By David in TN
Friday, March 15, 2019 at 1:13:00 A.M. EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 a.m. ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is Raoul Walsh’s Gangster Masterpiece, High Sierra (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino, with Joan Leslie, with a screenplay by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, based on Burnett's novel.
Film Noir Guide: “Bogey’s a gangster who's been paroled after eight years in prison thanks to the influence of his aging crime boss, who needs him to pull a heist at a swanky California resort. While driving to the West Coast, the sensitive killer admires the gorgeous scenery, visits the farm where he grew up, and comes to the aid of a young club-footed girl (Leslie) and her family.”
He joins up with his new gang, whose moll is Lupino. Bogey's character, Roy “Mad Dog” Earle is something the movies (especially back then) loved-the sympathetic criminal who is a Nice Guy deep down, but he can’t stop doing armed robberies.
Note the swanky resort when Earle scouts the place, and how good American women in 1940 looked.
N.S.: This is the picture that made Bogie, Bogie. And we have the stupidity of George Raft to thank for it.
Warner’s offered Raft the lead role of Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, but he rejected it, which gave Humphrey Bogart his big break. Raft’s career was holding fast, and this role and others he rejected would have consolidated his popularity for years to come, but Raft knew better. It was one of a series of moronic decisions—he also turned down The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944) that destroyed Raft’s career, while turning Bogart into what many polls have called the greatest star of them all.
Lupino was just coming off a co-starring turn with Raft (with Bogart playing Raft’s kid brother, in a forgettable role) in Walsh’s They Drive by Night (1940), about truckers, in which Lupino played a psycho killer. In Sierra, she was given a very sympathetic role as a bad-good girl, and she ran with it. It made her, and she had a great career as an actress. Later she worked as a director, screenwriter, and producer. While Lupino had some success in those roles, she has improperly been turned into a legend, due to feminism’s baneful influence.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning) is Lady in the Lake (1947) starring Robert Montgomery as Raymond Chandler's creation, Philip Marlowe. Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Leon Ames, and Jayne Meadows co-star.
Montgomery directs in what Film Noir Guide calls "this slow-moving and hard to follow mystery. He's hired by a magazine editor (Trotter) to find the mkissing wife of her boss (Ames). A woman's body is soon discovered in a country lake, and mongomery finds himself mixed up with a shady cop (Nolan) and a mystery lady (Meadows). Along the way he suffers a few beatings, gets framed for drunk driving (twice) and, of course, falls in love with Trotter.
The film is best known for Montgomery having the viewer see the film through his eyes, which not everybody likes. Trotter is good as the femme fatale and Nolan as the tough cop.
Robert Montgomery was one of Hollywood's leading anti-communists. Let's see if Eddie Muller mentions this.
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