Okay so I know I've been chastising everyone for not watching some of
the classics over the last few days but I'm no saint myself when it
comes to missing out on the oldies. In fact I've seen less the ten film
from this decade's list including the next two films. Also in the last
post we looked at Casablanca, but leading man Humphrey Bogart was a busy
boy in the 1940s. After a lot of supporting roles in the 1930s he
finally became a big star and was probably the top leading man in that
decade. Although he didn't win his Best Actor Oscar, for The African
Queen, until the 1950s the 1940s were definitely Bogey's best decade.
And recently I watched two of his films from the decade one pre and one
post Casablanca and both directed by John Huston.
First up we
have The Maltese Falcon, Huston's first film as a director, and a
nominee at the 1942 ceremony. In it Bogart plays private detective Sam
Spade whose detective partner is shot while on a job tracking a man for a
girl whose sister has supposedly run off with him. The man also dies
that night and Spade is fingered for both murders and has to find out
who killed who. Spade then gets charged with the task of finding a black
figure of a bird which turns out to be the titular Maltese Falcon, a
jewel encrusted figure which was a gift to King Charles V of Spain from
the Knights
of Malta. During his investigation Bogart meets the diminutive and
excitable Joel Cairo and the large and domineering Kasper Gutman
sometimes referred to as the fat man. Cairo is the man who first asks
Spade to look for the bird and Gutman is able to explain its
significance. Meanwhile Spade finds out that the girl Brigid was also
after the bird with the man who was killed. The film then builds to a
climax as we try to discover who shot who and who is scamming who and
what will Spade do? Bogart's Spade isn't a million miles away from
Casablanca's Rick, both characters don't really have an emotional
attachment to the item on offer and both would rather no attract
trouble. Unlike Rick, Spade is basically after money, although there is a
brief spark between him and Brigid its nothing like the Rick and Ilsa
romance in Casablanca. The similarities to Casablanca don't end there
though as Bogart's co-stars are Peter Lorre (as Cairo) and Sydney
Greenstreet (as Gutman), the former played the petit criminal in
Casablanca while the latter played the rival bar owner. Greenstreet in
fact was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and rightly so as, apart
from Bogart, his performance is the film's best, the excellent adapted
screenplay was also nominated. What I will say is that this is the first
proper mystery film that I've watched since I've been doing this quest.
While The Thin Man did have a kind of murder mystery structure, The
Maltese Falcon was incredibly involving and very well plotted, I believe
that Bogart's performance here at least deserved an Oscar nom but this
was the year that How Green Was My Valley walked off with most of the
awards and there was hardly anything left for even Citizen Kane.
Bogart
returned to Oscar-nominated films at the last ceremony of the decade
with The Treasure of The Sierra Madre which did however win Best
Director and Adapted Screenplay for John Huston and Best Supporting
Actor for his father Walter. The film sees Bogart's Dobbs teaming up
with Huston's Howard and Tim Holt's Curtin to find gold in the Sierra
Madre mountains in Mexico. Dobbs and Curtin meet as two Americans down
on their luck in Mexico and soon decide to seek Gold with the help of
old-timer Howard. They soon strike it lucky but there are complications
which
include the arrival of bandits, a fourth American discovering them and
Dobbs' own paranoia and greed. It is the final one of those three that
the film ultimately plays on as Dobbs believes that Howard is out to get
him and that Curtin plans to short change him later on. In terms of
plot that's about it and that's the beauty of the film as it is a study
of the human psyche and how much trust we can give our fellow man. This
theme is played upon nicely both by the haunting score and by the
brilliantly shot close-ups of all three men. The central three
performances are all excellent, Bogart really did deserve a Best Actor
nomination here as his portrayal of the greedy Gringo Dobbs is an
intense and sometimes unlikeable one. Dobbs is definitely different from
Bogart's other two roles in this decade and that's even better as we
don't really expect a man who's played so many heroes to here play a
morally ambiguous character. Walter Huston also does well as the
old-timer who's obviously seen men affected by gold in a similar way
before, Huston impressed me with his work in Dodsworth so it's nice to
see him winning an award while Tim Holt also does well as the upstanding
Curtin. The film isn't perfect, it takes a little too long to get
started and some of Howard's scenes in the Mexican village should've
been quicker but overall this is a masterpiece that shows you don't need
a huge story to keep audiences entranced for two hours.
There
will be a little bit more bogey before the decade is out but these are
definitely two of his defining films and I'm glad that I got to watch
both of them for the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment