"Dark Passage" is a 1947 Warner Brothers film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. That sentence telegraphs a few things about the film: it's a film noir with murders, betrayals and a femme fatale. A little formula isn't fatal for a film noir, since the genre is dependent on how human the archetypes can become -- is the existential hero believable? Is the femme fatale just tragic and mysterious enough to be alluring? Is the hero's faithful but ill-fated friend more than a plot device? As noir goes, "Dark Passage" is a bit too generic, but as filmmaking goes, it's a clever experiment that works more often than it fails. As a bonus, Agnes Moorehead turns in one of the most unexpected performances in cinematic history, and that alone makes "Dark Passage" worth viewing.
As a man falsely convicted of killing his wife, Bogart plays a standard noir hero with a troubled past and no future. To compensate for his commonness, director Delver Daves shoots most of the first part of the film from Bogart's perspective, which, as a choice, turns out to be more of a gimmick than a thematic choice but the early scene of being in an oil drum rolling down hill is pretty cool anyway. The movie is, naturally, concerned with finding out who murdered Bogart's wife, and the plot is a little muddled and weighted down with too many expository scenes. (Howard Hawks had just directed Bogie & Bacall in "The Big Sleep" and demonstrated that the more complicated the plot, the less important the exposition. I guess Daves didn't pay attention.) Bacall shows up as Bogart's helpmate, there are creepy supporting characters speaking strange monologues (another noir trademark), and enough weak but interesting men to keep the plot moving forward. But aside from the camera work, the most remarkable thing about "Dark Passage" is the casting of Agnes Moorehead as the de riguer evil woman. Sure, we can all know that Ag can play a domineering rhymes-with-witch, but who thought she could play a sexually voracious one? Her character of Madge is never fully explained, but seems to be an annoying rich woman whom everyone must tolerate because of her social position. To be bearable, Madge must be attractive in some way, and since the stately Ms. Moorehead exudes all the smoldering sensuality of a Mother Superior, she has to act sexy, which she's just talented enough to do. You've seen in "Citizen Kane," "The Twilight Zone" and "Bewitched," but you've never seen her like this. Check her out.
As a man falsely convicted of killing his wife, Bogart plays a standard noir hero with a troubled past and no future. To compensate for his commonness, director Delver Daves shoots most of the first part of the film from Bogart's perspective, which, as a choice, turns out to be more of a gimmick than a thematic choice but the early scene of being in an oil drum rolling down hill is pretty cool anyway. The movie is, naturally, concerned with finding out who murdered Bogart's wife, and the plot is a little muddled and weighted down with too many expository scenes. (Howard Hawks had just directed Bogie & Bacall in "The Big Sleep" and demonstrated that the more complicated the plot, the less important the exposition. I guess Daves didn't pay attention.) Bacall shows up as Bogart's helpmate, there are creepy supporting characters speaking strange monologues (another noir trademark), and enough weak but interesting men to keep the plot moving forward. But aside from the camera work, the most remarkable thing about "Dark Passage" is the casting of Agnes Moorehead as the de riguer evil woman. Sure, we can all know that Ag can play a domineering rhymes-with-witch, but who thought she could play a sexually voracious one? Her character of Madge is never fully explained, but seems to be an annoying rich woman whom everyone must tolerate because of her social position. To be bearable, Madge must be attractive in some way, and since the stately Ms. Moorehead exudes all the smoldering sensuality of a Mother Superior, she has to act sexy, which she's just talented enough to do. You've seen in "Citizen Kane," "The Twilight Zone" and "Bewitched," but you've never seen her like this. Check her out.