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overthinking entertainment
Movie: High Sierra
After being released from prison, notorious thief Roy Earle is hired by his old boss to help a group of inexperienced criminals plan and carry out the robbery of a California resort.
Aging mobster Big Mac (Donald MacBride) is looking to pull off one more heist before he retires. With his sights set on robbing a California casino, Big Mac breaks one of his former associates, Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart), out of prison to mastermind the job. When the robbery goes awry, Earle is forced to go on the lam and settles for the night in the hills of the nearby Sierra Nevadas. But, with the cops on his tail, Earle is soon forced to fend off the law from the mountains.
Imogen Sara Smith: An austere purity takes over High Sierra as Roy flees into the mountains, pursued by the police. The long car chase is not goosed by music, only accompanied by the monotony of sirens, wheels screeching on switchback dirt roads, and yells echoing through the mountains. The bare slopes and sharp-toothed pinnacles of the Sierras form a landscape of harsh beauty, mercilessly indifferent to people. There is no refuge in this wilderness; the fugitive is treated as a wild beast, to be picked off by sharpshooters as though he were a coyote or a mountain lion. But Roy is lured out by his human ties: betrayed by the fanatic loyalty of his dog and his own reckless impulse to call out to the woman he loves.
This spectacle is witnessed by gawking crowds and narrated in purple prose by a radio announcer, turning the scene into a metacommentary on the American myth of "the gangster as tragic hero," as Robert Warshow titled his 1948 essay. Outlaws, chasing freedom and success in their purest form, are really "just rushing towards death," in words that Doc Banton (Henry Hull) attributes to Dillinger. They are romanticized, demonized, and commodified, packaged as entertainment and edifying moral lessons. Roy is irritated by the moniker "Mad Dog," the inspired invention of some city-desk editor, and belittled in death by a cynical reporter (Jerome Cowan). The big shot's downfall is a kind of ritual, a collective reminder not just that crime does not pay but that "crashing out" is only a fantasy that keeps you going as you serve your time. From the safety of their living rooms, listeners to the radio broadcast can vicariously savor the bitterness of fate and the cold, pine-scented air of the mountains.
Kimberly Wadsworth: The characters are interesting too – Bogart plays Roy Earle, a bank robber in the clink who's just gotten pardoned at the top of the film. But it turns out one of his old bosses pulled some strings to get him out, for he needs Earle to spearhead a heist at a splashy resort in California. Earle heads west to the Sierra-Mountain camp where the rest of the team for the heist has set up a base of operations, and meets Marie Garson (Lupino), a taxi dancer one of the others fell for in Los Angeles and invited to tag along with him. However, Garson wasn't as interested in the dude as much as she was desperate to get out of Los Angeles, so as the team waits for the go-ahead for their heist, Garson finds her attention shifting to Earle, and he gradually finds himself reciprocating – a development that has a tragic impact on their stories.
Bosley Crowther: We wouldn't know for certain whether the twilight of the American gangster is here. But the Warner Brothers, who should know if anybody does, have apparently taken it for granted and, in a solemn Wagnerian mood, are giving that titanic figure a send-off befitting a first-string god in the film called "High Sierra," which arrived yesterday at the Strand. Yes-sir, Siegfried himself never rose to more heroic heights than does Mr. Humphrey Bogart, the last of the great gunmen, when, lodged on a high mountain crag with an army of coppers below, he shouts defiance at his tormentors ere his noble soul take flight. It's truly magnificent, that's all.As a matter of fact—and aside from the virtues of the film itself—it is rather touching to behold the Warners pay such a glowing tribute, for no one has made a better thing out of the legendary gangster than they have. No one has greater reason to grow nostalgic about the bad boys of yesterday who, as one of the characters in "High Sierra" reverently remarks, are "all either dead or doing time now in Alcatraz."
Trailer
posted by Carillon on Nov 11, 2024 at 3:25 PM
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I thought it was pretty solid! It's busy, but never in a way that felt inauthentic, I liked that there was a bunch of little side plots and the movie could breath. You can see why folks call this a precursor to noir, and one of the things that makes it not a noir and more of a gangster flick is the story.
posted by Carillon at 3:27 PM
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Also features a predictably good Ida Lupino performance. In fact, at the time of release, she was top billed -- Bogart was not as much of a leading man at that point in his career.
posted by Bryant at 9:10 AM
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Also, love to see what Hell Or High Water was referencing in it's final shootout.
posted by Carillon at 7:48 PM
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