Bogart made three unforgettable landmark films: Maltese Falcon, Big Sleep, and Dark Passage. Of the three, Dark Passage is the least known, which is tragic, because it measures up to the other three and in many ways surpasses them for atmosphere, characterization and psychological mood. Based on a novel by David Goodis, who also wrote the novel that Shoot The Piano Player was based on, it hits top marks in rankings of films in the categories of Film Noir, Existentialism, Dostoyevskian outlook and Kafkan world-view. Filled with forever unforgettable scenes and quotable lines, heart-wrenching views of fog-bound 1940s San Francisco and characters who seem to be stand-ins for the all our own private inauspicious never-to-be famous or successful friends and acquaintances, it's a brilliant metaphor for that dying species: the "individual". Also, of all the Bogart/Bacall pairings, it was the softest, tenderest & most romantic. Movies like this should be on some kind of everybody's-required-viewing-list.
Review of Dark Passage
