Dark Passage

[ChristopherBanks]

What an underrated movie - I wonder what Welles thought of the use of subjective camera. The effect is quite creepy, and it gives you some understanding of what an interesting movie "Heart of Darkness" could have been.

I can't seem to find much about the movie on the internet, apart from a few lazy reviews that just repeat the plot verbatim.

It takes a whole hour to get to see Bogart and have the movie presented conventionally; we only see things from Bogart's POV, and when we don't he is in darkness, or covered in bandages. How did the studio let director Delmer Daves get away with using a big star and not including him for more than half the running time of his picture?

[jaime marzol]

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yes, dark passage is excellent. the subjective camera worked very well here. in robert montgomery's, LADY IN THE LAKE, it didn't work so well. there are the only 2 films i can think of that had subjective camera for any length of time. can anyone think of others?

bogart was excellent in DARK PASSAGE. he's always excellent. he didn't have to show up to film the first half of the film, bet he loved that.

.,

[Harvey Chartrand]

The only subjective camera story I can think of is the 1960 Twilight Zone episode entitled 'Eye of the Beholder' -- most of which is seen from the POV of an ugly woman who has had extensive plastic surgery to make herself beautiful and whose head is swathed in bandages. We never see the faces of the doctors and nurses who hover over her, which kind of telegraphs the 'surprise ending.'
I think Orson Welles would have been a great TZ host, by the way. Forty years on, Rod Serling and his clenched teeth (and always with the cigarette) gets to be a bit much. I think Welles would have 'traveled' better. Forrest Whittaker (a very talented actor with a Wellesian girth) hosts yet another revival of The Twilight Zone, coming this fall on UPN.

For those with strong stomachs, there is the victim's point of view scenes of a ghastly protracted murder in 'Gangster No. 1' (2000).

[Fredric]

I've been going headfirst into Bogie films lately. Own the Big Sleep, Casablanca, and Maltese Falcon is on the way. Key Largo is quite great, too. Glad to see a favorable review of Dark Passage, since it is the Bogie/Bacall pic most ignored. I almost was about to skip it, but I'm going to snag a peek even sooner, now.

[jaime marzol]

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lloyd bacon's THE BIG SHOT, great early bogie.

TOO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, hawks/bogart, excellent. the 2 versions of THE BIG SLEEP, great.

all the huston/bogart films, absolutely tremendous, i even like BEAT THE DEVIL. after enjoying THE AFRICAN QUEEN, it would be appropriate to rent eastwood's WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, about the filming of AFRICAN QUEEN. the book is also good.

tcm's documentary, BOGART, the untold story, great.

wyler/toland/bogart DEAD END, nothing short of radical, and one of my favorite wyler films. another great film, THE DESPERATE HOURS, wyler/bogart, features a crusty, old bogie.

and the list goes on, and on, and on.

has any one been in more great films, and worked with more great directors?

[jaime marzol]

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and the holly grail of bogart collections, the pastel version of THE AFRICAN QUEEN. it was released on video. i rented it. when i saw it, since i had left the tape in my car for a few hours, i thought i had cooked it. i returned it hoping they would not notice. years later i find out it was supposed to look like that.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

I think Orson Welles would have been a great TZ host, by the way. Forty years on, Rod Serling and his clenched teeth (and always with the cigarette) gets to be a bit much.

Yes, he would have been a great TZ host. but harvey, if you couldn't even stand to see mr serling with a cigarette, how would you have been able to stand to see orson with his cigar?


bye now!