Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

Aka Heroes Without Uniforms. We’ve run into a wolfpack. Merchant Marine sailors First Mate Joe Rossi (Humphrey Bogart) and Captain Steve Jarvis (Raymond Massey) survive the sinking of SS Northern Star by German U-boat U-37 en route from Halifax. After 11 days drifting they are rescued. Steve spends time with his wife Sarah (Ruth Gordon), while Joe meets and marries singer Pearl O’Neill (Julie Bishop). At the union hall, merchant seamen, including the Northern Star survivors, spend their time waiting to be assigned to a new ship. Over a round of poker, Johnnie Pulaski (Dane Clark) jokes about getting a shore job and reveals his fear of dying at sea. The others shame him into signing along with them on another ship. Alfred “Boats” O’Hara (Alan Hale, Sr.) is tracked down by his wife, who has apparently not seen him since he was rescued. She angrily serves him with a divorce summons. O’Hara, knowing he is headed back to sea, gleefully tears it up, saying Them ‘Liberty Boats’ are sure well named! When they are charged with getting supply vessel Seawitch to Russian allies in Murmansk as part of a sea convoy and the group of ships comes under attack from U-37 again, Rossi and Jarvis are motivated by the opportunity to strike back at the Germans but now have to dodge Luftwaffe bullets too … For a sailor’s wife this war is just another storm.  Tremendously exciting action adventure paying tribute to the men of the US Merchant Marine. The evocation of a group under pressure with their particular avocations and tics is expertly done and the characterisation is a model for war movies. There are all kinds of devices and diversions, from an onboard kitten and his successor; to envy of a Naval officer Cadet Ezra Parker (Dick Hogan); and the usual carping about the quality of the nosh. With a screenplay by John Howard Lawson (from a story by Guy Gilpatric) and additional dialogue by A.I. Bezzerides and W. R. Burnett you can be sure there are some riproaring lines: A trip to perdition would be like a pleasure cruise compared with what we’re going into. Wonderfully shot by Ted McCord with marvellous effects, you would never guess that this was shot on the studio lot due to wartime restrictions. Directed by Lloyd Bacon with uncredited work by Byron Haskin and Raoul Walsh. I’ve got faith – in God, President Roosevelt and the Brooklyn Dodgers – in the order of their importance!

Sirocco (1951)

We want Syria for ourselves.  Damascus, 1925. American Harry Smith (Humphrey Bogart) is selling guns to Emir Hassan (Onslow Stevens), whose Syrian rebels are battling the occupying French troops. Hoping to stem the fighting, French Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) asks Harry to introduce him to Hassan. Meanwhile, Feroud’s girlfriend, Violette (Märta Torén), is increasingly drawn to Harry. While she wants Harry to ferry her out of the dangerous country on one of his regular trips to Cairo, he stays and tries to make a profit from his dealings with both Hassan and Feroud... Who cares whose guns are firing as long as they’re not shooting at you?  This promisingly Hemingwayesque riff on the premise of Casablanca lacks its diamond-sharp characters and dialogue but boasts a few good performances, particularly from Cobb, even if Toren is no Ingrid Bergman. One of the best scenes is between them when he responds horribly violently to her question,  What kind of man are you? It also supplies the tragic ending but in a very different manner as you might imagine from the war-torn streets of Syria, the Twenties or not because Bogie’s gun-running character (the name is a nod to his role in To Have and Have Not) has a change of heart and he makes a calculated decision in which only he can be the loser when he persists in playing both ends against the middle. Screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides (whose novel The Long Haul was the basis for Bogart’s film They Drive By Night) and Hans Jacoby from Joseph Kessel’s 1936 novel Coup de Grace and directed by Curtis Bernhardt. You’re a man entirely without moral scruples

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

All we ever do is go to the movies. Movie critic Allan Felix (Woody Allen) is freshly divorced from dreamgirl waitress Nancy (Susan Anspach) who mocked his sexual inadequacy and is inconsolable, feeling that he’ll just never measure up to Rick Blaine in Casablanca, played by his movie hero Humphrey Bogart. His friends businessman Dick (Tony Roberts) and his neurotic model wife Linda (Diane Keaton) try to introduce him to dates with disastrous results.  The ghost of Bogart (Jerry Lacy) advises him on the sidelines but after a dreadful night out with Sharon (Jennifer Salt) from Dick’s office culminates in a fight with bikers even his ex-wife shows up to have a word and shoots Bogart. Meanwhile, Allan becomes convinced that he has so much in common with fellow neurotic Linda and she has feelings for him, they spend the night together … My sex life has turned into The Petrified Forest. Allen’s 1969 stage play was adapted by him for the screen but directed by Herbert Ross and it’s a smoothly funny combination of parody and pastiche that Hollywood had been making since Hellzapoppin’ years before anyone dreamed up the term postmodern. Perfectly integrating the themes and action of Casablanca which kicks off the story as Alan watches sadly at the cinema, this is totally of its time, rape jokes ‘n’ all (but to be fair Allen’s script acknowledges it’s not an ideal situation for women). Keaton is a delight in their first film together, a work that cunningly exploits the gap between movies and real life and if it’s rather more coherent at that point than the edgy films Allen had already directed it’s still very funny. There are some awesome lines and the yawning chasm between Bogart’s cool and Allan’s chaos is brilliantly devised with the ending from Casablanca inventively reworked to satisfying effect. The San Francisco and Sausalito locations look great courtesy of the marvellous work of Owen Roizman. It’s the first Allen film I ever saw and it introduced me to the music of Oscar Peterson who was also on TV a lot in those days and I like it as much now as I did when I was 9 years old and that’s saying something. You felt like being a woman and I felt like being a man and that’s what those kinds of people do

Deadline USA (1952)

A journalist makes himself the hero of the story. A reporter is only a witness. New York City newspaper The Day is in money trouble. Even though editor Ed Hutcheson (Humphrey Bogart) has worked hard running the paper, its circulation has been steadily declining. Now the widow (Ethel Barrymore) of the paper’s publisher wants to sell the paper to a commercial rival, which will most likely mean its end. Hutcheson also worries that his estranged ex-wife Nora (Kim Hunter) is about to remarry. His only hope of saving the paper is to increase the numbers by finishing his exposé on a dangerous racketeer Tomas Rienzi (Martin Gabel) before the sale is made final after a reporter is badly beaten up investigating the murder of a girl called Bessie Schmidt who may have been Rienzi’s mistress while her brother Herman (Joe De Santis) had dealings with him... Stupidity isn’t hereditary, you acquire it by yourself. Twentieth Century-Fox and writer/director Richard Brooks were a good fit:  a studio that liked pacy stories paired with a filmmaker whose toughness had a literary quality and a fast-moving narrative style.  Both parties wanted message movies and the message here is A free press, like a free life, sir, is always in danger. The newspaper is broadly based on New York Sun which closed in 1950 (and it was edited by Benjamin Day) although according to Brooks’ biography it was more or less based on New York World which closed in 1931. The casting is great with Bogart excellent as the relentlessly crusading editor who acts on his principles while all about him tumble to influence and threats, trying to peddle the truth rather than the expeditious. Barrymore towers in her supporting role as the publisher and their conflict with her daughters is the ballast to the crime story, with the marital scenario giving it emotional heft. Jim Backus does some nice work as reporter Jim Cleary:  For this a fellow could catch a hole in the head. A cool piece of work, in every sense of the term. Watch for an uncredited James Dean as a copyboy in a busy montage. That’s the press, baby. The press! And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing!

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

On the screen you get ’em all, what about off? It’s pouring rain at the funeral of Hollywood screen star, the Spanish sex symbol Maria Vargas, and we learn about her life from the men who became beguiled by her … Washed-up film director Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) is on the outs but gets a second chance at stardom when he discovers stunning peasant Vargas (Ava Gardner) dancing in a nightclub in Madrid. Goaded by his megalomaniac producer, strong-arming Wall Street financier Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), Harry convinces Maria to screen test for, and then star in, the next film he will write and direct. Publicist Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O’Brien) makes sure she’s a sensation. But as Edwards’ possessive nature and the realities of stardom weigh on Maria, she seeks a genuine lover with whom she can escape and takes refuge with a wastrel playboy Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring) before true love rescues her arriving in a white automobile … I waste my money with pleasure but yours is just a waste. Writer/director (and producer) Joseph Mankiewicz joined the ranks of those filmmakers (Wilder, Minnelli) who turned on Hollywood for this baroque exploration of directors looking for inspiration:  when all else fails, eat yourself, as Sunset Blvd. and The Bad and the Beautiful demonstrated. Despite the casting and the setting (the cinematography doesn’t come across well at this juncture) this doesn’t quite click in the first part: it isn’t as sharply attractive as those productions, with Bogart perhaps a little too laconic as the narrator of this introductory section which is all exposition and caricature. But Mankiewicz made Letter to Three Wives so he knows how to make things interesting and he plays with the narration. The entire mood lifts with the shift to the voice of brash publicist Muldoon explaining life in Hollywood, before moving back and forth to Harry; and then to the lover and husband Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi),  the Italian count who is last in his line and fails to declare a terrible secret, dooming their union. The overlapping and conflicting accounts combine to create a clever, arresting portrait of the industry and stardom after the first few story missteps, with Gardner ultimately endearing as her enigmatic character develops, desperate to find her true love when the fairytale disintegrates and her humanity destroys her. Naturally she looks utterly stunning in this vague take on the career of Rita Hayworth with touches of King Farouk, the Duke of Windsor and Howard Hughes figuring amongst the male ensemble. How much more like a dream can a dream be?

The Harder They Fall (1956)

What do you care what a bunch of bloodthirsty, screaming people think of you? Did you ever get a look at their faces? They pay a few lousy bucks hoping to see a man get killed. To hell with them! Think of yourself. Get your money and get out of this rotten business.  After seventeen years reporter Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) finds himself out of work when his newspaper folds. He’s so skint he agrees to work for the shady boxing promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) to help hype his new boxer, the massive Argentinian heavyweight Toro Moreno (Mike Lane). Toro looks the part but he has no actual boxing talent and all his fights are fixed. When he gets a shot at the title against the brutal and sadistic Buddy Brannen (Max Baer), Willis is faced with the tough decision of whether or not to tell Toro that his entire career is a sham as they move eastwards across the country and one fighter is killed in the ring and Brannen wants to fix Toro good … What gives, Eddie? I looked up Toro in the book. There’s no record of him in South America. Famous as Bogart’s final film before his death from cancer, this is a characterful work about ethics from Philip Yordan’s sparky screenplay which he adapted from Budd Schulberg’s novel. Bogart has an admirable arc as he evolves from a cynical sportswriter to the press agent coming to terms with the horrible corruption at the core of his sport:  will he write an exposé and take it down? The pairing of Steiger with Schulberg’s material again two years after On the Waterfront has its own attractions as well as offering an opportunity to see his Method acting stylings clash with Bogart’s classical theatrics. Jan Sterling does well as Bogart’s wife, functioning overtly as his conscience while Harold J. Stone is terrific as Bogart’s colleague, a broadcaster who can’t stand how he’s promoting Toro. Burnett Guffey’s glistening monochrome cinematography gives us some of the best fight scenes we’ll ever see in this tragic epic about life bristling within the ropes. Tough as you like, this was inspired by real-life boxer Primo Canera. Directed by Mark Robson.  Don’t fight it, Eddie! What are you trying to do, hold onto your self-respect? Did your self-respect help you hold your job? Did your self-respect give you a new column?  

Key Largo (1948)

You don’t like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don’t you? If it doesn’t stop, shoot it. World War II vet Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) visits Key Largo to pay his respects to the family of his late war buddy, McCloud attempts to comfort his comrade’s widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall) and wheelchair-bound father James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), who operate a run-down hotel. But McCloud realises that mobsters, led by the infamous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), are staying in the hotel. When the criminals take over the establishment, conflict is on the cards with murder and mayhem ensuing as a hurricane approaches … Thousands of guys got guns but there’s only one Johnny Rocco. Director John Huston and Richard Brooks’ adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’ s 1939 play in verse is stunning entertainment, see-sawing as violently as the weather that eventually challenges the survivors of Rocco’s plan. It didn’t start out promisingly. Huston was coming off huge success on Bogart-starrer Treasure of the Sierra Madre and hated the play;  when he and Brooks went to the location it turned out you couldn’t have a storm cellar because two feet down was ocean; and Brooks was forced to find solutions in the screenplay for Huston. Warners wanted Charles Boyer but Huston suggested Robinson, reasoning that with the removal of the Spanish Civil War plot from the original they could make Little Caesar just now he’d be from Cuba. It worked. I fight nobody’s battles but my own. There are lines that clearly allude to Bogart’s classic role in Casablanca in a film that reunites him with the director who made him a star in The Maltese Falcon. Stars blend perfectly in cracking classical Hollywood entertainment – Robinson and Barrymore are quite brilliant, as are Bogie and Bacall, paired again (and finally) after To Have and Have Not, with Claire Trevor giving an Academy Award-winning performance as the tragic moll. Literally thrilling, awash with high points and a memorable Max Steiner score. Come over here, I’d like to spit on you

The Love Lottery (1954)

Long before George Clooney thought of it, matinee idol Rex Allerton (David Niven) decamps to Lake Como to escape the hordes of girlie fans who besiege him everywhere he goes, even in his dreams:  this commences with one such nightmare when he’s torn to pieces at a premiere by the adoring mob who all look like Peggy Cummins. He falls for mathematician Anne Vernon who’s doing the calculations for gangster Herbert Lom that blackmail him into being the prize in a worldwide raffle. This mild satire from Ealing has some ambition but the writing doesn’t really hold up – the story by Charles Neilson-Terry and Zelma Bramley Moore was written by Harry Kurnitz and producer Monja Danischewsky. There are some good scenes and Niven does a lot with thin material with Vernon making hay as the clever woman who eventually falls for his charms. The attempt to marry his lady love in church is good but the payoff gag with Cummins isn’t really done as well as it could have been. There are a lot of short dream sequences which detract from the narrative momentum but on the plus side it’s beautifully shot by Douglas Slocombe and edited by Seth Holt, directed by Charles Crichton. And Humphrey Bogart does everyone a favour by showing up in a cameo.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

What a colourful poster for a movie whose heart is as black and enamelled as the shiny falcon at its story’s centre. This was one of my favourite movies when I was 11 and I’ve seen no reason since to alter my opinion even if there are times when different elements stand out. It’s now 75 years since it was released and it was immediately appreciated as a masterpiece of the hard-boiled style, yet to be christened film noir (a few years later, in Paris, bien sur).  It marked writer John Huston’s directing debut and Humphrey Bogart’s finding an extraordinary avatar in the character of Sam Spade. Dashiell Hammett’s novel had been filmed twice before but this is the Real McCoy, with Huston making very few alterations and giving the ensemble of bizarre characters a chance to shine – the effete Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) making an admirable sidekick to the Fat Man, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet); Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr) is the perpetually useless hitman and Mary Astor gives it her all as the astonishingly duplicitous femme fatale Ruth Wonderly aka Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Yes it’s all about a caper concerning a black bird but does it matter?! There are so many great scenes but the cinematography (Arthur Edeson) and editing (Thomas Richards) constantly reveal new levels of aesthetics – dontcha love the scene when Sam moves in on Brigid during her confession and the net curtain blows open to reveal Wilmer standing at the ready under the street light down below? Oh! There’s nothing fake about this. I can practically smell the gardenias! Unforgettable.

Casablanca (1942)

Round up the usual suspects. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she has to walk into mine. Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  Play it, Sam. We’ll always have Paris. Here’s looking at you, kid. I stick my neck out for nobody. Sometimes you have to go back to the source to remind yourself that there was a time when mainstream cinema produced work with remarkable, quotable dialogue and not every film was a comic book rehashed  for a market where people boil dogs as a pre-prandial treat. Romantic thriller Casablanca is notorious for being rewritten on the set, nobody knew what was going to happen next and certainly nobody concerned thought it would be the embodiment of all that was great about Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart is Rick Blaine, one of the great screen protagonists, an apparently jaded uncommitted man of the world and a dedicated ex-patriate pragmatist who is in fact a passionate, patriotic and loyal friend who sticks his neck out for absolutely everyone. Ingrid Bergman is the woman he loved in Paris, showing up at his cafe in occupied Morocco, unaware that he is there. And we flash back to their coup de foudre and realise she is now the other half of famed Resistance fighter Paul Henreid, who needs to escape the Nazis on his tail. Rick’s friendship with local police chief Claude Rains smooths a lot of issues regarding his backroom business in supplying refugees with Letters of Transit but this new situation is brimming with complications.The writers who adapted and altered the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick’s were Howard Koch (maybe), the Epstein brothers (definitely) and Casey Robinson (whose rewrites were uncredited), Michael Curtiz directed a cast made in heaven and the music is just perfection! The character of Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henreid, was based on a Jewish activist who allegedly fathered Marlene Dietrich’s daughter back in Berlin (her marriage was very happily open.) After WW2 he became persona non grata in exile and was executed by the Czech government with his remains used for surfacing a road. Not a Hollywood ending. The film that he inspired is sublime.