High Sierra (Snap Case)
by Raoul Walsh
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Joan LeslieDirector: Raoul Walsh
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of High Sierra (Snap Case)
Movie Review: The film that made a star out of Bogart...and his dog, too!
Summary: 5 Stars
"High Sierra" is an important film in many ways. It was the bridge between 1930's gangster movies and 1940's film noir. It was the first instance of the romantic, sympathetic criminal. It was also the pivotal movie of Bogart's career. It was the first time the studio's publicity department promoted him as a "star" and the last time he didn't receive top billing in a film. He deserved the attention he received for pulling off the character of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle; he was able to make this Dillinger-with-a-heart-of-gold believable.
The film benefits from a lot of top drawer talent; directed by Raoul Walsh from a screen play adaptation by John Houston. Bogart and Ida Lupino were reunited from their previous successful teaming in "They Drive by Night." The strong supporting cast includes Joan Leslie as the girl Bogart wanted to marry, and Cornel Wilde as the "inside man" on the planned heist. Even the dog is wonderful! (The role of "Pard" is played by Bogart's own pet mutt, Zero.)
Walsh fought for and won the right to film on location at Mount Whitney. We're used to location shooting now, but if you watch many films contemporary to "High Sierra" you can't help but notice the artificial "filmed" background screens.
Warner Brothers does their usual nice job with the DVD package. The print has been cleaned up significantly; the video is very good quality and the sound is crisp and clean.
Special features include an original trailer for "High Sierra" and an interesting documentary about Bogart's career and the making of this film. Already somewhat familiar with Bogart's biography the narrative didn't have any big surprises, but there are a couple of amazing photos of Bogart in his early 20's. One shot of him at about age 22 in a top hat and tails, sporting an ear to ear grin, doesn't bear any resemblance to the Bogart we all know and love.
"High Sierra" is a significant film that belongs in any serious film buff's collection.
Highly recommended!
Summary of High Sierra (Snap Case)
Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino star in this tragic study of an American gangster whose hard-boiled persona finds itself at war with his compassionate side--a side that will ultimately be his downfall.This 1941 melodrama is memorable for both its strong central performances and their intimations of how the previous decade's crime dramas would evolve into film noir--no accident, given the solid direction of veteran Raoul Walsh and the hand of screenwriter John Huston, who teamed with the author of its novelistic source, W.R. Burnett (Little Caesar). In the central character of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a fictional peer to John Dillinger, Humphrey Bogart finds a defining role that anticipates the underlying fatalism and moral ambiguity visible in the career-making roles soon to follow, including Sam Spade in Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon.
Earle suggests a prescient variation on the enraged sociopaths that were fixtures of the gangster melodramas that shaped Bogart's early screen image. Pardoned from a long prison stretch, the weary robber is clearly more eager to savor his new freedom than immediately swing back into action. But his early release has been engineered by a mobster who wants Earle to pull off a high-stakes burglary, setting in motion a plot that is a prototype for doomed-heist capers--a small, yet potent subgenre that would later include Huston's The Asphalt Jungle and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.
What gives High Sierra its power, however, isn't the crime itself but Earle's collision with the younger, brasher confederates picked to help him, and the hard-edged but vulnerable taxi dancer they're competing for, played forcefully by Ida Lupino, who actually received top billing. Her attraction to the reluctant Earle is complicated by a convoluted subplot designed to showcase then starlet Joan Leslie, but the movie finally moves into its most gripping moments when the wounded Earle, pursued by police, flees ever higher toward the mountains. His final, suicidal showdown would become a clich? of sorts in lesser films, but here it provides a wrenching climax sealed by Lupino's vivid final scene. --Sam Sutherland
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