Robert Montgomery's 1946 film Lady in the Lake attempted to tell the entire story with a "subjective camera": shooting the film from the point of view of the main character, with the camera acting as his "eyes". The first hour or so of Dark Passage does the same thing--and the results are far more successful than anything seen in Montgomery's film. Humphrey Bogart heads the cast as an escaped convict, wrongly accused of his wife's murder. After being forced to beat up a man (Clifton Young) from
whom he's hitched a ride, Bogart hides out in the apartment of Lauren Bacall, while recovering from plastic surgery, and tries to set about locating the actual murderer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
The story is involving, the atmosphere is as starkly noir as anything Bogart participated in, and the dynamic between the leads is as conspicuous as ever.
An example of how star power can compensate plot, this is the least electric of the Bogart-Bacall pairings; luckily, there's Agnes Moorehead, the screen's best hornet, to intervene whenever the going gets too lackadasical.
Dark Passage isn't a particularly good film - there's a lot of disparate elements that never quite sew themselves together. It's a crazy patchwork made up of different pieces of other movies.
A film more than 50 years old two legends as stars isn't automatically great, but if a studio tosses some money towards issuing a DVD, one can assume it's at least good.
Though not on the level as the other Bogart/Bacall classics, this surprisingly experimental film noir has plenty to enjoy. Also great images of 1940's San Francisco.
A good chance to watch Bogart and Bacall getting emotional. I found this noir quite entertaining but some events and decisions made by the characters were a tad far fetched, and the ending was too pleasing for my taste.
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