Humphrey Bogart

  • The Wagons Roll at Night (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Humphrey Bogart’s pre-stardom years are sometimes a wild ride. Back before Warner Brothers figured out that a tough-guy persona was ideal for him, he could show up as a mad scientist, a glib-talking boxing promoter or, in the case of The Wagons Roll at Night, as a travelling carnival owner. In this melodramatic tale, he’s the mean and cruel taskmaster who welcomes a naïve young guy as replacement lion tamer, and he gets increasingly vexed once the young man starts pining after his sister. If you’re thinking that lions are a very cinematic way of justifying violent scenes… you’re absolutely correct. (Some of the footage feels authentically dangerous.) Seeing Bogart mauled by a lion is good fun (nominally a spoiler, but, come on, it’s the film’s biggest selling point)—the rest of the film, not so much. It’s not bad, it’s just quite familiar, with Eddie Albert being good as the naïve kid, and the attractive Sylvia Sidney playing the cynical carnival girl—outshining Joan Leslie as an ingenue. Watchable and with a few moments of interest, The Wagons Roll at Night comes across as a bit too much of a routine melodrama for the times, but one that sustains modern viewing—especially if you’re interested in Bogart’s role right on the cusp to his stardom.

  • The Oklahoma Kid (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I’ve long held a fascination for the sheer weirdness of the Oklahoma land rush, and I like both Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney, so The Oklahoma Kid should be a lot of fun to watch, right? Well, mostly. The depiction of the land rush isn’t up to what we saw in Cimarron (both versions)—nor is it strictly factual, considering issues in sticking with the right time and place. Then there’s Bogart—by 1939 an increasingly valuable player in the Warner Brothers troupe, but not yet the legendary Bogart of posterity. There’s no way late-1940s Bogart would have accepted a role as a stereotypical black-clad villain cowboy, but this is what we have here. Finally, there’s Cagney, not quite at ease out of the city streets of his urban screen persona but giving it all he’s got in a typically exuberant role—and he gets to play the virtuous protagonist too! The rest of the film is rather standard good-versus-evil-in-cowboy hats stuff, but the comparatively slick execution and lighthearted tone of the result make it still quite watchable—plus, there are a few lines of dialogue here that come close to acknowledging the appropriation of Native lands, which is about as progressive as a western could be in 1939. While The Oklahoma Kid hasn’t gone down in history as a particularly fine or well-respected western (even if you’re limiting yourself to 1939, there’s Stagecoach, Destry Rides Against, Union Pacific and maybe Young Mr. Lincoln to contend with), it’s still reasonably entertaining, and maybe that’s enough. Well, that and Cagney fighting it out with Bogart.

  • Bullets or Ballots (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) The main draw of Bullets or Ballots is right there above the marquee—Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson. This would not be the only or their best pairing, but it was the first, and considering how it came before Bogart’s persona-defining superstardom, it’s remarkable to see how assured and, yes, Bogart-ish he feels here. The story itself won’t feel particularly distinctive to fans of 1930s gangster movies: Robinson plays a tough police detective who gets “fired” from the force before joining the mob, while Bogart is a gangster convinced that the newcomer’s allegiances are still with the police. To say that it’s from Warner Brothers would be redundant, so closely does it follow the Warner gangster film formula. Still, it’s moderately entertaining: with Joan Blondell as an attractive moll, the film has all it takes to do what audiences at the time expected. It still works—a bit rough around the edges and clearly dated to a period sheen, but still effective when it counts. Bogart and Robinson would meet a gain a few times, but with Bogart’s status rising higher and higher each time.

  • We’re No Angels (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Humphrey Bogart doing comedy is already a tough sell, so it makes sense that that any comedy featuring him needed to be led by a director with a clear vision. I’m sure that the idea of Michael Curtiz reuniting with Bogart thirteen years after Casablanca must have had mid-1950s audiences interested. Alas, We’re No Angels shows little convincing demonstration of comic skills from anyone involved. Oh, sure, the script is light-hearted enough, with three escaped convicts trying to go straight but being tempted to use their very specific skills for the betterment of a small village. But the one laugh in the entire picture comes at the very last second, and is a visual gag that is in a markedly different tone than the rest of the film’s humour. The leading cast is good for a pause, what with Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov—but again not all of them are known for comedy and the film seems uninterested in going for big laughs anyway. It’s amiable, mind you… but slow-paced, a bit morally confused (even within the confines of having ex-convicts as heroes), too-theatrically staged (not a surprise, considering its origins) and not really compelling on a moment-to-moment basis. I was, however, a bit surprised in comparing it with the 1989 film of the same name: Aside from some quasi-tangential premises, the remake and the original are almost entirely different and discourage any kind of one-to-one comparison. I’m left unimpressed by We’re No Angels—not a bad movie per se, but nothing really worth remembering either.

  • Dead Reckoning (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I’d like to be more positive about Dead Reckoning, but some films are just okay and that’s it. Which is unfortunate, considering that it has a lot of elements that should have worked better together: A complex film noir plot blending crime and romance, the presence of Humphrey Bogart in a period of his career where he could do little wrong in a role that was adjacent to his usual tough-guy persona; the luscious Lizabeth Scott in full husky femme fatale mode and some fine production values—it was clearly made to ape then-recent successes such as To Have and Have Not (Scott filling in for Lauren Bacall), but without the top-notch talent and magical chemistry that made those earlier films a success. We’re still left with a more-than-decent film noir in execution—Bogart does what he did best and Scott seems custom-made to play a dangerous woman. But it doesn’t make as much of an impression, nor feels all that striking once everything is said and done: The revenge plot may be just a bit too scattered and convoluted to land well (maybe due to plot holes and contrivances), while the cinematography is, again, fine without being impressive. Dead Reckoning will do for those Bogart and/or noir fans who have seen everything else and just want more of their favourites—but no more.

  • Swing Your Lady (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) The passage of time can be kind or cruel to some movies, often depending on later events that are completely outside the intent, scope or effect of the film itself. In Swing Your Lady’s case, you can certainly make a case that the film’s upbeat, comic title would be entirely unacceptable in a more egalitarian society. But that would be missing the film’s most hilariously passé element—Humphrey Bogart as a fast-talking wrestling promoter in a southern small town, in the middle of a trifling romantic comedy. What. A. Difference. From his later screen persona—but then again, Bogart aficionados know that late-1930s Bogart was still finding his niche, and Warner Brothers was using him badly—no longer really trying him in completely unsuitable roles, but getting value out of his contract by throwing him in wildly different films. (Hence The Return of Doctor X the following year.)  Much of the comedy in watching Bogart in Swing Your Lady (a title more about wrestling than dancing) is seeing Bogart out of his element and still trying to do his best to make a humdrum film come alive. (As a bonus, Ronald Reagan also has a small role here, plus a few wrestling figures of the time.)  Surprisingly enough, the film is as more progressive than its now-troublesome title suggests—much of its plot revolves around a physically strong woman blacksmith courted both professionally to become a wrestler, but also romantically by two men attracted to her: a far cry from the usual physically frail heroines in Classic Hollywood movies. (What’s more, the male lead abandons his professional wrestling ambitions in the final minutes of the film, to take up the blacksmithing business with his now-wife. A few troublesome details aside, that’s not too bad for female agency and representation.)  Still, let’s not go overboard: Swing Your Lady is interesting, but it’s not necessarily all that good: much of its comic value now comes from a wholly miscast actor gamely trying to be professional about it. But I’ll take it: entertainment is entertainment, even if it’s not what the filmmakers intended.

  • All Through the Night (1942)

    All Through the Night (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, November 2021) Now here’s a curio — a Humphrey Bogart comedy in which he plays a Manhattan gambler with mob connections who goes up against Nazi infiltrators plotting a strike against the United States. I got wind of All Through the Night during a TCM documentary on Bogart’s pre-stardom days, and it’s clearly a film from the period during which Warner Brothers knew he was a charismatic leading man, but before he became The Bogart of legend. As a result, his character is incredibly confident (his establishing moment is in ordering his favourite cheesecake and having restaurant staff panic when they don’t have it on hand) but the film doesn’t bow to him like latter ones would. The result is a strange but pleasant mixture of spying thrills, gangster suspense and lighthearted comedy. It’s not strictly comic, but some sequences come close to it: the gobbledygook sequence in which they try bluffing their way through a saboteur meeting is somewhat amusing, but the scene in which they end up realizing they’re in a Nazi stronghold is clearly not completely at ease with comedy. (A more comic director would have made the reveal stronger and built up the characters’ reaction.)  Not every aspect of All Through the Night works just as well, nor is as harmonious: the film’s production history confirms that some comic sequences were added after the start of shooting to take advantage of studio players and the film’s overall leaning toward comedy. Still, even imperfect results can be fun to watch, and Bogart is at ease as a Big-Man-on-Broadway, lending some credibility to a film otherwise not grounded in realism. A young and slim Peter Lorre shows up as a supporting antagonist (one taken out of the film too swiftly). The dialogue is better than average and the flavour of the time is interesting—the film was shot before Pearl Harbor, but released after the United States entered the war. Despite its shortcomings, I liked All Through the Night quite a bit: it’s fun and unassuming, and even its plotting shortcuts are part of the charm.

  • The Harder They Fall (1956)

    The Harder They Fall (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Even if The Harder They Fall doesn’t feature guns, femmes fatales, violent crime or private investigators, there is absolutely no doubt that it is a film noir, and that’s part of why it remains so interesting. Let’s see: Humphrey Bogart (in his last movie before his death), boxing (and the violence of it), corruption both of the system (in showing a series of fixed matches meant to promote an incompetent boxer) and of the individual (in having the protagonist help create the deception), organized crime (touch your nose and grab your ear), great black-and-white cinematography, and a hard-nosed tone suggesting that the real world is much seedier than most movies. Bogart doesn’t play a man of action, but as a former sports columnist his character understands better than most the darkness that lies behind the façade of boxing, especially when he’s asked to create the illusion of a heavyweight contender from a big but unskilled Argentinian. There’s an elusive but solid narrative drive to the results, helped along with a wealth of credible details. The Harder They Fall has aged amazingly well in becoming a time capsule of mid-1950s boxing corruption — the numerous exterior shots featuring Bogart walking down the streets of Manhattan are almost worth watching the movie by themselves. If you do a bit of research on the film’s boxing figures, you’ll find out that at least two roles are essentially two boxers playing themselves — something that audiences would have known in 1956 but not in 2021. Still, there’s no denying the effectiveness of the result even today—Director Mark Robson keeps things moving, and the boxing scenes are still surprisingly effective. I’ve seen quite a few boxing movies, but few are as scathing about the sport as The Harder They Fall — and few are as interesting either.

  • The Return of Doctor X (1939)

    The Return of Doctor X (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Saying, “You have to see this!” isn’t always a measure of how good a film can be. So, when I point at The Return of Doctor X and recommend that it should be seen, it’s a very specific recommendation, based on the idea that any classic film fan would enjoy seeing Humphrey Bogart play a zombie vampire in what ended up being the only horror/Science Fiction film of his career. Not that this is the only weird thing about the film — an unwieldy mixture of thriller, horror and comedy (with frankly more comedy than horror), The Return of Doctor X is the kind of B-grade film that studios churned out in industrial numbers during the 1930s, using their stable of actors and filmmakers to the fullest extent of their contracts. Unrelated to the much-better Doctor X, it plays along uncanny lines rather than outright horror themes — despite the presence of a blood-drinking vampire, the comic relief almost overwhelms the picture. The result is definitely odd, and made odder by Bogart (not anyone’s idea of a horror/SF fan — indeed, he overtly dismissed the picture a few years later) as a bespectacled, white-streaked presence. You have to see this is you like Bogart, 1930s horror or studio misfires — but don’t expect too much out of it. At least it won’t waste your time at barely 62 minutes.

  • The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

    The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Some films have far more curb appeal than actual polish, and The Two Mrs. Carrolls is a fine example of those. It’s hard not to get intrigued by a film featuring no less than Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck in a domestic thriller. But there’s a reason why the film is far less often mentioned as those two stars’ best work: it ends up being a clunky mixture of miscasting, undercooked screenplay, dull direction and its own inability to stick to a gothic presentation. None of this applies to Stanwyck: She owns the film’s best moments, and while she’s playing a naïve character far away from her usual tough dames, she plays her with the kind of elegant dignity she could lend to any dramatic role at that point in her career. Sadly, Bogart doesn’t do so well, and much of it has to do with a double mismatch with the screen persona he took up in the 1940s — his shtick was a roguish but ultimately honourable man’s man, not the insane gothic villain painter that the script requires him to be, all the way to an over-the-top conclusion in which he crashes through a window with a murderous look in his eyes. He simply doesn’t fit the requirements of the story — a similar problem that many domestic thrillers of the 1940s found in casting likable leading men in darker roles (such as Cary Grant in Suspicion). It really doesn’t help that The Two Mrs. Carrolls is saddled with an unsatisfactory script: adapted and beholden to a stage play, it piles on the implausibilities and incoherences, with a female protagonist who should have figured something well before she laboriously pieces everything together. The film always seems to be holding back — perhaps due to its stars being unwilling to commit to a truly gothic take on the Bluebeard tale, perhaps by elevating director Peter Godfrey beyond his competencies at the time. The result is far from being unwatchable — but The Two Mrs. Carrolls’s interest is how odd of a film it is, and how it simply doesn’t meet its own objectives. Further reading on the film’s troubled production history reveals more of the backstory: Filmed in 1945 but held back for a variety of possible reasons until two years later, it suffered from a cavalcade of issues, not the least of which being a too-strong similarity with similar evil-Bogart vehicle Conflict.

  • They Drive by Night (1940)

    They Drive by Night (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) If you’re lured to They Dive by Night by Humphrey Bogart’s name, be warned that this is a film from his ascending stardom era—not the Bogart of pop-culture legend, but the rough-hewn character actor he was before his trench-coat fame. The story definitely has him as a supporting player to a lead duo played by George Raft and Ida Lupino as, respectively, a truck driver trying to make ends meet, and the scheming seductive wife of a trucking company owner. This being on the edge of a film noir, she kills her husband and promotes Raft’s character in a bid to get closer to him, but he’s already smitten with a far more wholesome girl. Bogart plays Raft’s brother/trucking partner, while Ann Sheridan plays the good girl. The thriller elements are solid enough (although the ending clearly belongs to a more reasonable, less spectacular age), but the look at circa-1940 trucking can be fascinating—my favourite sequence in the film details how the brothers take a load of produce across the state and negotiate themselves a nice windfall. Bogart remains interesting in one of his last supporting roles, while the normally compelling Lupino is even more captivating as a lust-crazy murderess. While a minor film by most standards, They Drive by Night remains a solid early noir with a few compelling performances.

  • Chain Lightning (1950)

    Chain Lightning (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) I have often written that the Science Fiction genre offers surprisingly few rewards to its creators for being right about the future: if you somehow happened to predict the future with 100% accuracy, it would feel like history and thus be completely unremarkable to those encountering the speculations years later. 1950’s Chain Lightning is a work of engineering fiction more than science fiction, but it still managed to be somewhat accurate in predicting the following decade of development in aeronautics… something that goes completely unremarked by modern viewers. In watching the result, we twenty-first century viewers are more likely to completely ignore the triumphant spirit of fast-paced jet development and instead focus on Humphrey Bogart playing a test pilot living at the very edge of human capabilities. A contemporary take on The Right Stuff’s first act, Chain Lightning remains interesting, either by its focus on the growing mystique of test pilot, or in seeing Bogart somehow try to fit his streetwise tough guy’s persona to the confines of an airplane cockpit. I don’t quite think he pulls off the trick, and much of the problem goes to a very technically minded script that chooses to focus on technology rather than make use of an actor like Bogart in character interactions. I am conflicted: I like techno-thrillers and actively relish long passages of exposition, but then again, the number of movies that Bogart did is limited and seeing him misused in a feature that can’t be bothered to take advantage of his strengths is really disappointing. Nonetheless, Chain Lightning is not a bad watch for fans of aviation movies… and having even a substandard Bogart is still better than no Bogart at all.

  • Men Are Such Fools (1938)

    Men Are Such Fools (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) One of the ways a screenwriter can sabotage a script is in unintentionally make their lead character wholly unlikable. Oh, there are plenty of opportunities for anti-heroes, magnificent cads and tortured protagonists… but since the point is a lighthearted romantic comedy, you should make sure that the heroine is, at least, likable—otherwise, many viewers will just wonder why the bother. Such is nearly the case in Men Are Such Fools, a story meant to show the corporate and romantic success of a plucky girl played by Priscilla Lane. Except that the pluckiness gets overdone: after leaving her husband to strike out on her own for suspiciously thin reasons (further evidence of a script being manipulated toward an ending, rather than evolving organically), we’re left to wonder why he even bothers chasing after her. An ending that rewards this pursuit doesn’t leave a triumphant taste, largely because (to reiterate the point), the heroine is simply too unlikable to be considered a goal. This being said, any Humphrey Bogart fan should miss this one: Here Bogart seems unusually ill at ease playing an executive cad, hitting upon the heroine in an office environment when he has no business doing so, and being almost entirely characterized by those actions. I also enjoyed some of the dialogue, although not really the story it’s in service to. Men Are Such Fool has maybe half of what it needs to succeed on its own as a romantic comedy, but it mishandles those elements so blatantly that it ends up backfiring upon itself.

  • Beat the Devil (1953)

    Beat the Devil (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) I’m a bit surprised at how Beat the Devil doesn’t work as well as I was expecting. On paper, it looks like a slam-dunk: a comic adventure starring Humphrey Bogart (plus Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida and Peter Lorre!), directed by John Huston and co-written by Truman Capote, all taking place in exotic British East Africa. It’s explicitly made as a parody of earlier films, and concerns swindlers trying to claim uranium-rich lands. I mean, how can this fail to deliver? But it does—the herky-jerky script struggles with consistent tone (a likely artifact from having been reportedly rewritten on a daily basis), the comedy is weighted down by bland direction and the visual flourish of the film is nothing worth reporting on. Some of the film’s production history suggests that it was almost treated as a vacation by Huston, Bogart and others, and this lack of discipline clearly shows—it’s also unclear if Huston had a sense for comedy, as demonstrated by what Beat the Devil tries to pass off as funny. This being said, I’m putting an asterisk (*) here to revisit this film in a while, just to see if I either understand more about what it’s reputedly trying to parody, or if I’m in a potentially better mood to accept what’s going on here.

    (Second Viewing, On TV, December 2021) This is my second go-around on Beat the Devil, and I’m still as dumbfounded (or disappointed) as during the first. At another glance, this still feels like a can’t-miss film: A group of shady characters; striking actors such a Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida and Jennifer Jones; directing by John Huston; and a script by Truman Capote. Better yet – the film is often presented as comedy, spoofing the kind of character-based adventure films that Hollywood was churning out at the time. The problem is that none of these things quite add up. It’s clearly not serious, but it’s not all that funny either, and the florid dialogue doesn’t add up to a compelling storyline. Some of this weirdness can be explained by taking a look at Beat the Devil’s production history – with the director ripping up the script on the first day of shooting and Capote churning out material as the shoot went on. The disjointed aspect of the film isn’t helped by actors goofing off when the goofing off doesn’t have a point. I gave the film a second look hoping that it would make more sense a second time around, but merely found my interest wandering again for what I feel are the same reasons. Oh, the occasional bon mot perked up my interest from time to time, but it’s not enough, not sustained into a coherent narrative nor a coherent comic tone. Maybe I’ll give it a third try. Maybe I’ll just ignore Beat the Devil as something that simply doesn’t work on me.

  • High Sierra (1941)

    High Sierra (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) According to many film historians, High Sierra is the film that put Humphrey Bogart on the map: He was already a steadily working, well-regarded actor for Warner Brothers, and his fame would be consecrated within the next year with The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, but High Sierra is the film that made people stand up and take notice of him as a star. Watching it, it also strikes me as a strong early noir film, what with the dark forces of fatality stopping even a well-meaning character from a happy ending. Bogart here plays a character recently released from prison, but already planning a big heist. The film describes his own dramatic arc along the way from prison to recidivism, made more interesting by the character being tempted by the righteous path. This being an early noir, you can expect that it’s not going to end well… but it’s the journey that counts, and seeing Bogart ruminate on the choices his character is making. This may be the transition point between Warner’s 1930s gangster films and true honest noir as we’d know it later on – you can point to The Public Enemy one way, and Detour the other. It’s also quite entertaining to watch – Bogart looks terrific with a very severe haircut, torn between Ida Lupino as a fantastic bad girl, and Joan Leslie as the flip side of his morality. The result is impressive even today, and not merely as a precursor to Casablanca-era Bogart.