In a Lonely Place (1950) - Ray and Bogart's dark, Hollywood-set noir

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Humphrey Bogart is prime real estate on this poster for Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, which also highlights that the film has a 'surprise finish'

An experienced Hollywood screenwriter gets insight into a book by a reception girl, who is later brutally slain. At the same time as he begins a relationship with his neighbor, he is investigated in the murder case.

 

In a Lonely Place is written by Andrew Solt (The Lusty Men (1952)), based on Edmund H. North's (The Fiercest Heart (1961)) adaptation of Dorothy B. Hughes' (The Delicate Ape (1944)) same-titled 1947 novel, and directed by great Wisconsinite filmmaker Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night (1948)).

To start out this is an enjoyable exposé of Tinseltown, but its tone changes with the murder. Humphrey Bogart's (To Have and Have Not (1944)) character's enormous iciness and unfeeling cynicism is very unsympathetic, so much so that one wonders what ever sexy Gloria Grahame (The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)) sees in him here?

Well shot (by cinematographer Burnett Guffey (The Split (1968))) and elegantly written, the film changes its focus to the shadowy parts of the movie business: Jealousy, hatred, loathing and other negative feelings abound here. The score (by avant garde composer George Antheil (The Plainsman (1936))) is excessive and too abrasive. But the acting is good. Not surprisingly, In a Lonely Place ends up being underlining its being a sad companion.

Related posts:

Nicholas Ray: Top 10: The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
55 Days at Peking (1963) or, Peking anno 1900

 Flying Leathernecks (1951) - Ray's gung ho, Technicolor aviation spectacle 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: In excess of 3.43 mil. $ (North America alone)

= Uncertain but likely at least a big hit

[In a Lonely Place premiered 17 May (New York) and runs 94 minutes. Shooting took place from October - December 1949 in California, including in Los Angeles. Ray's marriage to Grahame fell apart during filming. The film was listed in Variety January 1951 with a 1.375 mil. $ rental, coming to an approximately 3.43 mil. $ domestic gross. A cautious international total of 5 mil. $ is projected. Ray returned with Born to Be Bad (1950). Bogart returned in The Enforcer (1951). In a Lonely Place is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of In a Lonely Place? 

High Sierra (1941) - Bogart steals the silver screen

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Suspense, danger, violence and one sexy dame - all promised on this poster for Raoul Walsh's High Sierra

Roy Earle is a career criminal who robs a hotel and helps an ungrateful country girl with her club foot and then attempts to run off to the 'end of the world' with his ravishing muse.

 

High Sierra is written by John Huston (The Killers (1946)) and W.R. Burnett (Sergeants 3 (1962)), adapting Burnett's same-titled 1941 novel, and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Raoul Walsh (General Villa (1914)).

Humphrey Bogart (Racket Busters (1938)) is magnetic in his first serious lead role, and Ida Lupino (Paris in Spring (1935)) is beguiling as his dame. The story is knotted but thrilling, SPOILER and the ending, in which Earle is shot on the mountain while trying to escape justice, is dizzying. "Free!" 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 491k $

Box office: 1,489 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 3.03 times its cost)

[High Sierra was released 23 January (USA) and runs 100 minutes. Shooting took place from August - September 1940 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film made 1,063k $ (71.4 % of the gross) in North America. It won a National Board of Review award. It was remade with different titles in 1949 and 1955. Walsh returned with The Strawberry Blonde (1941), the second of four films he directed that year. Bogart returned in The Wagons Roll at Night (1941); Lupino in The Sea Wolf (1941). High Sierra is fresh at 91 % with a 7.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of High Sierra? 

The Desperate Hours (1955) - Wyler's top-drawer true-crime home-invastion thriller

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Humphrey Bogart - a bona fide heavy on the poster for William Wyler's The Desperate Hours

QUICK REVIEW:

A small, normal suburban home gets terrorized by an escaped convict trio, who take the family there hostage, while they await some money to come their way.

SPOILER It is the brave, noble American family, - with Fredric March (A Star Is Born (1937)) sparkling as the sacrificial father, - who in the end serves as a monolith for the sanctity of private property here in this true-crime thriller classic. "Get outta my house!", he commands Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep (1946)), right before furnishing him with a fatal installation of internal AC.
Bogart is a real ornery devil here in his last performance as a villain. The fear he and his thug partners inspire is easy to sympathize with. The unpredictability of the criminals' world, - and of the world surrounding the potboiler nightmare, - as well as the ending makes for a fierce, neat time of suspense here.
Joseph Hayes (The Young Doctors (1961)) adapted his own book and play for the screen with Jay Dratler (The Dark Corner (1946)), and German master filmmaker William Wyler (Roman Holiday (1953)) directed the picture.

Related reviews:

William Wyler: Ben-Hur (1959) - Perhaps the greatest epic film of all time
The Big Country (1958) - A big western gift  
Roman Holiday (1953) - Wyler takes us to marvelous Rome on an unforgettable romantic adventure 

Watch the original trailer for the film here

Cost: 2.3 mil. $
Box office: 2.5 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty
[If Desperate Hours played very well internationally, it may have been a box office success, but it doesn't look like it was a huge hit theatrically. It was remade in 1974 in India as 36 Ghante and in 1990 in Hollywood by Michael Cimino with the same title as the original, - but to considerably worse reviews.]

What do you think of The Desperate Hours?
What's your favorite home-invasion movie?

Casablanca (1942) - The perfect film

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Beautiful original poster for Michael Curtiz's Casablanca

QUICK REVIEW:

A perfect film, master director Michael Curtiz's (Mildred Pierce (1945)) Casablanca may also be the best film ever made.
American Rick has a 'café' in Casablanca, Morocco, during World War II, and the Germans are closing in day by day, when the Czechoslovakian resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) seeks refuge there with the woman, Rick had thought he would never see again; Ilse.
That's all good. But: Why is Casablanca so good?
It shows the purest and most beautiful in man during the worst darkness of our history. Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)) is mesmerizing as the cynic with a humanistic inclination, and Ingrid Bergman (Spellbound (1945)) is as beautiful as an angel, - and all the supporting roles, whether they are humorous reliefs or gripping, they are extremely well-played, and well-cast, to make for continuous viewer's joy.

Dooley Wilson and Humphrey Bogart as Sam and Rick in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca

Curtiz's expressive lighting and the many great scenes and lines, - and the music, Herman Hupfeld's As Time Goes By especially, stays with you forever.
Casablanca is a marvelous, hailed masterpiece about good people's actions during the Nazi insanity, made by an 1920's exiled, Austrian-Hungarian Jew, Michael Curtiz, who himself had family members who were refugees due to the antisemitism of the Germans.
Casablanca won Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay and was also a commercial success that has lived on and still begs to be seen over and over again. It is continuously at the top of Best Films lists everywhere and currently inhabits # 28 on IMDb's Top 250. 

Related post:

Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Watch the gorgeous trailer here

Budget: 0.8 mil. $
Box office: 3.7 mil. $ (only U.S. initial release)
= Big hit 

What do you think of this cinema classic?
Stories about the film, your experience with it, or its stars and/or filmmakers are welcomed

The Big Sleep (1946) - The sexiest noir carousel you will ever ride

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The beautiful, alluring original poster for Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep

Philip Marlowe, a Los Angeles-based private detective, gets hired by an old general to get to the bottom of an extortion affair, but the case proves complicated, and the general's two daughters do not exactly make the sailing smoother...

 
The Big Sleep is written by Leigh Brackett (Rio Lobo (1970)), William Faulkner (The Road to Glory (1936)) and Jules Furthman (Nightmare Alley (1947)), adapting the same-titled 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister (1949)), and produced and directed directed by Indianan master filmmaker Howard Hawks (The Road to Glory (1926)), whose 28th feature it was.

It is a fantastic film noir, and for me a tad better than The Maltese Falcon (1941), the other classic noir which is always mentioned as one of the greatest ever. This is because The Big Sleep is more uncompromising in that it doesn't seem to alter its characters to suit any plot ends at all.
The film is dirty and full of murders and twists, - despite submitting to the rigid Hays Code censorship regime of the period, the sinful truths are palpable. The snappy, sexy dialogue is worth staying totally silent for for the entire playtime; the screenplay is very deftly constructed.
The film is infamously puzzling, with no real denouement, and one of the funny trivia about The Big Sleep relates to the original author, Chandler's equal confusion and ignorance as to any resolution to his story: About a wire query sent to him by the screenwriters about one of the intricate plot's ends, Chandler later confided to a friend: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either"

The central allure of the film, is, of course, its stars: Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)) and Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not (1944)) were growing flaming hot by the 1946 release of The Big Sleep, (a somewhat different version was released for troops only in 1945), both as a couple on- and off-screen. Perhaps the best movie star couple ever, they both exuded charisma, attraction and sex en masse, and sparks fly right and left when they take the screen in The Big Sleep together.
Cat-eyed Bacall, enormously feminine and somehow assertive and masculine at the same time, plays one of the deadliest femme fatales ever put on the silver screen in The Big Sleep, possibly the best film noir ever made. It is a film that simply reeks of SEX without having a single sex scene in it. A rare, electrifying film experience not to be missed.
The film noir genre label, by the way, was coined by French critics in love with the dark, American detective crime pictures of the 1940s and 50s, just as they were about to kick off their French New Wave with several films that were inspired by the anarchism, sex appeal and freshness of films like The Big Sleep. The 'film black' (a direct translation of film noir) are fatalistic, crime-focused, adult in themes and attraction and often have to do with double-crossing, murder and other evil deeds for personal gain.

 

Related posts:

Howard Hawks: El Dorado (1966) - Hawks, Duke and Mitchum's great western

Hatari! (1962) - Hawks, Wayne and Co. chase natural sensations in Africa 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - Great musical numbers define cultural cornerstone

Top 10: The best adaptations reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Bringing Up Baby (1938) - A screwy gathering

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 1.6 mil. $
Box office: 4.8 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3 times its cost)

[The Big Sleep premiered 22 August (Atlantic City, New Jersey) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place from October 1944 - January 1945 on the Warner backlot in California. The shoot was protracted due to Bogart's drinking and marital problems that were eventually resolved in a divorce and his marrying co-star Bacall instead. The film was withheld from release, while the studio instead released their war-themed pictures around the end of WWII. A 2-minute longer 1945 version of the film was screened for servicemen. Re-shoots took place in January 1946, and 20 minutes from the original film were replaced. The film grossed 3.4 mil. $ (70.8 % of the total gross) in North America. Bogart and Bacall, who had already co-starred in Hawks' To Have and Have Not (1944) shared the screen in 2 more films: Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947) and John Huston's Key Largo (1948). Hawks returned with Red River (1948). Bogart returned with a voice performance in Never Say Goodbye (1946) and physically in Dead Reckoning (1946); Bacall in Dark Passage (1947). The Big Sleep is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Big Sleep?

The Barefoot Contessa (1954) - Old Hollywood sophistication with Bogart, Gardner

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Spry, full colors and sensual life stirs from this elegant poster for Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa

Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)) is Hollywood director Harry Dawes, and Ava Gardner (The Killers (1946)) is the stunning Spanish beauty Maria Vargas, who gets discovered by him. Her life as the 'barefoot contessa' is a life of fairy tale complexes and solid baggage, leading up to her premature death, which we know about right from the beginning of the film.

 

The Barefoot Contessa is written, produced and directed by great Pennsylvanian filmmaker Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Dragonwyck (1946)).

If you haven't seen The Barefoot Contessa, oh, do you have a wonderful and sad movie waiting for you here. It is a story about a lot of jet-set characters, who struggle with life's dark sides just as every other person. Mankiewicz's dialog is especially sharp and incredible. The Barefoot Contessa is one of the Hollywood giant's most splendid works.
Bogart and in even more so Edmond O'Brien (White Heat (1949)), who plays the perspiring PR-agent, are great in the film.
The Barefoot Contessa is a sophisticated, enchanting and deeply melancholic tragic drama.

 

Watch the lovely trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown, projected 2 mil. $
Box office: In excess of 3.25 mil. $ (North-American rentals alone)
= Uncertain but likely a box office success (projected return of 2.5 times its cost)

[The Barefoot Contessa premiered 29 September (New York) and runs 130 minutes. Shooting took place in Italy, including in Rome, from January - March 1954. A 1955 Variety article lists its North-American rentals as 3.25 mil. $. The projected cost of 2 mil. $ and world gross of 5 mil. $ would make it a box office success. It was nominated for 2 Oscars: It won Best Supporting Actor (O'Brien) and lost Best Writing, Story and Screenplay to Budd Schulberg for On the Waterfront. It also won a Golden Globe, among other honors. Mankiewicz returned with Guys and Dolls (1955). Bogart returned in Producer's Showcase (1955, TV-series) and theatrically in We're No Angels (1955); Gardner in Bhowani Junction (1956). The Barefoot Contessa is fresh at 100 % with a 7.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Barefoot Contessa?

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) - The quintessential anti-hero picture, Curtiz's electric gangster masterpiece

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With strong, splashy colors, striking composition and great detail, this is one delicious poster for Michael Curtiz's Angels With Dirty Faces

Rocky Sullivan wasn't a bad kid. But in juvenile penitentiary, he became one. Outside a gangster, and then behind bars again. When Rocky gets out, the neighborhood brats look up to him. But Rocky is heading into his own private abyss of self-destruction.

Angels With Dirty Faces is written by John Wexley (Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)) and Warren Duff (Step Lively (1944)), based on a story by Rowland Brown (Widow's Might (1935)), with Ben Hecht (Angel Face (1953)) and Charles MacArthur (The Mad Doctor (1941)) contributing uncredited work, and is directed by Hungarian master filmmaker Michael Curtiz (Mildred Pierce (1945)).
James Cagney (The West Point Story (1950)) has street smarts and an electric charisma that beats every other actor's who has ever tried portraying a tantalizing hoodlum; as Rocky Sullivan, he's on fire! The character seems to trick himself through just about everything in the film, especially in the ultra-real scenes with The Dead End Kids (Crime School (1938)) group of teenage outcasts.
Across from Cagney in Curtiz' timeless, hugely quotable gangster masterpiece is Humphrey Bogart (The Harder They Fall (1956)) as the slimy lawyer and Pat O'Brien (Johnny One-Eye (1950)) as Rocky's childhood friend who has become a the minister, the redeeming character of the film, beautifully acted and written.
Angels With Dirty Faces is a singularly electrifying street drama and one of the best gangster movies ever; an incredibly potent, raw and enjoyable film that feels like it claws right through your imagination and sheds its juice into your open, palpitating heart. A true classic.

Related posts:

Michael Curtiz: Top 10: The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Casablanca (1942) - The perfect film

 

Get a sense of the intensity of Angels With Dirty Faces from its original trailer right here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.7 mil. $
= Uncertain
[Angels With Dirty Faces was released 26 November (USA) and runs 96 minutes. Cagney took the story with him to Warner Bros. from Grand National Pictures when that company was nearing its 1939 bankruptcy. He drew on his memories of growing up in Manhattan and even of losing a childhood friend to the electric chair. Shooting took place in California and New York from June - August 1938. Cagney at one point used force to instill order around the notoriously unruly Dead End Kids. Later in the shoot the star was nearly shot, when live machine gun fire was used in a shootout scene, leading Cagney to conclude that the practice of using real bullets on film was "ridiculous." The film's budget is not known, but it is said to have been a financial success. It was nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Actor (Cagney), lost to Spencer Tracy in Boys Town, Director (Curtiz was also nominated that year for Four Daughters), lost to Frank Capra with You Can't Take It with You, and Original Story, lost to Boys Town. It won a National Board of Review award. Curtiz returned with uncredited direction on Blackwell's Island (1939) and credited as director with Dodge City (1939). Cagney returned in The Oklahoma Kid (1939); O'Brien in Swingtime in the Movies (1938, short) and theatrically in Off the Record (1939). Angels With Dirty Faces is certified fresh at 100 % with an 8.18/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Angels With Dirty Faces?

The African Queen (1951) - Classic romance bravura de Huston/Bogart/Hepburn

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A colorful, sensationalistic and somewhat hyperbolic poster for John Huston's The African Queen, which highlights its adventure romance elements

Perhaps one of the most wonderful films ever made, The African Queen sees Humphrey Bogart (King of the Underworld (1939)) in his only Oscar-winning role as a squirrel-like, drunkard captain on the titular steamer,  The African Queen, and Katharine Hepburn (Mary of Scotland (1936)) as a missionary, who is on a Christian's journey for the Queen through the impossible, German-infiltrated Africa of 1914.

Animals, suspense, blood, sweat, tears and magnetic on-screen chemistry between the star leads that's a sheer joy to the senses, - The African Queen is a truly marvelous piece of cinema with all of that and more. It is an adaptation of C.S. Forester's (The Good Shepherd (1955)) same-titled 1935 novel by James Agee (The Night of the Hunter (1955)), John Collier (I Am a Camera (1955)) and Peter Viertel (We Were Strangers (1949)).
It is one of the not few magnificent films by Missourian master co-writer/director John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)), a romantic war-adventure classic that you do not want to miss!

Related posts:

John Huston: Chinatown (1974) - Roman Polanski's masterpiece (actor)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) or, The Final Ape! (actor)
Casino Royale (1967) - The packed spy spoof frontrunner, a film very much of its time (co-director)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - The twentyfour carat noir caper thriller
Top 10: The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
 

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 1 mil. $

Box office: 10.7 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 10.7 times its cost)

[The African Queen premiered 26 December (Los Angeles, California) and runs 105 minutes. The script was changed to fit with the censorship of the day, and also to change Bogart's character to a Canadian, since he could not perform the desired Cockney accent. Shooting took place in Congo, Uganda, England and Los Angeles, California from May - August 1951. Shooting a Technicolor film with big stars on location in difficult terrain was rare at the time, and the shoot was beleaguered by sickness and dangers. Bogart and Huston made it through without incident and ascribed their fortune to their not drinking the local water but sticking to the whiskey brought along from the West. The film grossed superior 4 mil. $ in North America (37.4 % of the total gross) and 256k £ in the UK, where it was the 10th highest-grossing picture of 1952. It has also been re-released numerous times in many countries. It was nominated for 4 Oscars: Bogart won Best Actor, his only Oscar win ever. Best Actress (Hepburn) was lost to Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire; Director was lost to George Stevens for A Place in the Sun and Best Writing, Screenplay was lost to Michael Wilson and Harry Brown, also for A Place in the Sun. The film was also nominated for 3 BAFTAs. The titular boat is now renovated and on display in Key Largo, Florida. Bogart returned in Deadline - U.S.A. (1952), Hepburn in Pat and Mike (1952). Huston returned with Moulin Rouge (1952). The African Queen is certified fresh at 100 % with a 8.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The African Queen?