This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Not sure I can recall a movie with more plot contrivances, or weak attempts to explain them away. How can you get invested when your intelligence is being insulted in every scene. Admittedly, the POV camera is a lot less irritating than in Lady of the Lake. It helps that we're either enjoying some fine supporting performances or gawking at Lauren Bacall. By the way, the POV camera on Bacall during the dinner scene allowed me to take a good long look at her eyebrows. They don't match her actual eyebrow line. They have a painted-on arch like a character in the 1960s Batman TV series. But goodness she was beautiful. This is a snoozefest, though. Who puts Bogey in a movie, only to have him invisible for 45 minutes and a head-bandaged mute for another 20? Maybe one of the most incomprehensible decisions in movie-making's Golden Era. I'd liken it to the Edsel and New Coke.

This is at the same time both one of the most romantic noirs and one of the darkest. Humphrey's situation is utterly hopeless, as he condemned for life escapes from San Quentin with no chance at all to get away with it, unless he changes his face, but even with that operation carried through successfully, he faces new overwhelming difficulties by murders and suicides and not a chance to prove his innocence. This is one of the main themes of most noirs: the helplessness of innocence to prove itself true, while all society seems united in attacking and prosecuting you for it, and in most noirs this struggle against impossible odds is not very successful. Here Humphrey finds Lauren Bacall who appears from nowhere and helps him on the way, while Agnes Moorehead does her best to ruin even that small chance of a break - she has never been more furious.The cinematography is fascinating, this is a forerunner of both Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Frankenheimer's "Seconds", and the suspense is sustained all the way to the very end. It's certainly one of the best noirs of the forties, Franz Waxman's music helps in making it an accomplished cinematic masterpiece, and there is nothing wrong with the story. Only people lacking the sense of true romanticism could have any objection against the script.

Dark Passage is one of the more experimental movies of Hollywood's golden age with majority of the film's first third being filmed from the first person point of view of Humphrey Bogart's character. I never thought a black & white movie from the 1940's would remind me of a modern video game. I would like to see more films which experiment with this point of view style. MGM's Lady In the Lake (also released in 1947) was filmed in POV for the entire film which the studio promoted by claiming the POV style was the most revolutionary style of film since the introduction of the talkies. Nope, it didn't catch on. The use of POV took me of guard at first as I wanted to watch some Bogart but I did not get to see him on screen. Bogart's distinctive voice alone though helps carry the picture, thanks in part to his many witty remarks. We're then given a section of the movie in which Bogart doesn't talk and is wrapped in bandages looking like a horror movie character (these scenes also make me squeamish). Considering we have to wait a whole hour until we finally see and hear Bogart in his entirely makes Dark Passage nothing short of a daring role.For the plot you do need to suspend your disbelief at the number of highly improbable coincidences. Irene (Bacall) just happens to be out painting near San Quentin on the day Vincent Parry (Bogart), the man she has an obsession with escapes and she knows where to find him. Oh and she also happens to be friends with Madge (Agnes Moorehead) who gave false testimony in court against Parry that he murdered his wife. I find it is easy however to just roll along with the ridiculous plot as the movie plays out like a dream, culminating in the satisfaction of seeing Bogart get his revenge on Agnes Moorehead (a useless old bag and real love to hate character) and seeing these two characters getting their happily ever after together in South America. One minor complaint I have is the reveal of Frank Parry's face on the newspaper, prior to getting plastic surgery; because the character doesn't actually have Bogart's face, I would have preferred the mystery of not knowing what he looks like. Also, a plastic surgeon who can give you the face of Humphrey Bogart? Someone should have told Woody Allen that in Play It Again Sam. Dark Passage in part sees the return of gangster Bogart but still has the romantic elements of his on screen persona which he developed after achieving stardom. Right from the very beginning we're in classic gangster territory, a prisoner escaping from San Quentin, the type of setting not seen in a Bogart film since High Sierra. The on location filming in San Francisco also really adds to the film, giving you a sense of the world the movie inhabits and Irene's apartment with the two floors and the art deco designs - I want it!I once said 'All Through the Night' was the most Hitchcockian film Bogart starred in but Dark Passage wouldn't be far behind it. We get the innocent man falsely accused on the run while trying to prove his innocence. The focusing on landmarks (the Golden Gate Bridge), while the San Francisco setting has some Vertigo vibes. The trippy plastic surgery sequence feels reminiscent of the Salvador Dali dream sequence in Spellbound; while Madge's death rings a bell of the character death shots in Vertigo in which someone falls from a great distance.When attempting to review a movie, I can't always predict how much I will have to say about it. Occasionally though you get movies like Dark Passage, which have layers and layers of fascinating details worth talking about. Dark passage is my favourite Bogart & Bacall film, although to be honest I was never a huge fan of their partnership. To Have and Have Not bored me and The Big Sleep was, well, a big sleep. Plus I never fully got the appeal of Lauren Bacall; she never struck me as a massively interesting screen presence. I find Bacall plays a much more interesting character than in the previous two Bogie & Bacall pairings. Not a vamp but a lonely single woman who purses painting as a hobby. During the first kiss between Bogart and Bacall I had the reaction of "Ok, now I'm getting it".

"Dark Passage" is an example of how a gimmick can work wonders.Humphrey Bogart plays an escaped con who was wrongfully accused of murdering his wife -- of course he was wrongfully accused....he's Bogie! To evade the law, he enlists the help of a shady plastic surgeon to give him a new face. While he's waiting for his face to heal, he's nursed by none other than Lauren Bacall, fetching as hell as a do-gooder who wants to help him because her own father was similarly wrongfully accused of a crime. The gimmick is that we don't see Bogie's face for the first half of the movie. Much of the film is shot in first-person perspective except for the occasional establishing shot. Once his face is in bandages, the film switches to a more omniscient perspective, but we still don't get a glimpse of that hang-dog mug until the bandages come off.After Bogie becomes Bogie again, he sets out to solve the mystery of his wife's true murderer, which brings Agnes Moorehead into the picture, absolutely sensational as a shrill harridan with whom Bogie has some history. Moorehead steals the picture simply by being on the screen, a considerable feat given the screen presence of Bogie and the visual sizzle of Bacall.The first half of "Dark Passage" is effectively eerie; the first-person camera work really adds to the atmosphere, and Bogart's bandaged visage lends a creepiness to things. The second half is more conventional in terms of filmmaking, but by then the engaging plot and the presence of Moorehead have successfully filled in for what the film loses in visual interest."Dark Passage" is a real winner.Grade: A