Dark Passage

source: Dark Passage

Vincent Parry is a San Quentin convict wrongly accused of murdering his wife, who escapes from prison and is taken in by a gorgeous Good Samaritan (that would be Lauren Bacall as Irene Jansen). She lets him hide out at her place for awhile, but eventually Vincent takes a ride with a very perceptive cab driver who recognizes him and also has a heart of gold; he pulls his cab over to the side and just happens to know this plastic surgeon friend who wouldn't mind putting his neck on the line to alter the face of a wanted fugitive. After the operation is completed and the bandages are unspooled, Vincent Parry turns into Humphrey Bogart, and he is now able to set out to discover who really murdered his wife. I'm not one who usually can't suspend his disbelief when watching movies, but there are a lot of contrivances here, even for me! I think the director made a poor choice in spending the first 30 or 40 minutes without showing Bogie, and even more importantly by using a very grating "point of view" camera technique to substitute for the character of Parry for far too long. This subjective viewpoint, where the camera becomes the eyes of the convict, as people look and talk at him, hand him cigarettes and so forth, is extremely effective at first but quickly grows into overkill. I think this would have been a much more interesting film if another actor was utilized to portray the pre-surgery Bogart. Everything just falls too neatly into place, and once Bogart has his face transformed, he doesn't really get involved in too much hard detective work on his own before easily stumbling onto the real killer's identity (you can't really blame him; it's quite obvious). One begins to wonder why he even bothered with the plastic surgery. Lauren Bacall is beautiful to look at, and I can watch her doing just about anything. But I think her rapport with Bogart this time out is kind of lightweight. The real surprise of the film for me was Agnes Moorehead, who turns in a delicious performance. This is a film worth watching for its stars and a generally intriguing premise; it's just unfortunate that it couldn't have worked out a little better. **1/2 out of ****

A con named Vincent (Bogart) breaks out of prison to be befriended by a woman (Bacall) who sympathizes with his case which was akin to her father's. He gets a new face and tries to discover who really killed his wife and then his best friend. This is a rather tedious, unoriginal movie, with none of the snappy, quick dialogue that films of this era often display. It's slow-paced - lingering on humdrum scenes, repeating unimportant information such as Vincent's doctor's advice - and fairly predictable, even unintentionally comic (the silly anesthesia scene). The first half of the movie, we don't see Vincent; instead we see the action from his eyes. Perhaps that was interesting then, but I felt it added nothing to the movie. Morehead, as the dead wife's shewish friend (this is one of those movies where the good guys act predictably good, and the villains act only nasty) chews the scenery something awful in her confrontation scene with Bogie. Good acting by Bogie and Bacall, plus some scenes with a delightfully bullying thug, help save the film from being a total waste. 4/10.

Sadly, or perhaps not, most condemned prisoners do not have a dame, a dude, and a plastic surgeon around to break their falls when they escape. But when Bogart busts out of the big house, San Quentin, the Good Samaritans start popping up like dandelions. His method of escape is to throw himself down a steep incline in a steel barrel. The cameraman rides tandem and becomes his eyes and point-of-view. Bogart hitches a ride with a nosy fellow I've seen before in the movies. He has deep-set eyes and a divot in his chin. Bogart quickly dispatches the mug to dreamland and ventures out into an uncertain landscape of creeps and coppers. Instead, Bogart catches a break: he discovers he has a groupie played by Lauren Bacall. She is out painting landscapes when she hears the bulletin over the radio. She knows everything about his case. She even sat in the courtroom during his trial. She felt he got a raw deal. The dude he meets is a close friend who plays the horn. He allows Bogart safe haven to rest. Incredibly, Bogart steps into the cab of yet another sympathetic character. The cabbie guides him to a doctor who wields a wild scalpel. Bogart's ex-flame also knows Bacall--and is a royal pain in the neck. The coincidences pile up higher than The Golden Gate Bridge. Bogie and Bacall may have more well known films on their resumes, but this one will keep a big fat smile on your face.

Film noir is a rich genre, and "Dark Passage" has the surface requisites: crime and passion writ large, with hard-boiled men, melodramatic women, and chiaroscuro photography. It also has Bogart, Bacall, and a solid supporting cast. But this is a mediocre movie, and I'm not even talking about the truckload of implausible plot turns. The movie is boring. No scene is crisp (worst: five shots of Bogart laboriously descending a fire escape). It's dialog-heavy to a fault: everything is spelled out, leaving very little for the visuals to reveal beyond the facial reconstruction scenes. And boring isn't the only problem. Dark Passage fails at something even more basic: characters. They're noirish stereotypes. One in particular typifies the problem: Agnes Moorehead delivers a spectacularly mercurial performance, particularly in her final scene: She starts as an austerely beautiful woman flirting with a stranger, but then her face swiftly and thoroughly contorts into a mask of age and rage when she realizes who he is--the man she couldn't forgive or forget, but didn't recognize because of his facial reconstruction. And that's the problem: a woman obsessed to the point of homicide with one man, yet flirting instantly with a total stranger? Moorehead almost brings it off, but we just don't care. Her motivation is so muddled it has no resonance. And Bacall's motivation is even more implausible. Unfortunately, treating the characters as plot devices rather than people is a fatal flaw, and it kills the soul of this movie.

While the least-known and, really, the least impressive of the Bogart/Bacall features, this is still a solid, if rather offbeat, movie that combines a film-noir atmosphere with a gimmick that is meant to drive most of the story. The gimmick works moderately well, though it is really just a diverting sideline to the main drama and acting, which are what really make the movie work. The premise is interesting enough, at least for a while, and it is interesting to see just how long they can go without showing the face of Bogart's character. They might have stretched it out just a bit too long, since there is more than enough in the rest of the plot to make any further use of the device unnecessary. Bacall and Bogart work together well from the beginning. In itself, the pairing works almost as well here as in their three better-known movies together - it's just that here there is a less for them to work with. The two stars do get plenty of help from Agnes Moorehead, who plays her role with relish. Tom D'Andrea and Bruce Bennett help out when they get the chance. Delmer Daves also creates a generally believable atmosphere to serve as the background to the story, and to help get it past the less plausible stretches. Overall, while hardly up to the high standard of the other Bogart/Bacall pairings, "Dark Passage" is a solid if unspectacular feature that is worth seeing if you like the stars and/or the genre.

I don't know if I like this film or don't. Bogart and Bacall would have chemistry in an Army training film, but somehow the plot line of this film just doesn't give them the best opportunity to make the most of it. There are unbelievable coincidences and it appears that everybody knows everybody else but don't know each other. And how easy is it to get picked up by a beautiful girl while you are making a prison break? And how many cabbies would do what Tom D'Andrea does when he takes Bogie to a back street plastic surgeon and the whole transformation is done in 90 minutes with no assisting nurse? It's all very convoluted and full of plot holes. BUT, on the other side of the coin, it does hold your interest and the POV camera in the first of the film is well done (unlike Lady in the Lake which is seriously flawed). Agnes Moorehead is a true psycho and revels in it......what a bad dame she is. Exactly how she goes out of the window still puzzles me......didn't she know it was there or did she do it on purpose? The ending ties it all up in a neat little package which isn't very satisfactory but, hey, Bogie and Bacall get to live happily ever after.....or do they? He is a killer after all......remember Baker? Whatever the faults as I see them, you still can't beat Mr. and Mrs. Bogart.

Wow, we are really asked to believe a lot in this film. Typically movies can only get away with one or two unlikely plot elements, but somehow I still enjoyed 'Dark Passage' despite numerous key elements' implausibility. The film opens to a shot of convicted felon Parry (Bogart) in a barrel in back of a truck headed down the road. He shakes the barrel, takes a nasty roll and staggers out. It's just the first of many doubt-inducing sequences. The film, with its plot problems aside, is really an excellent film noir study. We are taken through most of the first half of the film from the first-person Parry (Bogart) view. I found this fascinating, despite wooden dialogue and continuous unrealistic steadiness of the camera. I think the base story of 'Dark Passage' is superb, with all its film noir elements. I especially like the first-person view, which then transforms through a surrealistic imagery scene of plastic surgery, into the normal third-person view. One plot element I particularly take issue with is that, although Parry gets a new face, we are asked to believe that his distinctive Bogart voice cannot be recognised by the closest of his acquaintances. He makes no effort whatsoever to account for this, and this is given no thought in the slightest. The film is one I would personally love to make - I would like to direct the thing myself, and revise the script a bit, make it more real in dialogue and plot primarily. This is a feeling I've not oft encountered, because I've almost always felt a director has done, even when he presents a wrong point of view, a better job than I could do. Due to my love for the story here I was torn - torn I tell you - in my selection of a vote for this film, but arrived at 7. I took off for the unrealistic factors, but made sure to preserve the respectability of the film. It is, incontestably, a classic - and in my opinion, just because a film is old doesn't mean it is. I respect this film.

4 out of 10... add 3to 4 to 5 to (reading some of the reviews on IMDb) 6 points depending on how much of a Bogart/Bacall coolaid drinker you are. With the exception of the beginning of the film, which I'll admit is very interesting, this script is a disaster. Sounded like some hack writer aping "film noir" speak or some has been writer aping himself. The film is unwatchable after Bogart recovers from the plastic surgery.Many of the lines play more like a satire of film noir than actual film noir. All the actors approach this pretty earnestly, more's the pity. Agnes Moorehead gives the worst performance of her career (Endora was more nuanced). But I did believe Bacall loved Bogey, both in the film and in real life...can I join the club, now?

The terrible script completely destroys this film. That's a shame, because I'm a huge fan of Bogart and Bacall. The film has first person camera work which is excellent, and the supporting cast is fantastic. However, Bogey's character acts like a total moron, leaving his fingerprints on every crime scene he finds himself at, and crime scenes follow him like a a five year old follows an ice cream truck. There is one phony plot contrivance after another. Bacall's character would have to be insane to believe that Bogey's character is innocent -- every time he goes to see someone, they die! He always has an explanation, and it always sounds false. In short, the awful script destroys what is, in every other way, an excellent film.