"Dark Passage"

 

Saw "Dark Passage" on dvd last night. With Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. What a gem of a movie! I think the best films were made in the 1940s and 50s. The plots were believable, the production values perfect. This was such a clever script written from the escaped con's point of view. Bacall looked so incandesently beautiful. And Agnes Moorhead I've never seen more sexy in a very bitchy, vindictive vein. The entire cast was spot on, esp the cab driver and the shady plastic surgeon. Even his best friend (to Bogie, "You're the only one who liked me.") who takes a big risk by putting him up in his tiny one room apt. for five days while he is on the run. The whole thing had such a down to earth realism. When Bogart finds his buddy dead on the floor when he returns from the surgery, he flees back to Bacall's apt, where he has to communicate by notes until his face heals. The whole thing had such a poignant quality about being in real trouble and the one friend you can trust.

When Bacall shows him the newspaper about Bogie being a suspect in the death of his buddy because his fingerprints were found in the room, he writes her a short note. "He was my closest friend."

I just loved it.