Title: Dark Passage
Rating: 4 Stars
I read a lot of books and I watch a lot of films. I usually read around 80 books and will watch somewhere between 50 to 100 films in a given year. If I wrote a blog entry each time I would be spending much more time than I want writing about what I read or watched. Therefore, one of my pretty solid rules is not to write about anything that I completed more than three days ago. I want to write about my fresh experiences. I want to write about how I felt as close to the moment as possible.
I watched the film Dark Passage several weeks ago, so this is a flagrant violation of my rule. However, in the subsequent time, I found myself coming back to it repeatedly and thinking about it. I think that I need to write this just to exorcise it out of my mind.
The film is based upon the David Goodis novel (which I did write about here). Goodis’ novel is a great example of noir. A man (Vincent Parry) is wrongfully convicted of a murder. Sentenced to life imprisonment, while in San Quentin, he seizes an opportunity to escape. Now on the run, he’s trying to stay free while at the same time trying to solve the murder that he was wrongfully convicted of. He meets Irene Jansen, a wealthy young woman that helps him. Will he be able stay ahead of the police? Will he figure out who really solved the murder? Does he have a future with Irene?
The film stays pretty true to the novel. Humphrey Bogart stars as Vincent Parry. Lauren Bacall, Bogart’s wife, plays Irene Jansen.
This brings up the first interesting issue regarding the film. One of the key plot elements that allows Parry to escape law enforcement is that he visits a cheap, disreputable, underground plastic surgeon. For something like $200, the doctor dramatically changes his face, allowing Parry to go around unrecognized as he investigates.
OK, so you cast Humphrey Bogart, one of the most recognizable faces on film, and halfway through the film he has to dramatically change the features of his face. What do you do? Do you go all Lon Chaney (ala Werewolf) on him and use extensive makeup and/or prosthetics for a dramatic before and after? Or maybe just ignore the plastic surgery angle all together?
Nope. Instead, the decision was to never actually film Bogart’s face before the plastic surgery. The few times that his character was in frame, his face was in shadows. Most times the film was shot from a viewpoint over his shoulder. Most times it felt as if I was playing a First Person Shooter game. I’ve seen very few films that shoot for large amounts of time from this perspective. It makes for a more intimate film. As Vincent talks to Irene, you feel as if Irene is talking directly to you.
The plastic surgery takes place somewhere around the 40 minute mark or so in the film. As you can imagine, the studio executives weren’t particularly amused by this choice. They have Humphrey Bogart, the most recognizable and biggest box office star of this time and for the first half of the film, you don’t even ever see his face? Considering that this film was made in 1947, this must have been considered pretty revolutionary.
The other thing that I found interesting about it was that it seemed to be making a nod to the German Expressionism films of the 1920s and 1930s. The plastic surgeon was simply just a creepy, eerie figure. When Vincent was anesthetized for the operation, the film represented his thoughts as some psychedelic, hallucinatory swirl of thoughts. Later in the film, when he is caught up in his fear, there was a similar moment where he was being haunted by a kaleidoscope of thoughts. Interestingly, this expressionist flow of wild thoughts also appears in the Goodis novel.
Being Hollywood, the film does sell out the ending a bit. It’s more ambiguous in the novel, but the film makes it pretty clear that Vincent and Irene will live happily ever after.
I enjoy noir films. Even as I enjoy them, I understand that they have a tendency to be formulaic. You have the world weary private dick. You have the sultry femme fatale. You have the tough but sometimes fair burly police Sargent.
The novel Dark Passages transcends these stereotypes to create a more interesting novel. Similarly, the film Dark Passages abandons the well trod path and in the process, discovers fresh new more interesting tracks.
dorkenstein 