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Dark Passage
Under discussion:
Dark Passage
(1947)
I really liked this movie, especially because it had a happy ending. After everything that
V
incent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) and Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall) go through, I wanted them to escape and live happily ever after.
But this is one of those strange movies where a critique could go either way. If I start writing about the wonderful acting and the deep psychological motivation, the movie would sound excellent. On the other hand, if I focused on plot coincidences and lulls in the action,
Dark Passages
would sound like it was not worth watching. The logic of argument pushes me in whatever direction I start, like a train going down a track, so I’ll try to keep it balanced.
The plot, in one sentence, is this: a man wrongly convicted of killing his wife escapes from prison and is helped by an interested rich woman until he can solve the murder. Unfortunately, the protagonist,
V
incent Parry, is not particularly interesting—he is a bit thick and dull. I realize that many film noir protagonists are “chumps” or not too bright, but we spend an inordinate amount of time with
V
incent Parry, and a lot of that time has little action. In contrast, consider
The Killers
.
It too has a not-too-brilliant, ordinary-guy protagonist who is taken for a ride, but it is full of action. For example, we see the robbery and the fight among the robbers. In
Dark Passage
, the major crimes happen off screen. To make matters worse, Bogart, then the highest paid actor in
Hollywood
, plays
V
incent Parry so phlegmatically that the character develops little depth.
As suggested above, the other major weakness is that the killer operates off screen and has a minor role, although a major impact. Apparently, in the novel, much more time is spent on Madge Rapf, her motivation, and her skulduggery. But in the movie, only Agnes Moorehead’s superb performance gives Madge much credibility. Madge is not a stereotype. She is an ambitious, keenly intelligent, hard-nosed, slightly good-looking woman who, when her schemes do not work out, takes the “dog in the manger” attitude, that is, “if I can’t have it, you can’t either.” This motivation underlies the murder and Madge’s false testimony that got
V
incent convicted. It underlies her peculiar relationship with Irene (Bacall). And, in the showdown, it explains her seemingly outrageous behaviour. When
V
incent, the man she once wanted, confronts her with the facts of her two murders, she admits her guilt, says she is the only proof he has of his innocence, acknowledges that he and Irene want to establish his innocence and get together, and then she throws herself out of her seven-story window. We need to understand this woman better. The movie should have shown her in action or at least explained the genesis of her motivation. Incidentally,
V
incent does not help the audience at all when he confuses things by telling Irene that Madge tripped and fell through the window. It is the worst line of dialogue in the movie.
The strength of the movie is the acting—another reason Bogart’s low-key performance pales. Irene is good as a no-nonsense, independently wealthy woman who operates from unique motivation—her father was wrongfully convicted of killing her step-mother, and Irene does not want the same thing to happen to
V
incent. She also slowly grows to like the chump. Maybe the fact that Bogart and Bacall were married explains the naturalistic acting in their scenes. For example, when she goes to cut off his bandages after his plastic surgery, she carries in and sets down the bowl and scissors with a natural ease of an old-fashioned wife taking care of her husband. She even makes a dry joke when pulling off the gauze. This husband/wife ease makes the happy ending seem more natural.
Besides Bacall, the minor characters do a superb job. Tom D’Andrea as the cabby conveys a lonely guy wanting to get mixed up in other people’s business, yet at the same time a respectful and caring person, who, at the same time, has some well-used connections with non-legit businesses such as a plastic surgeon who will operate at 3:00 a.m. Houseley Stevenson who plays Dr. Coley, the surgeon, appears only once but leaves a lasting impression. Seventy years old and ugly, he appears a quack, and then he does a top-rate professional job. He is seriously philosophical, then bizarrely humorous, and then sternly business-like in his instructions for recovery.
I really liked the theme song, “Too Marvellous for Words” (by Johnny Mercer and Richard Whiting), and it is introduced subtly throughout the movie, never loud and overbearing, only in quiet snippets. But this love song signals that Dark Passages is not the typical film noir that its title suggests. It is also a romance. Although it has the noir theme of an ordinary man wrongfully accused, it has a happy ending done Warner Brothers, big-studio style. Even though the Peruvian café is grossly elaborate, even though
V
incent is sampling one of those sissy tropical drinks, even though Irene gets the band to play “Marvellous” for her entrance, I still clapped at the happy ending.
Jim Bell
posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 2:16 PM by
JimBell
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