Dark Passage

Bogart and Bacall spark off their wonderful acting chemistry in "Dark Passage";

Guy escapes prison (Bogart,) See? Girl (Bacall,) gives refuge to guy. Got that? Yeah. . . The exciting scénics of San Francisco become the backdrop for the ensuing manhunt. The escaped con is often recognized and suspected, heightening his wish to flee and hide detection, taking us with him through his Dark Passage into and out of film noir. He is able to do so but must brave a medical metamorphosis and battle the intervening finger of fate that slates him against the quirks of manipulators and those who would see him behind bars in a shake of this finger. Is he guilty? --no. San Francisco creates a symphony of noir elements with a twist. What. . .? A happy ending you say? Of course. It's Bogie and Bacall, likely the only couple to make it out of film noir alive, together and with a pretty colored tropical drink in hand, in B& W, of course.

 

Imdb Link - DarkPassage

White Heat (1949)

The Raoul Walsh Classic Production - White Heat with James Cagney;

After killing two men in a train robbery, Cody Jarrett pleads guilty to a far less serious crime that occurred at the same time, but in a distant location, thereby giving him a perfect alibi. The Treasury Department decides to plant one of their officers, Hank Fallon, in the prison to see if they can learn where Jarrett hid the Treasury Bonds he stole. Jarrett and Fallon become good friends and when Jarrett makes a break for it, Fallon goes with him. Jarrett s next robbery involves stealing the nearly half-million dollar payroll from a chemical factory, but using modern technology the Feds are able to track him down and bring his robbery and killing spree to an end.



Bracingly directed by Raoul Walsh, this fast-paced thriller tracing Jarrett's (James Cagney) violent life in and out of jail is also a harrowing character study. Jarrett is a psychological time bomb ruled by impulse. He murders a wounded accomplice and revels in the act. He neglects his sultry wife (Virginia Mayo) and adores his doting mother. It is among the most vivid screen performances of Cagney's career.

 

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Funny Stuff;

If the surprise expressed by James Cagney's fellow inmates during "the telephone game" scene in the prison dining room appears real, it's because it is. Director Raoul Walsh didn't tell the rest of the cast what was about to happen, so Cagney's outburst caught them by surprise. In fact, Walsh himself didn't know what Cagney had planned; the scene as written wasn't working, and Cagney had an idea. He told Walsh to put the two biggest extras playing cons in the mess-hall next to him on the bench (he used their shoulders to boost himself onto the table) and to keep the cameras rolling no matter what.

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Angels with Dirty Faces

The Immortal Classic Movie with Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, from 1938 ; Angels with Dirty Faces. My dad tookme to see this when i was a kid. I loved Jimmy Cagney, i thought he was the coolest guy("think your a wise guy huh?") of all. Looking back i wonder how this was done because the fellow is pretty much of a small guy with a bit if a spazzy face. Wierd how Hollywood can take ugly people and make total crooners and sex symbols out of them (see Sigourney Weaver).

Angels with Dirty Faces is a 1938 American gangster film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, the Dead End Kids and Humphrey Bogart, along with Ann Sheridan and George Bancroft. The film was written by Rowland Brown, John Wexley and Warren Duff with uncredited assistance from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

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Plot Synopsis - Angels with Dirty Faces

Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien) are childhood friends who robbed a railroad car as kids. Rocky saved Jerry's life during the chase by pulling him out of the way of a steam train while running from the guards that saw them. Rocky was then caught by the police, but Jerry - who could run faster - escaped. Rocky, after being sent to reform school, grows up to become a notorious gangster, while Jerry has become a priest.

Rocky returns to his old neighborhood, where Jerry is running a home that intends to keep young boys away from a life of crime. Six of those boys, Soapy (Billy Halop), Swing (Bobby Jordan), Bim (Leo Gorcey), Patsy (Gabriel Dell), Crabface (Huntz Hall), and Hunky (Bernard Punsly), idolize Rocky, and Jerry attempts to keep his former friend from corrupting them. (These boys were to star in Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/The Bowery Boys films).

Meanwhile Rocky gets involved with Frazier (Humphrey Bogart), a crooked lawyer, and Keefer (George Bancroft), a shady businessman and municipal contractor. They try to dispose of Rocky, but he finds the record book that they keep where they list the bribes to city officials. Jerry learns of these events and warns Rocky to leave before he informs the authorities. Rocky ignores his advice and Jerry gets the public's attention and informs them all of the crooked government, causing Frazier and Keefer to plot to kill him. Rocky overhears this plot and kills them to protect his childhood friend.

Rocky is then captured following an elaborate shootout in a building, and sentenced to die. Jerry visits him just before his execution and asks him to do him one last favor - to die pretending to be a screaming, snivelling coward, which would end the boys' idolization of him. Rocky refuses, and insists he will be "tough" to the end, and not give up the one thing he has left, his pride. At the very last moment he appears to change his mind and has to be dragged to the electric chair. The viewer is never told whether Rocky genuinely was afraid, a "rotten sniveling coward", or if he does it for the Father and the boys. The boys hear about what happened and decide he was a coward. Then Father Jerry asks them to say a prayer with him, "for a boy who couldn't run as fast as I could".

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The Hitch Hiker (1953)

When was the last time you invited death into your car?

The Hitch Hiker (1953 Film Noir Cult Classic)

Two friends on a fishing trip pick up a stranded motorist who turns out to be a psychotic escaped convict. This sociopath has already murdered other good Samaritans in his efforts to evade authorities. He sadistically taunts and threatens the two men and perversely delights in telling them that he has them both marked for death sometime before the end of the trip. His destination is a ferryboat in Baja, California, which he hopes will help him get to the mainland. The hostages hope to stay alive long enough to escape or be rescued by Mexican authorities.
The film was based upon an incident that happened in California in the early 1950s. A man named Billy Cook murdered a family of five, including three children, and then killed a traveling salesman.

He then kidnapped two hunters and took them across the border into Mexico, intending to kill them, too, but before he could he was captured by Mexican police and subsequently extradited to the US, where he was tried for the murders, convicted, and died in the gas chamber at San Quentin on Dec. 12, 1952



The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is a film noir directed by Ida Lupino about two fishing buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker during a trip to Mexico. The movie was written by Robert L. Joseph, Lupino and her husband Collier Young based on a story by Out of the Past screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring, who was blacklisted at the time and did not receive screen credit.

     

In 1998, The Hitch-Hiker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."