DARK PASSAGE

DARK PASSAGE

Saturday, September 18th 2004 at Washington Square Park in San Francisco

Showtime: 8:00 pm

Sponsored by...

SF Connection

San Quentin/ Sites in San Francisco including Fort Baker, Marin County: Waldo Tunnel; Presidio of San Francisco (GGNRA / Presidio Trust), San Francisco: Fort Point; Golden Gate Bridge. Fillmore Street. 1360 Montgomery Street. The scene where Humphrey Bogart visits Agnes Moorehead was filmed at 1201 Greenwich at Hyde/San Quentin State Prison

Delmer Daves 1947 Warner Brothers Rating Approved

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are back on the screen together, and this time in the city by the bay. The film also stars Agnes Moorehead, who is the only female Bogie ever played opposite he looks scared of.

Bogie escapes from San Quentin, where he has been imprisoned for murdering his wife, and is picked up by Bacall who has long been obsessed with his case. Convinced that he is innocent, Bacall hides him in her San Francisco apartment. On a tip from a friendly cabbie, Vincent visits an underworld plastic surgeon who gives the fugitive a new face--thereby enabling him to dodge the authorities and find his wife's real murderer.

Coming just one year after LADY IN THE LAKE, this mystery likewise employs a subjective camera technique in which the viewer sees the action through Vincent's "eyes." The chief difference, however, is the ability here to integrate the technique into the film's plastic surgery plot twist. The audience does not see Vincent's (Bogart's) face until after the bandages are removed (more than an hour into the film) and, since we haven't seen his face until that point, the switch isn't very interesting. And since the narration up until then has been by Bogie, it's impossible not to imagine you've seen him all through the film. No one else ever inflected like that. At the time of this movie, Bogart was Hollywood's highest paid actor, making more than $450,000 a year.