Reeling Backward: "Action in the North Atlantic" (1943)

At first glance, "Action in the North Atlantic" seems like a typical jingoistic World War II war drama, conceived to pump up the troops overseas and the folks at home, while delivering some thrilling action and a little romance.

And it is. All that is missing is a "Buy War Bonds" title card.

It's about the Merchant Marines, carrying oil and military arms across the sea where they are desperately needed by Allied forces while dodging German U-boats and aircraft. It's the usual "swell bunch of guys" rogue's gallery of supporting characters, playing cards and getting into beefs, while coming together in a swell way during times of duress, with occasional nostalgic asides about their swell gals back home. It's swell!

What sets it apart from the pack, though, are two things: the truly impressive naval combat sequences/special effects, and the realistic grim tone and depictions of violence.

Let's talk about the latter first. I was struck by the overt (for its time) depictions of bodies being flung away in explosions or otherwise severely traumatized. Usually in films of this era, you'd hear an explosion off-sceen and then cut to dissipating smoke as a noble hero lies dying, but largely undamaged other than some handsomely blackened cheeks.

In one early scene, a lifeboat full of men is rammed by a German submarine, and a body is seen being chewed up by its propellers. It's very brief -- I rewound and played the film frame-by-frame to confirm -- but still gruesome stuff.

Beyond the depictions of violence, though, is the dire sense of consequences ready to befall anyone. (Well, maybe not star Humphrey Bogart.)

During that same sequence, when an oil tanker is torpedoed and sunk, one of the younger crewman, Johnny Pulaski (Dane Clark), valiantly rescues one of his mates who got trapped in the mess room. He turns back from the clamor toward the lifeboats, busts through the door with an ax, shields him from the raging inferno, straps him into a life vest, then takes it off when they see the ocean is a pool of fire from burning oil, dives into the icy brine together, helps him swim under the glames... only to have the man drown a few feet from the lifeboat.

Similarly, the captain and first mate (Raymond Massey and Bogie, respectively) learn there are men trapped in the stern of the ship, and make to go back and rescue them personally. But they take one look a the burning deck in front of them and conclude it's suicide. Neither do they go down with the ship, though they are the last ones into the lifeboat.

That may not seem like a big deal. But normally we'd see some kind of "we'll find a way!" heroics. The fact they decline to sacrifice themselves in a brave but pointless act speaks to the realities of wartime.

And speaking of war, the depictions of it are just tremendous. By 1943 the U.S. military had accrued a decent library of stock footage from the war, which is sprinkled throughout the film. But for the most part director Lloyd Bacon, a workhorse of the Warner Bros.' pen, used actual actors on actual sets, often with fire and debris right up in their faces.

I was mentally comparing it to similar scenes in the recent "Deepwater Horizon," and "Action" holds up quite well 74 years later.

This is especially impressive given that war edicts prevented any filming at sea -- the threat of enemy submarines right off our coastlines being a very real thing in 1942-43. So everything was shot on the Warners lot, including some rather good ship models for the complicated maneuvers depicted.

Even by today's standards, the war scenes are engrossing and impressive.

(I should note that Bacon did not actually complete filming on the production, as his contract was up and a dispute with the studio resulted in an uncredited Byron Haskin wrapping things up.)

The story's a pretty straight line. John Howard Lawson penned the screenplay, from a story by Guy Gilpatric. Gilpatric got an Academy Award nomination for his work while Lawson did not, under the more arcane rules of the Oscars back then.

Massey plays Steve Jarvis, Captain of the tanker Northern Star, and Bogart is his wiseacre first office, Joe Rossi. Their ship is torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine, whose crew even films and taunts the survivors before running aground their lifeboat. Jarvis vows to get his revenge, and after some floating in a raft and a little shore time for lovin' and such, they get a new mission aboard the Liberty-class cargo ship Seawitch, and another scrap with the Nazis.

The Germans are repeatedly referred to as Nazis, though of course the terms are not interchangeable. The depiction of the enemy is one of the harshest I've ever seen in a WWII film, with the Germans seen as bloodthirsty killers not dissimilar from a pack of slavering wolves. They also speak their native language throughout, a notable departure for films of that era, in long dialogue scenes that can be annoying if you don't sprechen sie deutsch.

Alan Hale, Sr. -- daddy of "The Skipper" and a noted character actor in his own right -- plays "Boats," the older bosun who's in charge of the enlisted men. He rarely goes ashore, because that means facing legal papers from his growing gallery of wives, ex- or otherwise. Sam Levene plays "Chips," the vaguely ethnic veteran  who can divine the movement of the Germans by the ache in his corns. He's supposed to be a veteran of World War I, though Levene was only born in 1905.

Dick Hogan is the young cadet fresh from Merchant Marine officer school, distrusted by the captain for getting his learning from books instead of the open sea. Though he proves himself able in the end. Julie Bishop plays the lounge singer who attracts Bogart's eye and becomes his wife in about a minute and a half.

Ruth Gordon, who would go on to an accomplished screenwriting career before becoming a star late in life, tackles one of her early acting role as Jarvis' loving wife. She would not act in another movie until 1965.

Wilhelm von Brincken plays the sneering German submarine captain. He has an interesting backstory. He met his wife in America while serving in the German consulate during World War I, and was arrested for espionage and sent to prison (including Alcatraz). Afterward he was recruited by Erich Von Stroheim to work in Hollywood, enjoying a busy career for the next two decades, including playing the Red Baron in Howard Hughes' "Hells Angels." When war came again, he was kept quite busy playing enemy commanders on land, sea and air.

"Action in the North Atlantic" may not amount to much more than wartime propaganda. But it's very well-done propaganda.

Reeling Backward: "Up the River" (1930)

Yes, John Ford again. I recently did a double feature of Frank Sinatra films in this space, so I figure there's no harm in doing it again with another artist.

"Up the River" was not Ford's first feature film, or even his first sound film. He made dozens of silent features starting in 1917, most of which have not survived the ages. "River" is notable mostly for having the first screen credits for Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart.

(Though both had appeared briefly in uncredited roles prior.)

This largely unheralded body of work represented John Ford's training ground, as he learned the craft of filmmaking, studied other directors' work, found his ethos as an artist and started to build his famous stable of pet actors. It was he who recommended both Bogie and Tracy to the studio, but they were both dropped after this film was made. (And surely regretted it in perpetuity.)

It was the only time Ford and Bogart ever worked together, and it would be nearly three decades before he and Tracy teamed up to make a film again.

It's a wacky comedy about a bunch of jailbirds, busting in and out of prison, falling in love and whatnot. It's rather amusing, a parade of broad caricatures and easy jokes, though if it weren't for the two main stars I doubt the film would be much remembered.

There are no pristine prints of "Up the River" surviving, so watching it takes some patience. It's scratchy and poppy, with a lot of distracting marks and missing frames. Dialogue will cut out in the middle of a scene and pick up half a sentence later, so it's helpful to watch with subtitles to track the missing words.

Bogart plays Steve, the good-hearted young kid doing a short stretch after making a bad choice. It's hard to think of Bogie as a youngster, even a little disconcerting. Tracy too, though he didn't physically change much from young to old, just getting a little grayer and thicker.

Some Hollywood stars remain stuck in time, at least in our minds. Spencer Tracy is forever the sage father figure; Julia Roberts will always be the sprightly ingenue.

Humphrey Bogart seemed born in early middle age and only went a little further. But he once was a smooth-faced, sharp-jawed stripling, as in this film.

Steve comes from a well-to-do family in New England, and they don't even know he's in prison. His family believes he's working in China, and he even has friends there who send fake correspondence from time to time. While working as an interviewer for incoming inmates, he meets Judy (Claire Luce), a 21-year-old who got sucked up into the rackets by Frosby (Gaylord Pendleton), an older crook who passes himself off as a fine gentleman.

In one of those things that only happens in the movies, Steve and Judy fall irrevocably in love after just two meetings totaling perhaps five minutes. They make plans to get married after they get out, start at the "bottom rung of the ladder," and become respectable again. Frosby tries to put the kibosh on that by moving into Steve's hometown, threatening to brow his cover as an ex-con if he doesn't play ball.

Tracy plays "St. Louis" -- that's the only name he ever goes by; I assume it's a nickname but since even the warden calls him that, we'll never know. He's a dapper career criminal who's a celebrity among convicts and lawmen alike. The opening scene shows him escaping from a state prison along with his sidekick, Dannemora Dan (Warren Hymer), a cigar-chomping dimwit with a good heart.

Those two stage another escape in order to go help Steve out. This culminates in a prison variety show in which St. Louis performs a knife-throwing act on a very nervous Dan. When the lights go out, they dress up as women and sneak out with the wealthy benefactors who came to watch the show.

This sequence includes the incredibly painful spectacle of two white actors performing in blackface as "Black & Blue," an aw-shucksin' pair in the Amos and Andy mold. In the middle of this travesty, Ford even cuts away to a closeup of an African-American prisoner in the front year screaming in hysterics at the act. I realize this was simply how many folks felt back then, but it's still tough to watch.

The script, by Marine Dallas Watkins, contains a lot of pratfalls and other vaudevillian slapstick comedy of the era. It is notable for the naturalistic acting of Tracy and Bogart. We even get a preview of Bogie's famous clenched-jaw grimace, which he would later go on to express depths of pain in noir and romantic films of the 1940s and '50s.

This was very much an era in which cinema was seen as an offshoot of the legitimate theater; the credits still use the term "the players" in introducing the cast. Ford and other pioneers of the advent of sound pictures started to move away from that very stiff, formal style of acting.

While modern audiences might have a tough time sitting through "Up the River," for both aesthetic and moral reasons, it's an energetic and amusing film for its era. And it launched a trio of Hollywood giants.

Reeling Backward: "The Harder They Fall" (1956)

The career of Humphrey Bogart has become so iconic that we forget his tenure as a leading man was actually rather brief. After kicking around Hollywood for a decade in supporting roles as dandy boys and gangsters, he hit it big in 1941 with "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon." The end would come just 15 years later, with his star power and health both fading rapidly.

"The Harder They Fall," Bogie's last movie, was a typically hard-bitten role in a sports drama that was distinctively more pessimistic than most films of the time. It essentially postulates that boxing is rife with corruption from top to bottom, with greedy managers, gamblers and promoters vacuuming up all the cash and the fighters bought off cheaply, their latter years filled with pain and woe.

Bogart himself was already suffering from what would later be diagnosed as esophageal cancer. His raspy voice had lost some of its power -- reportedly a portion of his lines had to be dubbed by another actor in post-production. His face looks lean and droopy, but not all that much changed from his "Casablanca" days.

Bogart's lack of physical beauty is part of what defined him as a star; his hangdog looks were in stark contrast to the Errols and Carys of the day. I think it also helped him invest his roles with a brooding sort of charisma, since he knew he couldn't skate by on a twinkle in his eye and a cleft in his chin.

The film is directed by Mark Robson from a screenplay by Philip Yordan, based on a novel by Budd Schulberg. Both the book and movie were seen as thinly-disguised takes on the scandal of Primo Carnera, a great Italian lummox of a fighter who nonetheless managed to capture the heavyweight crown from 1933 to 1934. It was widely believed the Mob greased his rise, and that many of his fights were fixed.

Here the exotic import is Toro Moreno, a young Argentine strongman who lacks even a lick of actual boxing skill. In his first sparring match with a brokedown old trainer (Jersey Joe Walcott), Toro is revealed to have weak punch and a jaw of glass. 

Nonetheless, crooked promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) wants to build him up big so he can cash in when the South American giant finally falls, betting against his own fighter. To accomplish this he recruits Eddie Willis, a washed-up former sports columnist played by Bogart. He becomes the press agent and Svengali to Toro, using his media connections to get favorable coverage and tamp down any complaints about opponents taking a dive.

The scenes between Steiger and Bogie are a study in stark contrast, with Steiger going way over the top and Bogart underplaying coolly.  Some have supposed the actors, who did not get along, did this to show their distaste for each other. But it actually helps the movie, with the volatile Nick seemingly ready to erupt any minute while Eddie stares him down.

At first Eddie rationalizes getting caught up in such a dirty racket, reasoning that since all the fighters facing Toro have been paid to take a dive, no one will get hurt. He even strong-arms the other players in this rotten game to get a better payout for the boxers. 

Still, his heart goes out to the simple-minded Toro, who only wants to go home and is prevented from doing so by Nick's hoodlums. They soon dispatch Toro's Argentine manager back home, played by Carlos Montalbán, older brother to Ricardo.

The travel and dark arts put a strain on Eddie's relationship with his wife, Beth (Jan Sterling). There's even a brief scene where they're talking on the phone and a woman's hand comes in from off-screen to cut off the connection, implying he's philandering. Overall, though, the inclusion of her character just mucks up the works, a brazen effort to introduce some feminine appeal into a very Y-chromosome undertaking.

Eventually Toro must face the champ, who isn't about to take any dives and indeed vows to give Toro the beating of his life. He's played by real-life boxer Max Bauer, who in a bit of Hollywood inbreeding, actually starred with Primo Carnera in a movie 23 years earlier.

Eddie must reluctantly clue Toro into the fact that he's a paper tiger who stands no chance. He tries to convince the big dolt to fight defensively and go down at the first solid punch, but the Argentine's pride prevails and he tries to make a go of it -- actually landing a few good knocks on the champ before getting cut to pieces.

Eddie is disgusted but still willing to take his cut of the scam, until he learns that through Nick's criminal accounting Toro will only keep $49.07 of all his winnings. Worse, Nick sells the rights to Toro to an even seedier promoter for $75,000, planning to take him around the country as a laughingstock act. He reasons that people paid to watch him on the way up, so they'll pay to watch him on the way down.

Fed up, Eddie sticks Toro on a plane back to Buenos Aires with his own cut of the pie, $26,000, stuffed into the lug's coat pocket. He then defies Nick's threats of violence and sits down at his typewriter to begin writing an expose on the sins of the boxing world.

One of the film's big problems is the interaction between Bogart and Mike Lane, the 6-foot-8 wrestler hired to play Toro. Lane simply can't act his way out of a paper bag, and juxtaposed with a master of subtlety like Bogart, it makes for a bunch of clunky scenes.

The boxing scenes are staged quite well -- though it's somewhat easier since Toro is supposed to be an incapable puncher. Burnett Guffey scored an Oscar nomination for the film's moody black-and-white photography.

"The Harder They Fall" ends up being a serviceable final star vehicle for Bogart, showcasing his unique power as a movie star. Like John Wayne, Bette Davis and a few others, they broke the mold when they made Bogart.

Reeling Backward: "Tokyo Joe" (1949)

I'm beginning to realize how much Hollywood reused story lines that had proved successful. "Casablanca" was a big hit, so that basic set-up -- Humphrey Bogart as a man of dubious loyalties in an exotic land, centered around a saloon, involved with nefarious dealings and a notorious woman -- was recycled several times. "To Have and Have Not" was an example previously covered in this space, and now I've stumbled across another: "Tokyo Joe."

This 1949 film with a B-movie feel is not widely remembered, and perhaps the reason is that it so closely resembles "Casablanca." The big difference is that instead of being an expat firmly rooted in his adopted homeland, Bogie plays a guy returning after a long absence. In other words, she doesn't walk into his gin joint, he walks into hers.

I should note that "Tokyo Joe" was not the movie I was expecting to see. I'd ordered it up in my Netflix queue along with a bunch of other World War II flicks -- those following the Reeling Backward column may have noticed the trend -- and I thought "Joe" was about an American pilot during the war. Joe Barrett was a pilot during the war, but the film is set in roughly the same year it came out, and Joe has long retired from military life.

He comes back to Tokyo to check on the status of the bar named after him, but not until being hassled by the American military. He's given only a 60-day visitor's pass. Joe arrives back at the bar to find it miraculously untouched by the many bombing raids, but not doing much business in the postwar funk that seems to grip the entire land. His friend Ito (Teru Shimada) is running the place, just getting by but better than most in Japan these days.

After refreshing their judo skills on each other -- in a rather painful-looking scene -- Joe and Ito have a discussion about the relationship between Japanese and Americans these days. Most Japanese feel guilty about having attacked Pearl Harbor, and shame at having been defeated by another power when their leaders told them they were invincible. The fact that the Americans have generally treated the Japanese well only feeds their shame.

Joe is astonished to learn that his wife Trina (Florence Marly), whom he thought dead, is still alive. He rushes over to her house, but finds her married to a British diplomat, Martin Landis (Alexander Knox). Joe abandoned her right before the war, and she divorced him in the interim. There's an interesting scene where the two men confront each other, and Joe tells Landis right out that he plans to win Trina back.

The romance between Joe and Trina is singularly unconvincing. Marly plays a Russian, with a not-terribly-good accent that sounds like a vaguely European lilt ... perhaps even, Swedish?

She has a blonde icy look and an impossibly tiny waist that made me ill every time I looked at it. Her confession to Landis that Joe holds a strange sexual power over her -- she doesn't use those exact words, but her description of wilting at the mere sight of him is enough -- is not borne out in her scenes with Joe, which are oddly flat.

In order to stay in Japan, Joe starts an air freight company with Japanese crime boss Baron Kimura, played by the great Sessue Hayakawa, as his secret partner. As near as Joe can figure out they're only hauling frozen bullfrogs, but it's not long before something more sinister turns up.

Joe later finds out he has a daughter with Trina, and Bogart's scenes with the girl are genuinely touching and a bit funny. Here's this hard-boiled guy -- Joe was prepared to resort to blackmail to force Trina back to him -- totally melting at a 7-year-old pixie.

The ending of "Tokyo Joe" is notable for its ambivalence. Joe is forced to choose between obeying the American military or Kimura, and appears to capitulate to Kimura, who is holding is daughter hostage. Things work out so that Joe saves the day, but is shot by Kimura and near death. As he's toted away on a stretcher, it's entirely uncertain if Joe will live, and if he does if Trina will choose him or Landis, and if the girl will ever find out her father's identity.

In an era when Hollywood loved cut-and-dry endings, "Tokyo Joe" is notable for the way Humphrey Bogart never steps fully into the light, or out of it.

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Dark Passage" (1947)

"Dark Passage" wouldn't have been a particularly notable film noir, except for three things: Bogie & Bacall, Bogie's face swap and first-person camera perspective.

It was, of course, one of several onscreen pairings of offscreen couple Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. They met on the set of "To Have and Have Not" (profiled in this column some months back) and soon became a permanent item. Even though she was much younger than him, somehow their faces just fit well together on the screen.

Another interesting thing is that Bogart, whose distinct face is indelibly etched into the iconography of American cinema, does not show his mug until about halfway through the movie. When we do see him, his face is all bandaged up like the Invisible Man. Bogie has to do a lot of acting with just his eyes, and gives a softer, more sensitive performance than his usual tough-guy routine.

For the first third or so of the movie, we don't even see Bogart at all, bandaged or otherwise. That's because director Delmer Daves shoots from a very unusual perspective, as if the audience is seeing through Bogart's eyes. We see his hands coming into the frame, but that's it.

If indeed they are Bogart's hands -- they look more beat-up and hairy-knuckled than I would have thought. It seems more likely that they rigged up a special camera to an operator, who walks around and pretends to be Bogart, sticking his own hands in front of the lens when necessary.

Bogart's voice narrates his thoughts as his character, Vincent Parry, escapes from San Quentin, where he's been imprisoned for a bum murder rap after supposedly killing his wife.

Young painter Irene Jansen (Bacall) picks him up in her car, saving him from being recaptured, and keeps Vincent in her apartment until he can figure things out. He goes to see an old friend, trumpet player George, and bumps into a helpful cab driver (Tom D'Andrea) who, rather than turning him into the authorities for the $5,000 reward, suggests he visit a plastic surgeon instead.

Plastic surgery is something depicted in Golden Age movies as some kind of magic process by which people's faces can be completely altered in the matter of 90 minutes under the knife, followed by a mere week of recovery.

The doctor, who makes vague threats about turning Vincent's face into that of a monkey if he takes a dislike to him, ends up doing his job very well indeed. Interestingly, he suggests making Vincent look older and with a few scars, which seems to serve no purpose other than to justify Bogart's distinctive look.

The movie abruptly shifts from the first-person perspective after Vincent is sedated, the camera turning around to show us Bogart's face in all those bandages.

He tries to return to George's to lay up while his new face heals, but finds him dead, bludgeoned with his own trumpet. Out of options, Vincent returns to Irene's.

The second half of "Dark Passage" is not nearly as good as the first, as the plot devolves into a mix of gobbledygook and double-crosses. A small-time crook that Vincent bumped into earlier turns up again to blackmail Irene and Vincent. Madge (Agnes Moorehead), a friend of Irene's who also was the star witness against Vincent at his trial, also makes an appearance, along with her once-fiance Bob, who now has an eye on Irene.

I have to say the romance between Bogart and Bacall is not terribly convincing. Irene seems to have talked herself into believing she loves Vincent without ever really having a reason for doing so. There's a few moist eyes, but not much real passion.

The ending is notable in a few ways. Having figured out that Madge was the one who framed him, Vincent confronts her, trying to force her to confess. When she refuses, he seems completely stumped as to what to do next. Was his entire plan to get a murderer to admit to what she did, even though there's no proof to substantiate it?

Anyway, Madge falls through the window to her death. Vincent describes it as her stumbling, but I think the real implication is supposed to be that she threw herself against the pane. Either way, Daves shows her entire fall from several angles, including her body lying on the pavement far below -- fairly gruesome for 1947.

Vincent and Irene talk on the phone from the bus station, where he's crossing the Mexico border on his way to Peru. Their conversation is reminiscent of the one between Red and Andy in "The Shawshank Redemption," where the person on the run tells the one they've left behind what little remote town they'll be in, even making Irene repeat the name back to her. In the last shot, they're reunited in a beach-side club.

"Dark Passage" isn't a particularly good film -- there's a lot of disparate elements that never quite sew themselves together. It's like a crazy patchwork made up of different pieces of other movies. Still, the audacious camera work alone make it memorable.

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "High Sierra" (1941)

I've seen probably three dozen Humphrey Bogart movies in my lifetime, and no matter what his part in it is, the experience always affects me the same way.

I spend the next couple of days unconsciously talking through my teeth in a fast, low patter. I imagine walking around with a .45 automatic tucked into my belt, and pistol-whipping any wiseguys who ticked me off.

That's the thing about the great iconic stars -- we instinctively want to like them, and be like them.

So what intrigued me while watching 1941's "High Sierra" is why we end up liking Roy "Mad Dog" Earle so much. He is, after all, a hardened killer who slaps people around and guns down innocent people who get in his way. Just released from an Indiana prison on a pardon that was bought and paid for, Roy's a gray and grizzled veteran con man.

Rather than looking to go straight, Roy's only intention is to nail one last big score so he can retire. Big Mac, a dying mob boss, arranged for Roy's release so he can head up a big job to steal half a million in jewels from a California resort. Roy's been given a couple of pinhead small-timers as his wing men (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) and he's none too happy about it. He also isn't thrilled with having to hole up in a camp up in the mountains, waiting to get the word the job is a go.

So why do we root for Roy, so much so that when the cops are on his tail and he's got a box full of hot jewels, we want him to get away with it?

Perhaps it's Roy's misplaced love for Velma (a 16-year-old Joan Leslie), a poor girl with a club foot he meets along the road to Los Angeles. Velma's grandfather -- played by Henry Travers, forever Clarence the angel from "It's a Wonderful Life" -- takes an instant liking to what he senses is a kindred soul, for Roy used to be just another Midwestern farm boy before he became a notorious gangster.

Roy arranges for Velma to have an operation to fix her foot, which he pays for, with a mind to marry the girl half his age. I think Roy convinces himself he's in love with her, rather than because of any real connection they share. She's goodness incarnate, and he knows he's bad, and maybe he thinks being around her will rub off on him. Velma represents an ideal Roy strives for but can never attain.

The flip side of the female coin is Marie (Ida Lupino -- who actually got top billing over Bogie), a two-bit moll who falls hard for Roy, without getting much of anything in return. She was brought along by one of the two small-time crooks, who fight like dogs over her, until Roy sets them straight and takes the girl under his protective wing.

The other notable player is Pard, a scraggly little mutt who starts following Roy around at the mountain camp. Algernon, the black handyman at the camp, relates that everyone Pard has taken a shine to has died -- which obviously doesn't bode well for Roy. (Willie Best plays Algernon in a shiftless, google-eyed depiction of servitude that is outrageous even by 1941 standards.)

Incidentally, a lot of people have mistakenly thought that Pard was played by the same dog that played Toto in "The Wizard of Oz," but in fact it was Bogart's own pet, Zero. Hopefully the star negotiated a decent contract for his mutt.

The last act of "High Sierra" is the least interesting, as all the little pieces of the Production Code-era morality lesson fall into place.

The two small-timers buy it in a car crash, and the inside man from the resort squeals like a stuck pig, resulting in Roy's mugshot on the cover of every newspaper. Velma, fixed of the problem that saw her labeled a cripple, becomes a party girl who loves to dance and drink. Roy decides to get hitched with Marie as some sort of consolation prize for Velma, and she immediately starts behaving like a whiny rhymes-with-witch.

Their downfall is, of course, the mutt Pard, who gets recognized by a motel manager, putting the cops onto Roy's trail. Roy helps them by stupidly giving Marie all his money so she can take a bus to Las Vegas, forcing him to hold up a drugstore for gas money, which begins a high-speed pursuit that ends with Roy trapped in the high mountains.

Marie, rushing to the media hoopla over public enemy one being cornered, is given away by Pard, who runs barking up to Roy's hideout spot. Hearing the dog, and realizing Marie must be near, Roy comes out from cover long enough to be taken out by a sharpshooter with a scope rifle. Roy's careening fall down the mountain side is pretty graphic for its time.

"High Sierra" was directed by Raoul Walsh from a script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, based on Burnett's novel. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to label it film noir, especially with all the sunny location shots, but it's an early and above-average example of the hard-boiled heist film.

And, of course, it's got Bogart, doing that unexplainable and inescapably magnetic Bogart thing he does.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "To Have and Have Not" (1944)

Lauren Bacall was 19 years old and a total acting novice when she appeared in a doorway to ask Bogie for a match. She reportedly was so nervous to be starring next to the screen legend that she tucked her chin into her chest to keep from shaking, tilting her eyes up at Bogart in an alluring way that soon earned a nickname, "The Look."

Later on in the film, standing in that same doorway, Bacall would deliver the lines that would cement her debut as one of the most memorable in cinematic history: "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

Talk about togetherness: Bacall and Bogart would initiate a romance during the shooting of 1944's "To Have and Have Not" that eventually led to their marriage (and the demise of Bogie's).

Directed by Howard Hawks from a script by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, "To Have and Have Not" was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway that bears little resemblance to the movie, other than the Caribbean setting and being about a fishing boat captain. Hawks supposedly called it Hemingway's worst novel, and the author dared him to produce a decent movie out of it.

The result is a film whose plot is a mishmash that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but is so strong on mood and romantic tension that we don't give a fig.

Bogart plays Harry "Steve" Morgan, an itinerant boat skipper in Martinique. Much like the city of Casablanca, Martinique is an exotic locale ostensibly under the control of the French, but with the influence of the Nazis clearly visible. The Vichy thugs are running the show, while the Free French are trying to drum up a rebellion.

As the story opens, Steve has been taking a rich American out for big-game fishing every day for two weeks, without much success. On the last day the client loses the rod and reel, and slaps Steve's friend and first mate Eddie across the face. Played by the great character actor Walter Brennan, Eddie is an old drunk who has to beg for his booze. But he's still Steve's friend, and he can't stand to see Eddie treated that way, even if he is a worthless rummy.

His client tries to skip out on Steve without paying his bill, but dies first in a gunfight between the Vichy and patriotic French. The fat, diabolical police Captain Renard -- played by Dan Seymour, in something like a combination of the Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet roles from "Casablanca" -- confiscates Steve's passport and money.

Penniless, he's forced to take a job from the resistance to pick up one of their leaders on a remote island, but the important passenger is shot during an encounter with a patrol boat. Steve spends the rest of the movie nursing the injured man, insisting to the Free French that he's not taking sides, and dodging questions from Renard.

It's funny; as you watch the movie, you can't take your eyes off Bacall. But once it's over and you start thinking about it, her character is almost totally unnecessary to the story. See, I just gave you a pretty complete overview of the plot without ever mentioning Marie Browning -- aka "Slim."

Slim is a young pickpocket whose M.O. is to lure men into buying drinks for her, then making off with their wallets. That's how she and Steve first meet -- she's just duped Steve's fishing client, and when he demands she return the wallet, he finds a ticket for a plane that takes off right before they were supposed to meet at the bank for his payoff.

Slim and Steve spend most of the movie fighting and kissing, often both within the same scene. It's real screen magic, the two of them. Bogart's doing his usual world-weary cynic shtick, but in between we catch little moments where he seems totally amazed by Bacall.

Jazzman/composer Hoagy Carmichael has a small role as Cricket, the saloon piano player, and Bacall even sings a couple of his tunes. Well, perhaps not. Accounts vary about whether the voice is actually Bacall's. According to legend, as a boy Andy Williams was recruited to dub Bacall's singing. It certainly sounds like her famously low (though not yet husky) voice.

I love the film's ending, which is somewhat abrupt but still satisfying. Having shot one of Renard's men, Steve proceeds to beat the captain and his cohort until they agree to release Eddie, who they've taken hostage. Leaving the villainous police in the hands of the resistance, they gather their stuff to hop on the boat, hoping they have enough gas to get them to another island and a new start.

Slim, whispering her goodbye to Cricket, asks him to play a happy song, and Bacall does this gorgeous little jig on their way out of the nightclub. It was the start of a beautiful friendship -- between Slim and Steve, between Bogie and Bacall, and between her and audiences for decades to come.

3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Across the Pacific"

Lord knows I have been called a persnickety purveyor of film. One of the reasons I didn't care for "Inglourious Basterds," beyond its astonishing unevenness, is the fact that the group of soldiers whose name the title bears appear onscreen for less than 20 minutes.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like it when movies double-cross their audience by purporting to be something that they aren't.

What, then, am I to make of a movie called "Across the Pacific" in which the Pacific Ocean is never glimpsed, let alone reached, forget about being crossed?

Actually, I quite liked it. It's a perfectly serviceable example of war propaganda film, made in 1942 and set in the days before Pearl Harbor. Humphrey Bogart plays a disgraced Army captain traveling aboard a Japanese ship who falls into also sorts of Nipponese intrigue.

It was directed by the great John Huston... well, partially. He had to leave during filming for his own military stint. Vincent Sherman finished things up. Mary Astor plays the mysterious woman whom Bogie bumps into on the ship and pitches woo.

I'm not really sure why they titled it "Across the Pacific," other than "Journey to Panama" probably was less likely to stir up American audiences to patriotically fork over their money for an admission ticket to see the evil Japanese get their comeuppance. But, in point of fact, Bogart boards a ship in the eastern seaboard, and only makes it as far as Colon -- the eastern side of the Panama Canal -- before the film reaches its conclusion.

Seen today, the movie is mostly interesting for its depiction of the Japanese during the war. Considering the movie was made only months after the sneak attack on Pearl, about a nation and people at which the country was actively engaged in warfare, it's fairly even-handed stuff.

Most of the Japanese crew and other characters are played by actual Japanese actors. Some of them speak in an offensive pigeon English accent, but others -- such as an amiable fellow passenger named Joe Totsuiko, speak it at least as well as Bogart. Although Joe wears coke-bottle-thick glasses, which was a common stereotype of the Japanese during that era.

There is one ship's concierge with a difficult-sounding name, whom Bogie immediately dubs Should Be.

Longtime Bogart nemesis Sydney Greenstreet plays Dr. Lorenz, a professor of sociology at a Philippine university and avowed admirer of Far East cultures. Turns out he's actually a spy for the Japanese, looking to find out about military defenses at the Canal, which his allies hope to take out at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bogart plays the patsy, Rick Leland, who has just been drummed out of the Army for embezzling. He was stationed at the Canal and knows the military set-up.

The audience is left to think Leland really is a rat for a while, but before long we're brought wise to the fact that he's a double-agent. His court martial was ginned up to ingratiate him with Lorenz.

Astor plays Alberta Marlow, a girl traveling the world for purposes that aren't made clear until the very end. I rather liked the Bogart-Astor pairing -- it's quite snippy in a charming way. They end up insulting each other most of the time, and she gives at least as good as she gets.

There's one really funny bit where Leland saves Lorenz from a would-be assassin, and the old doctor mentions that he carries a gun for protection, showing him a small automatic. Leland takes out his fat .45 (probably Army issue) and holds it next to Lorenz' weapon and says, "Hey, mine's bigger than yours."

Even in 1942, filmmakers loved a good dick joke.

3 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Caine Mutiny"

Here's an embarrassing revelation: If you'd asked me if I'd ever seen "The Caine Mutiny," I would have told you yes. It's considered one of the more iconic performances of Humphrey Bogart's career, particularly the latter stage. The image of him rolling those ball bearings in his fist while muttering away as the unstable Captain Queeg is indelible, and I know I'd seen clips of it many times.

But shortly after starting up the movie the other day, it became apparent to me that I hadn't seen it all the way through. I think because it's one of those movies that gets replayed on TV a lot, I'd seen snippets of it here and there, and I had sort of absorbed it into my consciousness without ever getting the total experience.

Well, I've rectified that now, and it's a fine movie, and Bogie is indeed great in it, and it's a noble adaptation of Herman Wouk's book, which came out only three years prior to the 1954 movie.

But it's not perfect. And I think I know why: Willie Keith.

In the book, Willie is the central character and the guy through whose eyes we see Queeg. He grows quite a bit as a character, too, going from a pudgy spoiled rich boy to a lean and seasoned Naval officer. But in the movie, he becomes more or less a supporting player.

There's a few scenes of his life off the ship, where he's wooing a nightclub singer (a knockout May Wynn) and dealing with his overbearing mother. But aboard ship, Keith takes a back row to able performers like Bogart, Fred MacMurray and Van Johnson; in the courtroom scenes, Jose Ferrer and E.G. Marshall take center stage. Willie just sort of fades into the background.

Robert Francis' performance as Keith doesn't help; he's bland and unemotional, and looking up his profile on Imdb.com I'm not surprised to see that "Caine" was one of his first, and last, starring roles.

The real dynamic is between Bogart, Johnson and MacMurray, with the former playing the righteous but dimwitted executive officer who relieves Queeg of his command, and the latter as the clever but week-kneed communications officer who goads him into doing it.

I was intrigued by how physically small Bogart appears in the movie compared to the other actors. It is not uncommon for male movie stars to be short, but there are a whole host of tricks filmmakers use to hide this (such as: hiring short extras, putting the star in lift shoes, or putting him on hidden platforms or runways, or shooting him from a low angle so he seems to loom). It seems like a conscious decision was made to have him appear small. According to a little Web research, Bogart was on the low end of average height, 5'8", while both Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray were a few inches over 6 foot. Perhaps because Queeg is the villain of the piece, having him appear small adds to the conniving portrayal. Queeg has a furtive, almost rat-like quality to him.

I enjoyed "The Caine Mutiny" very much while recognizing its flaws. Mostly, it makes me want to re-read Herman Wouk's great book.

UPDATE: While researching May Wynn's history, I learn the reason that Robert Francis didn't have a long career is that he died in a plane crash in 1955 at age 25.

Oscar countdown: Day 4

If you haven't dialed in to Turner Classic Movies lately, you really should. Every year they spend the weeks leading up to the Oscars showing Academy Award-nominated movies virtually around the clock. You'll get to see some stuff you never heard of that's really good.

Yesterday I watched "Sahara," a WWII tank picture starring Humphrey Bogart. Really ripping stuff. It was nominated for, among other things, the wonderful cinematography of the blazing desert.

One of the things that's always fascinated me about movies is how their fortunes rise and fall over time. Some great movies, like "Sahara," end up receding into our collective memories, while others that no one thought too much of at the time are remembered forever. As the TCM Oscar series shows, even films nominated for the industry's top award can get lost in the shuffle of the ages.

For example, I've always thought that "Broadcast News" was one of the finest movies of the 1980s. James L. Brooks' masterpiece has three really indelible characters, led by Holly Hunter in one of the best female roles ever written. And despite it being a very entertaining film, with plenty of acidly funny moments and romantic longings, it's an Important Film that tackles issues that matter. For my money, it's one of the best all-time movies about journalism, right up there with "All the President's Men" and "His Girl Friday."

And yet, more than 20 years down the line, "Broadcast News" doesn't get a lot of attention when people name the best movies of that era. And this is a movie that was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

Aside from individual movies, actors sometimes find themselves sinking into obscurity despite winning an Oscar. The supporting acting categories are notorious for being the kiss of death to a thespian's career. F. Murray Abraham, who won for "Amadeus," is a prime example. Ditto for Mira Sorvino. Or dozens of others.

The lesson is that being nominated for an Oscar, and even winning one, is no guarantee that your movie or your career will have legs.