"Dark Passage" - review

“Dark Passage”

An interesting but ultimately humdrum journey.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were one of Hollywood’s greatest pairings both onscreen and off.  Their love affair defied age, status and background.  When they met while shooting “To Have and Have Not”, Bogart was 44 years old, married, and already an industry icon.  Bacall was only 19, single and a complete unknown in Tinseltown.  “To Have and Have Not” was a major hit and was quickly followed by “The Big Sleep”, which also did very well.  “Dark Passage” was Bogart and Bacall’s third appearance together, but box office lightning did not strike again.

Bogart plays a man wrongly convicted of murder who escapes from San Quentin and gets plastic surgery to avoid detection while trying to prove his innocence.  Bacall is the artist who believes him and while trying to help Bogart find his accuser, they fall in love.  Bogart and Bacall’s crackling chemistry does justice to the romance, but everything that happens around the love story feels clumsy or cliché.

The first act of the film is unusual in that it’s shot from the POV of Bogart’s character since we never see his face pre-surgery.  Initially this choice is a fun visual variation, but once the bandages are off it gets dropped, so it ends up feeling more like more a sight gag than a story necessity.  While a new handheld camera was used to film the POV sequences, the movement is too slow and mechanical to feel natural, which breaks the immersion.

The cast of characters that Bogart meets are familiar archetypes, but unlike Bogart and Bacall, they are oddly paired.  First there’s the taxi driver who just happens to recognize Bogart’s character and also just happens to know a disgraced doctor who can fix Bogart’s face for a small fee.  The actor is great, but the character’s ghoulish bedside manner makes it very doubtful that any man, convict or otherwise, would submit his skin to the scalpel of a doctor who looks like Bela Lugosi channeling Henry Frankenstein!

How did the taxi driver and the doctor come to know each other?  What it is about their “working” relationship that works?  They seem to be from such totally different worlds, yet their dynamic suggests a history that might actually make a better story than the one being told!  Is there an underground specifically for escaped cons needing plastic surgery?  I’d like to see that!

Then there’s the character named Baker whom Bogart bums a ride from just after his jailbreak and whom we later learn is a small-time crook who wants to blackmail Bacall through Bogart.  How did Baker come to be driving by San Quentin that day?  This is also how Bogart meets Bacall’s character a little later after he knocks Baker out and steals his car.  These coincidences are too contrived, and no justifications are forthcoming.

Aside from Bogart and Bacall’s smoldering scenes together, part of what makes “Dark Passage” entertaining was director Delmer Daves’s insistence on actual location shooting in San Francisco.  This live-on-the-street style gives the film a visceral atmosphere that is quite welcome.  Many films shot on studio sets or backlots can feel quite claustrophobic due to the small number of locations and that sense of sterility can carry over onto the screen.  Being outside gives a real feeling of danger for the protagonist and his desire to remain undetected.

Another visually striking sequence is the psychological collage that occurs when Bogart’s character is sedated before his plastic surgery.  Many of the film’s players make an appearance, and the kaleidoscopic effect on their faces is used to great effect with the addition of some quite unusual images to establish the morose mish-mash of so many worries in his head.

“Dark Passage” is aptly titled, as it is a beautifully shot film with great performances, but the story is haphazard and the pacing erratic.  It feels like the narrative was written on the fly without considering any connections between the characters or developing an overall theme for the story being told.  It’s an intriguing puzzle at first, but it ultimately feels like many pieces are missing from the picture.