad film. In fact, there were some rather good moments. It’s just that when compared to the other Bogart films I have seen this one falls well below the bar.

What pains me, even more, is that some of its failures lies in the hands of Bogart himself. Yet before we take the man off of his pedestal, I must remind the reader that at this point in his life, he was dying of cancer. It had not been diagnosed yet, but there is little doubt that Bogart’s insides were being eaten alive during filming. Legend has it that a sound-alike dubbed his lines during post-production.

His illness shows through the performance. He looks tired, and haggard throughout.

But you say “The character is tired and haggard, so shouldn’t the actor act that way?”

“Yes,” of course, I’ll answer, “but Bogart practically made a career of tired, haggard characters yet in films like Casablanca or Treasure of the Sierra Madre he embodied the characters and made them look tired.” Here, you see an actor who is a master craftsman performing at a much lower level than we’ve come to expect.

But, look, I spit on no man’s grave. Remember a fine actor’s better performances; let a dead man have his dignity.

There is a film in there, besides a Bogart performance. The plot concerns a down-and-out sportswriter, Eddie Willis (Bogart) hired as publicity man for an up-and-coming boxer (Mike Lane) who can’t actually box. The boxer, Toro Moreno, is a giant of a man who looks menacing but punches like a girl (and not a girl like Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby). You see Toro is mob-connected boxing promoter Nick Benko’s (Rod Steiger) fighter. Benko plans to buy every fight Toro boxes all the way up to a championship bout in which, betting on the other fighter, Benko will make a bundle.
The story is actually a good one, and with a little tweaking it could have been a great film. But the writing never really sparkles, and the direction never rises above the material.

Steiger’s performance is the films saving grace. He manages to come off completely ruthless, and immoral while still making the audience love the character. He out acts Bogart in every scene, and even with a tired, sick Bogart that is still quite an accomplishment.

Bogart may look tired on the screen, but his presence is still a formidable one. His lines don’t shine like they might in The Big Sleep, and his character isn’t quite as iconic as Rick in Casablanca, but he still manages to outperform most of the actors who’ve put their faces on a theatre screen.

I’ll take an average Bogart performance over Tom Cruise’s best roles any day.