Dark Passage (1947) - film review

Wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife, Vincent Parry escapes from prison with the intention of bringing the real culprit to justice.   Shortly after his jail break, he meets Irene Jansen, a stranger who had an interest in his trial and who offers to hide him from the police in her San Francisco apartment.  Through a friendly taxi driver, Vincent makes contact with a plastic surgeon who manages to transform his face, allowing him to evade the authorities whilst he looks for his wife’s killer...

Dark Passage may not be the best example of American film noir, but it is certainly one of the most enjoyable.  The deficiencies of the patently absurd plot – taken from a mediocre David Goodis novel – would be unbearable if it were not for Delmer Daves’s inventive direction, some stylish noir photography and all-round strong performances.  This was one of the earliest American film noirs to make extensive use of real locations – in this case, San Francisco – something which gives the film a very different feel to what had gone before, a much greater sense of realism and modernity.     

In their third screen pairing, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (now man and wife in real life) recapture something of the sizzling rapport of their earlier amorous rencontre in To To Have and Have Not (1944), although both struggle a little to make their implausible characters believable.  Perhaps the best performances come from the supporting cast.  Houseley Stevenson seems to revel in his sinister mad scientist portrayal of plastic surgeon Dr Coley, whilst Agnes Moorehead exudes venom like it’s going out of fashion – she clearly has her sights set on scoring highly in the Top One Hundred Most Terrifying Female Film Villains Of All Time chart.   The set builders certainly had their work cut out here, replacing all the chewed scenery.

Dark Passage is famous for the fact that the lead actor, Humphrey Bogart, doesn’t show his face until over an hour into the film.  This was necessitated by the story, but director Delmer Daves made artistic capital of Vincent Parry’s face change by using the subjective (first person) camera technique, in which most of the narrative is told from the perspective of the main character, with the camera effectively taking the role of this character.  (The obvious alternatives would have been to alter Bogart’s appearance with heavy make-up or to have another actor play the role of Parry in the first part of the film – both unattractive propositions.)   Robert Montgomery had previously used the subjective technique in his film Lady in the Lake (1947), somewhat controversially.  In Dark Passage, Daves improves on Montgomery’s work with some remarkably effective use of a handheld camera, which puts the audience in the place of the main character.   Studio boss Jack Warner was naturally none too pleased to learn that Bogart, the most highly paid actor in Hollywood, was recognisable in only the last third of the film – and Bogart’s absence may also have contributed to the film’s comparatively poor showing at the box office.

© James Travers 2008

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