Dark Passage (3 Stars)

I thought I would take a look at another Lauren Bacall film that I've never seen before, and I picked this one, "Dark Passage", made in 1947. Judging by the picture on the poster I expected a film noir detective story. I'm sure that's what the poster artist intended to portray, but it's false advertising. It's not a detective story. There's no femme fatale. It's not 100% clear who's holding the gun in the poster. Judging by the angle it should be Humphrey Bogart, but it seems to be a feminine glove, so it could be Lauren Bacall. It doesn't really matter, because neither of them holds a gun at any point in the film.

At the beginning of the film a convicted murderer, Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart), escapes from San Quentin prison. He's picked up by a woman, Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall), who takes him back to her apartment in San Francisco because she believes he is innocent and wants to help him. This is complicated by the fact that Irene's close friend is the main witness who testified against him in the murder trial. To disguise himself while looking for the real murderer Vincent undergoes plastic surgery to change his face.

The film uses experimental cinematography. For the first 35 minutes the film is shown from a POV perspective, through Vincent's eyes. This means that we only see his arms and hands, never the rest of his body. We never see Vincent Parry's face, except in a newspaper photo. For the next 25 minutes of the film we see his face in heavy bandages after the operation. The actor is recognisable as Humphrey Bogart. but only just. After the film has been running for an hour, almost exactly to the minute, the bandages are removed and we can see his face for the last half hour of the film.

According to the featurette on the disc, the film was a flop at the box office, but not because of the film itself. In 1947 Hollywood directors and actors were forbidden to work if they were members of the Communist party. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were not Communists, but they joined an association called the Committee for the First Amendment which protested about Americans being persecuted for their political views. As far as the general public were concerned, the committee members were Communist sympathisers, so the film was widely boycotted. A few months later Humphrey and Lauren left the organisation to save their careers. Humphrey Bogart made the famous statement: "I'm no Communist. I'm just an American dope".

The Big Sleep (4½ Stars)

This was Lauren Bacall's third film, and her second film with Humphrey Bogart, to whom she was now married. After only three films she was already typecast as a seductive bad girl. I don't say that to criticise her. She did it so well.

The film is based on a 1939 novel with the same name by Raymond Chandler. The film contains most of the characteristics of film noir, such as the cynical private detective working in a big city and the femme fatale. The book's plot is complex, and the film makes no attempt to simplify it.

A retired general hires private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) to investigate gambling debts that his younger daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) has had to pay to a bookshop owner, Arthur Geiger. Usually the general's personal aide, Sean Regan, would have carried out the investigations, but he disappeared a month earlier. By coincidence Sean used to be one of Philip's friends. Philip speaks with the general's older daughter Vivian (Lauren Bacall), who at first assumes Philip has been hired to search for Sean, but then becomes very curious when she finds out that he's doing something else.

Philip visits Arthur Geiger's house, but finds him dead. Only Carmen is in the room with the body. Carmen claims that Arthur was killed by Joe Brody, a gambler who had previously blackmailed her father. Joe now wants to blackmail Carmen, saying he will blame her for the murder. In the same evening the general's driver, Owen Taylor, is found dead. Philip goes to Joe's house, where he finds Joe with Vivian and Arthur's assistant Agnes. Carmen arrives and tries to shoot Joe, but Philip stops her. Then Joe is shot by Carol Lundgren, the general's former driver.

Philip meets Eddie Mars, the owner of an illegal casino and also Arthur's landlord. Eddie complains that Sean has run away with his wife. Carmen tells Philip that Vivian has been having an affair with Eddie. Philip confronts a man who has been tailing him. The man turns out to be Harry Jones, Agnes' lover. He says that Agnes is the only one who knows where Eddie's wife is hiding. Before the information can be revealed, Harry is killed by one of Eddie's men.

And so it continues. I hope I got all that right. The story confuses me as well. Philip's investigation begins with the gambling debts, but as the film continues it's no longer about the debts. Philip develops an obsession to find out what secrets are being hidden that drive the people to kill one another. All he can be certain of is that Vivian is in the middle of everything.

The film takes place in a very stylish world of trickery and deception. It's an unreal world. What I mean is that all woman we see, whether they are shop assistants or taxi drivers, are stunningly beautiful. And they all flirt with Philip, distracting him from his investigations. But whatever else happens, Philip's main interest is in Vivian. She's the most beautiful and the most dangerous of all the women around him. Whenever they talk it's like they're sparring with one another. He's trying to get information from her, while she is trying to cross-examine him. Vivian's laces her conversations with sexual innuendo in an attempt to wear Philip down.

To have and have not (4 Stars)

"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow".

This film carries the name of the author Ernest Hemingway on the poster, but the film has very little to do with his novel, apart from borrowing the names of the characters. In Hemingway's book Harry Morgan is an alcohol smuggler during the Prohibition who turns to smuggling Chinese immigrants into Florida. Somehow I think cinema audiences would have had problems sympathising with such a character. In the film Harry Morgan is an American living on the island of Martinique in 1940 who takes rich customers on fishing trips.

Martinique is a small island in the Caribbean which used to be a French colony. After Germany conquered France, a German-friendly government was installed on Martinique, and the German secret service became active on the island. The majority of the islanders hated the Germans and the puppet government, but they were afraid to do anything. Members of the French resistance sneaked onto the island to continue the fight against the Nazis. Harry just did his best to ignore the conflicts and carry on doing his business. In 1940 America was still independent, as far as the War in Europe was concerned, and so was Harry. This changes when he's desperate for cash and does a job picking up resistance fighters from another island. At first it's only for the money, but the cruel methods of the German occupiers make him sympathetic to the resistance's cause.

At the same time a young woman called Marie Browning arrives on the island, claiming to be from Brazil, although she has an American accent. She flirts with men in the hotel and steals their wallets while dancing. Harry is the first person to see what she's doing, but he promises not to expose her as long as she shares the money with him. He calls her Slim, a nickname that she hates, so she calls him Steve in return. The two fall in love, but Slim makes it clear from the beginning that she's in charge and has to do whatever she says. As an old school macho he repeatedly tells her what to do, but she refuses.

The bigger story is what was happening off screen. Harry Morgan was played by the famous Hollywood actor, Humphrey Bogart, now 44 and at the peak of his career. Marie Browning was played by a 19-year-old girl called Betty Perske in her first ever film role. They had met briefly on the set of "Passage to Marseille" a few months earlier, but their second meeting on February 29th, 1944 changed history. Humphrey was totally smitten with Betty, and he kissed her at the end of the day's filming. This was a shock to the other members of the cast, because he was known to be a perfect gentleman, not a man who would take advantage of an actress 25 years younger than himself. Apart from that, he was married, although it was a well known fact that he was having problems due to the excessive drinking of his wife, the actress Mayo Methot. Shortly after the film was completed, before it was released, the director Howard Hawks urged Betty Perske to change her name to the more glamorous sounding Lauren Bacall.

By the time the film was released there was a passionate affair between Humphrey and Lauren. Humphrey divorced Mayo on May 10th, 1945, and he married Lauren 11 days later. They were soul mates in the truest sense of the word and remained together until his death of cancer in 1957.