"Dark Passage" is a silly film when you look at it objectively, but an effective film noir, a subgenre that, though set in the real world, has an exaggerated, almost feverish quality, emphasizing the dread, anxiety, and paranoia of modern life.
Humphrey Bogart plays a man who escapes from prison where he was sent after being wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife, and tries to prove his innocence and bring the true culprit to justice. The plot may bring to mind The Fugitive, but unlike that film's hero, Bogart's Vincent Parry remains a fugitive even after undergoing plastic surgery to conceal his identity. This is film noir, after all, which rarely concludes on a happy note.
In retrospect, "Dark Passage" was an unusual choice for Bogart at a time when he was at the height of his box-office power. We are 37 minutes into the film before we see him, and even then his face is covered in bandages. Prior to that, we hear his voice and see the action through his eyes. Those bandages don't come off until we are one hour and two minutes into the action. Jack Warner is said to have opposed a production in which the star spends a third of its running time off-screen, but his protests were registered too late, after filming had already begun on San Francisco locations.
Warner may have also had qualms about the story. It's far-fetched, with Bogart crawling through the bushes after his escape while a police chase is in progress. Bacall, as an artist who never met Bogart's character but followed his trial in the newspaper, just happens to be driving by at the time. She gives him a ride, and then shelters him in her classy apartment. "I don't believe in fate or destiny, or any of those things," she tells him when explaining how she rescued him. Director Delmer Daves who wrote the screenplay based on a novel by David Goodis, may not have believed in those things either, but, what the heck, bring 'em on if your story is too weak for more sensible solutions.
Bogart's encounter with the plastic surgeon occurs after equally unlikely circumstances. A chatty cab driver who "can tell what people think, what they do, sometimes even who they are" from looking at their faces, recognizes Parry, but is sympathetic to his troubles. Rather than turn him in to the police, he takes him to see a friend, a plastic surgeon who works out of a tiny office hidden away in a dark alley. "I perfected my own special technique 12 years ago," he says, "before I was kicked out of the Medical Association." This is the kind of doctor who also did the work that turned Jack Nicholson into the Joker in 1989's "Batman," but Bogart fares much better, emerging with the face of the world's greatest movie star.
The film's most memorable scene is when Bogart, obviously drugged during surgery, hallucinates, and we see the surgeon cackling hysterically like the mad doctor in a horror movie. Drugs and their effect were pretty much a new topic in movies in that era (see "Murder, My Sweet" for a similarly grotesque hallucination), but it was not unusual in film noir.
"There's no such thing as courage," the doctor tells his apprehensive patient. "There's only fear - a fear of getting hurt and a fear of dying." Fear haunts Bogart throughout Dark Passage, and is often the dominant emotion in film noir. The poor guy can't even eat in peace when he stops at one of those all-night diners that frequently turn up in noir. A detective grills him about his identity, and Bogart is on the run again.
"Dark Passage" is not a great film, but it's weird and interesting, a must-see for devotees of both Bogart and film noir.
Brian W. Fairbanks
Humphrey Bogart plays a man who escapes from prison where he was sent after being wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife, and tries to prove his innocence and bring the true culprit to justice. The plot may bring to mind The Fugitive, but unlike that film's hero, Bogart's Vincent Parry remains a fugitive even after undergoing plastic surgery to conceal his identity. This is film noir, after all, which rarely concludes on a happy note.
In retrospect, "Dark Passage" was an unusual choice for Bogart at a time when he was at the height of his box-office power. We are 37 minutes into the film before we see him, and even then his face is covered in bandages. Prior to that, we hear his voice and see the action through his eyes. Those bandages don't come off until we are one hour and two minutes into the action. Jack Warner is said to have opposed a production in which the star spends a third of its running time off-screen, but his protests were registered too late, after filming had already begun on San Francisco locations.
Warner may have also had qualms about the story. It's far-fetched, with Bogart crawling through the bushes after his escape while a police chase is in progress. Bacall, as an artist who never met Bogart's character but followed his trial in the newspaper, just happens to be driving by at the time. She gives him a ride, and then shelters him in her classy apartment. "I don't believe in fate or destiny, or any of those things," she tells him when explaining how she rescued him. Director Delmer Daves who wrote the screenplay based on a novel by David Goodis, may not have believed in those things either, but, what the heck, bring 'em on if your story is too weak for more sensible solutions.
Bogart's encounter with the plastic surgeon occurs after equally unlikely circumstances. A chatty cab driver who "can tell what people think, what they do, sometimes even who they are" from looking at their faces, recognizes Parry, but is sympathetic to his troubles. Rather than turn him in to the police, he takes him to see a friend, a plastic surgeon who works out of a tiny office hidden away in a dark alley. "I perfected my own special technique 12 years ago," he says, "before I was kicked out of the Medical Association." This is the kind of doctor who also did the work that turned Jack Nicholson into the Joker in 1989's "Batman," but Bogart fares much better, emerging with the face of the world's greatest movie star.
The film's most memorable scene is when Bogart, obviously drugged during surgery, hallucinates, and we see the surgeon cackling hysterically like the mad doctor in a horror movie. Drugs and their effect were pretty much a new topic in movies in that era (see "Murder, My Sweet" for a similarly grotesque hallucination), but it was not unusual in film noir.
"There's no such thing as courage," the doctor tells his apprehensive patient. "There's only fear - a fear of getting hurt and a fear of dying." Fear haunts Bogart throughout Dark Passage, and is often the dominant emotion in film noir. The poor guy can't even eat in peace when he stops at one of those all-night diners that frequently turn up in noir. A detective grills him about his identity, and Bogart is on the run again.
"Dark Passage" is not a great film, but it's weird and interesting, a must-see for devotees of both Bogart and film noir.
Brian W. Fairbanks