Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Movie review - "Dark Passage" (1947) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Bogart and Bacall made four films together of which three are commonly regarded as classics - this is the third one, about which opinion is more divided, but it's still pretty good (cf Saigon, the odd one out for Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake).

It has a memorable gimmick - the first hour of the film is from Bogart's character's POV as he escapes from prison and sets about trying to prove his innocence and get plastic surgery. He then turns into Bogart.

The movie does have flaws - at two hours it feels long; there are sequences which are frustrating even if logical (eg Bogart's character being unable to speak after the surgery). The mystery gets forgotten. I wish they'd come up with a better reason for Lauren Bacall to get involved in the story other than "someone did this to my dad".

Agnes Moorehead is superb as a psycho woman - "if I can't have you no one can". I like how Clifton Young's character came back and loved the ending with Bogie and Bacall having to meet up in Peru because no one will believe Bogart about what really happened.

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