Film Review: Dark Passage (1947)

If a title of film noir icon should be given to a single actor, the most suitable candidate is Humphrey Bogart, the most iconic of all actors of 1940s Hollywood. The most “noirish” and darkest film he appeared in is Dark Passage, a 1947 crime drama written and directed by Delmer Daves, also known as one of the more unusual and innovative examples of the genre.

The film is based on the eponymous 1946 novel by David Goodis that would, decades later, become the subject of a plagiarism suit filed against the producers of the popular TV series The Fugitive, which had a similar premise. The plot is set in San Francisco and begins when Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) escapes from San Quentin Prison, where he was serving a sentence for the murder of his wife. Parry is actually innocent and was convicted on the testimony of Madge Rapf (played by Agnes Moorehead), a former female friend vengeful over his rejection of her romantic advances.

During his escape, Parry receives unexpected help from Irene Jansen (played by Lauren Bacall), a socialite and aspiring painter who always believed in his innocence. She gives him temporary shelter in her home, from where he, through the guidance of a sympathetic taxi driver Sam (played by Tom D’Andrea), goes to a “problematic” part of the city and hires the services of Dr Walter Coley (played by Houseley Stevenson), a disgraced physician who performs plastic surgery on him. Parry had originally planned to recuperate in the home of his best friend George Fellsinger (played by Rory Mallinson), but instead he finds George murdered and now has little option but to ask Irene again for help. While she nurses him and gradually falls in love, Parry has to decide whether to leave the country or try to find the real killer and prove his innocence.

David Goodis liked to spend time frequenting seedy bars and hanging out with people from the bottom of society, and this was reflected in his novels (many of which would later be adapted for the screen in Hollywood and France) where the plot took the perspective of outcasts and losers. Dark Passage features one such protagonist, a man who starts as an escaped convict and whose attempt to prove his innocence and return to normal society seems doomed from the start and leads from one disaster to another. The only things that keep Parry from returning behind bars and a likely encounter with the gas chamber are his own propensity for violence and the occasional assistance from characters like Sam and Dr Coley who, being marginalised outcasts in their own way, see him as a kindred spirit.

This social commentary, however, didn’t cause much interest among the public nor with the critics. Instead, Dark Passage is best known for the unusual technique of showing the plot in the first half almost exclusively through the protagonist’s point-of-view shots. The procedure, pioneered one year earlier in another film noir, Lady in the Lake, works through the brilliant cinematography of Sidney Hickox and the steady direction of Delmer Daves. It becomes “gimmicky” at the moment it is abandoned, after Parry goes through the surgical procedure and Bogart, who was the highest-paid Hollywood actor at the time, finally shows up first in bandages, then with his proper face.

The major problem for Dark Passage is Daves’s script, which relies too much on convenient plot coincidences. Parry, during his escape, first encounters a man who is later revealed to be an opportunistic career criminal; the only justification for his presence is through the great performance by Clifton Young, a youthful character actor whose life and career were cut short four years later by a tragic accident. Parry also finds that Irene is conveniently part of the same social circles he had belonged to before his incarceration.

These flaws, however, are compensated for by great acting, although Bogart, who obviously enjoyed working with his glamorous and loving wife Lauren Bacall, doesn’t make as strong an impression as in his most iconic roles. He is much overshadowed by supporting players that include Agnes Moorehead as one of the vilest female villains of Classic Hollywood and Tom D’Andrea as the protagonist’s unlikely saviour. Even better than the cast is San Francisco with its iconic locations, which include the Malloch Building, a piece of Art Deco architecture that served as Irene’s apartment and which is one of the city’s minor landmarks.

Daves by the end brings plot twists and violence that were quite shocking for 1940s standards, but ends the film with a somewhat unconventional happy ending that might restore the audience’s faith in humanity. Dark Passage, although far from being among the top classics, can be recommended to fans of Bogart and film noir.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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