By David in TN
Thursday, July 19, 2018 at 11:14:00 P.M. EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 a.m. ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is Dark Passage (1947).
Eddie Muller calls Dark Passage "the most unusual" of the Bogie-Bacall pairings. Humphrey Bogart plays an escaped convict wrongly convicted (is there any other kind in film noir?) for murdering his wife. Lauren Bacall is an art student who hides him from the law and had attended his trial. Agnes Moorehead plays the shrew whose testimony got Bogie convicted. In one of the bizarre coincidences this film is full of, she's an acquaintance of Bacall's character.
We don't see Bogart's face for over half the film because a plastic surgeon worked on him. The camera is Bogart's eyes, as in Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake. San Francisco locations are used.
Clifton Young is a blackmailer and Housely Stevenson plays the plastic surgeon.
4 comments:
A truly weird and dreadful movie. Even Bogart and Bacall’s star power couldn’t save it. One thing about it is with the close ups in the second half of the film, you really see how profound the age difference was between them. Bogie looks like he could be her grandfather, not just her father.
LBD,
I don't recall this one, but we watched The Harder they Fall last week, and even in his makeup, Bogie, who was 56, looked at least 66. Granted, he was dying of cancer, but he had looked bad for years. Well, he was one of Hollywood's two smoking and drinking champions, the other being John Wayne.
Noir Alley is so great, even the lousy movies are fun to watch.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning) is Scene of the Crime (1949).
Van Johnson, an unusual film noir protagonist, plays a Los Angeles police detective investigating the murder of an ex-partner, who may have been on the take. Arlene Dahl plays Johnson's long-suffering wife who wants him to quit the force. Gloria DeHaven is a stripper Johnson is playing around with.
According to the Film Noir Guide, "Scene is a standard crime movie fortified by good performances and a sensational climatic shoot-out."
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