Edgar Allan Pooh
" . . . that wasn't wrong," confesses ten-cent hooker "Marie" (Ida Lupino) to Public Enemy Number One "Roy" (Humphrey Bogart). HIGH SIERRA reveals that gasoline cost about 24 cents per gallon in the high mark-up area of California's desert, but obviously inflation has pumped up the price of sex even more than that of gas since WWII. Roy is a poor sap who's been watching too many doctor movies, and believes that he can get a girl half his age simply by underwriting a little cosmetic surgery. Of course, Humphrey himself is so soft that he felt terrible seeing Ida walking toward the gas chamber in THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, so he writes her a get-out-of-jail-free card toward the end of SIERRA. Unfortunately, Ida's dog "Pard" (Zero) eats Humphrey's homework, so SIERRA concludes with Ida once again chamber-bound. Hanging, frying, or gassing women was a frequent theme of American flicks from this period (remember Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON, among others), since it was the only way one infamous member of the MPAA censor board could get off. This Perv had little interest in seeing the MEN actually most guilty getting their just desserts on film: Note how "Louis Mendoza," SIERRA's "inside man," gets off Scot Free, along with ALL of the well-heeled Crime King Pins wearing suits more expensive than Roy's.
James Hitchcock
"High Sierra" is an early example of film noir and is sometimes cited as the film which made a major star of Humphrey Bogart. It was co-written by Bogart's friend John Huston, who later in the same year (1941) would direct him in "The Maltese Falcon". In most of Bogart's films noirs, including "The Maltese Falcon", "Dead Reckoning" and "The Big Sleep" he played the hero, albeit often a flawed hero, but here he plays the villain. The film opens with Bogart's character, a convicted bank robber named Roy Earle, being released from jail after being pardoned by the State Governor. This does not mean, however. that Roy has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice or that he is now a reformed character. Far from it. His release has been engineered by a gangster named Big Mac, to whom the corrupt Governor owes a political favour. Big Mac (a name which in the forties presumably did not carry the associations with hamburgers which it would today) wants Roy to carry out a robbery for him at an exclusive holiday resort in the Sierra Nevada of California. (Hence the title). In form the film is a "heist movie" comparable to something like "The Concrete Jungle". It shows how Roy and his associates go about planning and carrying out the crime, concentrating more on the villains than it does on the police pursuing them. These being the days of the Production Code, however, when film-makers were forbidden from showing criminals succeeding in their enterprises, it also tells the story of how the robbery goes wrong and how Roy is forced to take refuge in the mountains. Film noir was a genre often noted for its tone of moral ambiguity, and I said earlier that some of Bogart's other roles involved him playing flawed heroes. Here, there is another sort of moral ambiguity about his character. On the one hand Roy is a dangerous criminal; he has no compunction about shooting dead a security guard who attempts to foil the robbery, displaying the ruthlessness which is to earn him the nickname "Mad Dog". , On the other hand, he also has certain qualities which, in another context, could have been admirable ones. He has a professional pride which leads him to be meticulous about planning his crimes, whereas his partners can be careless and slapdash. (He loathes the "Mad Dog" nickname, believing that it denotes someone wild and out of control). He has a code of ethics which leads him to turn down an opportunity to double-cross his associates. (But woe betide anyone who tries to double-cross Roy!) At one point in the film he pretends to be a successful businessman, and it is easy to imagine that, under different circumstances, this is what he could have become. The strangest side of Roy's nature is shown in his relationship with Velma, a young woman with a deformed foot whom he meets while planning the robbery. Taking pity on the girl, and knowing that her family are too poor to pay for corrective surgery, Roy pays for it himself. He does so in the hope that the otherwise attractive Velma will marry him afterwards, but never makes this a condition of paying for her surgery. (In the event, Velma turns him down, but for reasons unconnected with his criminal career, of which she remains ignorant). It is easy to see why this film made Bogart a star, as he gives one of the finest performances of his career, bringing out all sides of Roy's complicated personality, not only his ruthlessness, but also his better qualities, to such an extent that, even during the climactic final scenes of the manhunt on Mount Whitney, we can feel a certain sympathy with him. There are also good supporting performances from the two main female players, Joan Leslie as Velma and Ida Lupino as Marie, the sluttish moll who becomes Roy's lover after his rejection by Velma. The personalities of the two women are sharply contrasted. Velma can be seen as representing the respectable life of domesticity which Roy hopes to retire to after pulling off one last big job which will keep him for the rest of his life, while Marie represents Roy's actual life as it is at present. The film is also notable for its extensive location shooting, especially as it was made in the early forties, a period when most films were shot indoors in a studio. Raoul Walsh's black-and-white photography of the California sierras is very different to the gritty, urban look of most films noirs, but it lends the film a certain epic grandeur. It is the sort of film Ansel Adams might have made had he taken up film-making as well as landscape photography. Huston's script, co-written with William Burnett, is a powerful and intelligent one. This combination of acting, direction and writing makes "High Sierra" one of the great classic noirs, worthy to tank alongside the likes of "White Heat" (also made by Walsh), "Double Indemnity" and "Pickup on South Street". 9/10
AaronCapenBanner
Raoul Walsh directed this tense thriller that stars Humphrey Bogart as Roy Earle, nicknamed 'Mad Dog' in his youth, but who has now calmed down. After he gets out of prison, he is enlisted by his former employer to crew chief two inexperienced crooks(played by Alan Curtis and Arthur Kennedy) which he resents, but goes along with it. They plan to rob a rich hotel resort in Nevada, but along the way lonely Roy helps a crippled girl named Velma(played by Joan Leslie) get an operation to correct her physical impediment. She is grateful, but Roy is too old for her, and he leaves, but does find love with Marie(played by Ida Lupino) who loves him despite his doomed fate, as the heist goes wrong, and Roy finds himself on the run, until they get to the Sierra Nevada mountains... Well-filmed on location, exciting story of a doomed man whom time has passed by was Bogart's breakout role to leading man status.
