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 Asphalt Jungle (1950) - Huston's twenty-four carat noir caper thriller

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Grimy urban hardness issues form this brilliant poster for John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, which reveals little and has confident, elegant blood-red credit letters in its bottom

A lucrative jewel heist goes awry for various reasons: Coincidence, accidents and greed...

Rhode Islander master filmmaker John Huston (The Night of the Iguana (1964)) stages a fast-paced, hard-boiled film noir like no one else. The characters of The Asphalt Jungle are juicy and well-written, the dialog so cutting sharp and snappy that this heist thriller is finished before you know it. Not a single second of film is wasted or out of place here in a film that certainly equals Huston's noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), if not outright surpasses it in brilliance. Though lurid and darkly humorous at different times, the film preserves a stark realism that distinguishes it as also a serious film about modern (at the time), urban crime and its consequences.
Marilyn Monroe (Love Nest (1951)) - mostly unknown at the time - plays adorable, sexy and dumb; Sam Jaffe (Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)) is brilliant as the top-professional, wise, ice-cold Doc Riedenschneider, and Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Bomb (1964)) is violent yet sympathetic as the hooligan Dix.
The Asphalt Jungle is a great, exciting and fierce caper noir. It was co-written by Huston and Ben Maddow (The Savage Eye (1959)), adapting the same-titled 1949 novel by W.R. Burnett (Vanity Row (1952)).

Related posts:

John Huston: Chinatown (1974) - Roman Polanski's masterpiece (co-star)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) or, The Final Ape! (co-star) 
Casino Royale (1967) - The packed spy spoof frontrunner, a film very much of its time (co-star)
Top 10: The best adventure films reviewed by Film Excess to date
The African Queen (1951) - Classic romance bravura de Huston/Bogart/Hepburn

Watch an original trailer for the film here

Cost: 1.2 mil. $
Box office: 2.1 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.75 times its cost)
[The Asphalt Jungle premiered 8 June (New York) and runs 112 minutes. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles, in Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio from October - December 1949. The film reportedly grossed 1 mil. $ (47.6 % of the total gross) in North America. Despite its release ranking it as a big flop here, the film reportedly made a 40k $ profit. It later collected 29k $ in a 2006 re-release in the UK. It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Supporting Actor (Jaffe) to George Sanders in All About Eve, Cinematography - Black and White (Harold Rosson) to Robert Krasker for The Third Man, Director to Joseph L. Mankewicz for All About Eve, and Screenplay also to Mankewicz for All About Eve. It was also nominated for 3 Golden Globes, a BAFTA, won 2 National Board of Review awards and a prize at the Venice International Film Festival. Huston returned with The Red Badge of Courage (1951). Hayden returned in Journey Into Light (1951); Louis Calhern (Executive Suite (1954)) in A Life of Her Own (1950). The Asphalt Jungle is fresh at 97 % with an 8.59/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Asphalt Jungle?