High Sierra

High Sierra (1941) is a noir heist film released the same year as The Maltese Falcon, both of which star Humphrey Bogart, with John Huston writing both scripts (William R. Burnett also worked on the High Sierra script and wrote the novel). Interestingly, Ida Lupino received top billing for this one even though Bogie is in it way more and she plays a relatively minor role. She was better known at the time, or before The Maltese Falcon made Bogart a megastar, thus the top billing.

Directed by Raoul Walsh, High Sierra is the story of the hard-boiled Roy Earle, fresh out of the penitentiary when he's called on by gangster Big Mac to rob a resort. Earle apparently was based on real-life gangster John Dillinger, and Bogart plays the character with all the right edges, and soft spots. He appears small in a few scenes, but his bad-guy lines and the use of shadow help make him as tough as nails, not to be messed with. He gets sentimental after meeting a girl with a clubbed foot and later arranges for her to have surgery. He falls for her, or maybe for her innocence, which we can assume his own life has been devoid of. This makes his character complex, not just another baddie with only the score on his mind but rather a guy who's got layers, some cold, some warm.

For me, that's what made him compelling and the movie good. I didn't know which way the story would turn, either with Earle pursuing the country girl with the wonky foot or with him carrying out the heist and living a life, or ending it, on the run with his new moll, Marie (Lupino).

William R. Burnett wrote the novel High Sierra, which also came out in 1941. It's remarkable how fast they worked back then to churn out potboilers, screenplays and flicks, especially Huston, and also Burnett, who already had the novel Little Caesar (1929) and screenplay Scarface (1932) under his belt. Last thing, I thought Pard was a good ingredient for making High Sierra entertaining, more so if you're aware Bogart's actual dog, named Zero the Dog, played the role.

Humphrey Bogart on the set of High Sierra

Zero the Dog and Bogart

Laura

Laura (1944), directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price, is a murder mystery and film noir. Detective McPherson (Andrews) is investigating the murder of Laura Hunt after her body was discovered at the entrance to her apartment, her face unrecognizable after a shotgun blast to the head. His two main suspects are newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Webb), who tries to lend a hand in the investigation, and Laura's somewhat sleazy fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Price), who is receiving cash for companionship from Laura's aunt. Both Lydecker and Carpenter are dubious and immediately unlikable. McPherson, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with Laura, spending time lazing about with drink in hand in her apartment and falling in love with her, seemingly through the portrait of her on a wall.

But Laura is not dead. McPherson falls asleep in her living room and is shocked when she walks through the door after returning from a trip someplace (where the radio wasn't working, so she hadn't heard the news of her murder). This part confused me, as I thought a drunk McPherson was actually dreaming Laura was still alive, and I had to get back on track with the plot after realizing later that what happened after she turned up was in fact not a dream. His investigation continues, though now he must find out who the murdered woman was and why she was killed in Laura's apartment.

Laura is considered to be one of the greats of film noir, and I can see how it's unconventional but can't figure out why it's ranked so highly in lists of best noir films. The dialogue, especially from Lydecker, is biting and fast-paced, and there are twists and surprises. Watching Vincent Price not in a monster film is interesting, and the very attractive Gene Tierney helped hold my attention. Strangely, her character's reputation as a sophisticated and successful advertising exec, which we come to know before she resurfaces—through the way she's described by acquaintances and how she's characterized through the portrait—doesn't ring true once we get to know her "in person." I can't see any reason for her character being depicted differently than she seems to be later, and I think this must be something of a flaw in the storytelling or perhaps poor casting, since although Tierney is a treat to watch and a talented actress, she's too girlie in the way she plays Laura. It's a fun movie but not one I'd put in my personal list of favorite noirs.

The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941) is considered by some to be the starting point for the film noir movement. I'd recently watched Fritz Lang's classic thriller entitled M (1931), which has plenty of dim scenes and imbues a sense of foreboding, which are characteristics of noir as well. Peter Lorre is in both films, as a serial killer in M and an implied homosexual baddie in The Maltese Falcon. I'd seen Lorre in Casablanca (1942) years ago but only vaguely remember his performance. I wanted to watch The Maltese Falcon to see him in another Hollywood role (M is in German). That, plus I'd read this was the film which gave Humphrey Bogart megastar status.

Directed by John Huston and based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, 1930), and with Bogart, Mary Astor in the role of femme fatale, and Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (in Casablanca too), The Maltese Falcon holds more intrigue for a modern-day audience that is aware of how important it is in film history. I knew it was highly regarded but didn't know why really: that the onscreen detective would forever be changed, that hard-boiled, morally-flawed characters including dangerous women would take center stage, that noir would burst onto the scene and come to be regarded as a genre.

When I watched it yesterday, I expected to see something new, not realizing it has been so influential that countless other films to some degree echo this groundbreaker. The same old cynical gumshoe, sultry seductress, and rapidly spoken, frequently risqué lines—I'd seen it all before in other movies, not knowing the impact The Maltese Falcon had had on them, and particularly on film noir, the attributes of which have arguably spread into every other film genre.

It's like when you're reading Shakespeare and a line sounds trite, even though the Bard himself came up with it first, or at least first put it on paper (e.g., wild-goose chase, it was Greek to me, seen better days, green-eyed monster, good riddance, love is blind, break the ice, and so forth). Actually, the final line in The Maltese Falcon, spoken by Bogart, is: The . . . uh . . . stuff that dreams are made of—a misquotation of The Tempest's Propero: We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.

But without knowing anything about the film's significance, it's still entertaining, and also seamless. This was Huston's directorial debut, and in each scene it's clear how painstakingly careful he was with every shot and detail. There's also a seven-minute take, remarkable for the way the camera subtly follows characters down a corridor and into a room and around the space, and (most conspicuously) pans from left to right to catch Elisha Cook Jr. exiting the room.

I wouldn't dare attempt to summarize the plot; it's labyrinthine, and I'm sure I didn't grasp all its ins and outs. Roger Ebert wrote: To describe the plot in a linear and logical fashion is almost impossible. That doesn't matter. The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style.

And boy did Bogey have style. I was astounded by how effortlessly he pulled off long, long, long lines without a hint of coming close to faltering. That was the main ingredient of his charisma.

Finally, I doubt enough credit has gone to the novelists who were writing "noir" stories during the depression and world wars. Writers like Hammett, Graham Greene, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich, whose thrillers and detective stories were steeped in disillusionment, urban woe, and realism, were telling these dark tales before conservative Hollywood was putting them on screen. War and poverty had left idealism lame, in either sense of the word, and realism and disillusionment had been seeping into literature since the Victorian era, with Kafka, Zola, and lots more. Naturalism and realism in literature surely in part gave rise to film noir and, in this sense, to some of the best movies ever made.

Humphrey Bogart and Elisha Cook Jr. in The Maltese Falcon (1941)