High Sierra (1941)

Next up is a movie that’s probably only know for the fact that it launched Humphrey Bogart into stardom, 1941’s High Sierra. Bogart plays a gangster, Roy, who’s released from prison and heads out on another big heist. He meets up with all kinds of wacky characters and decides that he actually wants to be a good guy after all, but the world just won’t let him.

This is the perfect follow up to my last review. In Stranger on the Third Floor I mentioned how I’ve complained till I’m blue in the face about 40s and 50s romance. Here is the perfect example of the kind of romance I hate. Our lead, a 42 year old man, sees a 20 year old woman and instantly falls in love despite barely ever talking to her. In fact, I would say he falls in love solely based on the fact that she’s a cripple with a club foot. He tries to buy her love by fixing her foot. It’s clear he isn’t doing it purely out of the goodness of his heart; he wants something from her in the end. I understand that this is supposed to show us as the audience that this is a guy that just wants to settle down and live a quiet life, but he tries to buy the love of a girl half his age. I’m not even sure half his age is accurate, because she looked and acted just like a kid. Sorry for the spoiler, but she does not take him up on his offer of marriage. Marriage… when they haven’t even gone on a single date or anything. No “I like you, do you like me?”, he jumps right into “I want to marry you.” I’m not surprised in the slightest that she said no, I would’ve said no too. Then they make her out to be the bad guy in the whole situation. I’m supposed to feel bad for ol’ Roy because this ingrate didn’t want to marry him after he insisted she take his money for the surgery? Clearly, this plot thread did not endear me to his character in any way. It turned me off from him more than anything else. The only interesting thing I found out about Roy is that the dog that follows him around in the movie was Humphrey Bogart’s actual dog, Zero. I thought that was really cute… it must’ve been a blast to have his dog on set with him while he worked. I know that without the distraction of the dog, I would’ve have lasted nearly as long as I did.

Now I’ve gone on for a long time about these 2 characters, but they aren’t nearly the only characters in the movie. There’s the old guy that hires Roy for the heist, his bodyguard or something, a bunch of guys that come to the heist and then die immediately after, club foot, club foot’s grandparents, club foot’s mother, club foot’s guy from back home, Marie the “femme fatale”, the doctor, Roy and let’s not forget Algernon. Algernon is the cringey black character that painfully reminds you that you’re watching a movie from the 40s. Yes, sir… no, sir… let me be your punchline. He wasn’t a main character, but to see that 20 minutes in didn’t fill me with hope. Now let’s talk about Marie, the “femme fatale” I mentioned earlier because she’s important to the plot. She’s the one that talks Roy into bringing the dog along with him everywhere and sets up the ending. She also falls in love with him because he is a man and she likes man. Except this time he doesn’t love her. Wow, what a twist! Oh, but then he gets turned down by club foot and decides he loves Marie after all. How sweet. There’s nothing like the feeling of being somebody’s second choice.

Just like in the last movie, this one had a femme that wasn’t quite fatale. Except this time, the movie didn’t even have the other noir elements to prop it up. High Sierra was filmed on set instead of completely on a sound stage, so it’s very bright, the music is cheery, our lead wears 0 trench coats and there are no voice overs. The only thing I can pick out that makes it a film noir is the crime element, but that’s stretching it. If anything I would say this is just your run of the mill action, crime, drama movie.

I don’t understand why this movie gets more praise than Stranger on the Third Floor. It has horrible pacing, the character building is weak, and the plot is laughably obvious. I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. Roy could’ve died, Marie could’ve died, club foot could’ve died, I didn’t care. The only death that would’ve hurt me was the dog. It was boring, it didn’t age well, and it isn’t some ground breaking noir. I don’t regret watching it, but I don’t think I’d ever bother to watch it again.

Verdict: 6.9/10

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

As promised, my first post back is about a movie that most consider to be the first film-noir, 1940’s Stranger on the Third Floor. It’s a short movie, coming in at only 64 minutes, but it’s got a lot of the film-noir staples. You’ve got murder, trench coats, voice overs, dark shadows, and a femme… well she’s not quite fatale yet, but it’s early and the movie can’t have it all. The plot centers around a man who’s the key witness in a death row murder trial. After the suspect is sentenced to death, he starts to wonder if he did the right thing. While it may be considered the first, it seems like most don’t consider it one of the best. It didn’t do very well at the box office and because it didn’t rake in the dough, nobody paid it much attention. Well I can tell you that for once I paid attention.

I can agree on the fact that this isn’t a masterpiece, but there are parts to it that drew me in. Essentially there are 3 main characters: our protagonist, Michael; his girlfriend, Jane; and the titular Stranger. The chemistry between Michael and Jane is what initially got my attention. Over the years, I’ve complained till I’m blue in the face about how much I hate romance in the 40s and 50s. It always happens so fast that I can’t buy into it, but this movie does it just right. It starts with the couple already together and clearly in love as they share breakfast together at a diner. They banter and joke around in a way I find endearing. Michael was, for the most part, a sweet guy and an interesting lead. Jane is a great early femme fatale. She wasn’t merely “the girlfriend”, she spoke her mind when it came to the trial, and when things were looking grim for our protagonist, she stepped up to the plate to find the stranger. While I’m on the subject of the stranger, let’s talk about him because he was played by Peter Lorre and was the perfect casting choice for the role. He was such a creepy character, and he was in most of my favorite scenes of the movie. The first of which was where Michael first encounters the stranger and chases him down the stairs. The music perfectly times to their frantic steps and when they pause to stare each other down, the music stops with them. I’m usually not much for the music in these movies, but it was fantastic. The other scene that stuck out in my mind was when Jane starts to look for the stranger and takes a break in a shop, only for Peter Lorre to walk up and order raw hamburger right beside her. I’ll admit it’s a little ridiculous that she recognized the guy based on his bulging eyes, but putting that aside I liked the build up of her realization that the guy she suspected of murder was standing right beside her.

The characters are the main reason that this movie worked for me. I liked the story for the most part, but I feel like the length of the movie hurt my overall impression of it. When the movie was over, it just felt incomplete. It’s like whoever wrote the screenplay had a good idea and wrote out all the main plot points, but they had no real concept of how to flesh the story out to feature length. For example, we’re thrown right into the trial at the beginning and I think they could’ve had a few scenes setting that up more, or feeding us more information about our characters. More character building in this movie would’ve only helped it. Another problem I had was that at one point our protagonist completely disappears. Michael gets arrested, or detained, I’m not even sure, by the police and this forces Jane into finding the stranger to prove him innocent. They didn’t really tell us much about what was happening to him and I think they could’ve set the situation up for us some more to crank up the tension. It wasn’t a bad story, but it just had some pacing issues that held it back from being great.

But story and characters are not the only thing this movie has going for it. It also has style. The biggest thing you’ll probably hear this movie being known for, aside from being the first, is the nightmare scene. The middle section where Michael starts to contemplate if he did the right thing by convicting the guy is one of the highlights of the movie. You get the great stairwell scenes that are moody and dark, and this is where the majority of the voice overs take place. After an unfortunate series of events involving Michael’s intolerable neighbour, he has nightmares about getting arrested and sentenced to death himself. He realizes just how fallible the system currently is. It’s sad to see a man sentenced to death because one guy says he saw him standing over a body, it’s even sadder to know that people are still convicted solely based on eye witness testimony today. People can easily lie, or worse yet they can think they’re telling the truth but just aren’t remembering what actually happened. It’s he said, she said with people’s lives. Not only that, but in his nightmare he imagines that nobody really cares what the truth is because they like the idea that a news reporter who helped convict a man to death for murder is now accused of murder himself. Cases turning into media frenzies where the public is more concerned with a good story rather than the facts is even more of an issue today than it ever could’ve been in the 40s. With the whole world connected, a good story can travel faster than the truth. I think the level of justice has dramatically increased since this movie was made, but some of its points are definitely still valid and I found it interesting to think about.

While Stranger on the Third Floor has its share of problems, there are some interesting scenes and tense moments that succeeded in holding my full attention which is a high bar to reach because I can get distracted by almost anything. This is worth a watch if you’re into film-noir and you can look past the plot issues.

Verdict: 7.3/10