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
Cinematographer: Tony Gaudio
Editor: Jack Killifer
Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Producer: Mark Hellinger
Writer: John Huston
Writer: W.R. Burnett
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 100 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: High Sierra
Summary: 5 Stars
ESSENTIAL MOVIE!!! High Sierra was the movie that finally catapulted Bogey into a major star. The role of Roy Earle was one he had campaigned to get but almost didn't. Bogey recognized the role as being one that was complex & challenging. Yhis was also the last film that Bogey didn't get top billing, Warner Bros. had decided to give Ida Lupino that distinction though her role was subordinate to Bogey's.
Roy Earle is a bank robber that has done several years incarcerated. at the opening of the film we see Earle being released on a pardon. A friend, Big Mac (Donald MacBride) has worked hard behind the scenes to secure his release. But it's not just generosity, Big Mac wants Earle to go to California for a sure-thing heist. From the very beginning we see the complexities of the Earle character. Immediately upon his release he wants to "see if the grass is still green & if the trees are still growing."
Earle meets up with an ex-cop, Jake Kranmer (Barton MacLane), who has the information, cash & car for Earle to get to California. Earle instantly dislikes & distrusts Kranmer & slaps him around. Here, we see the other side of the Earle character, the one who can be violent & vicious.
On the journey across the country he happens to meet a family heading the same way & more than broke. Pa (Henry Travers) & Earle take an instant liking to one another, Pa even thinks he's one of the best men alive though he doesn't realize who Earle is. There's also Pa's wife, Ma (Elizabeth Risdon) & Pa's daughter by a previous marriage, Velma (Joan Leslie). The family is going to California because Pa's ex-wife & mother of Velma has invited them to live with her. Velma is a beautiful young lady but she has one problem: She has a club foot. Earle falls for her immediately though there's a big age difference. Once again, we see the good & caring side of the Earle character.
When Earle arrives at his destination he finds the two men, Red (Arthur Kennedy) & Babe (Alan Curtis), at a cabin with a dime-a-dance woman with them, Marie (Ida Lupino). Earle doesn't want the woman there becuause he senses trouble. He tells Red to get rid of her. Later, Marie goes to Earle's cabin & convinces him to let her stay. Red & Babe are inexperienced, Red's in awe of him but Babe sees him as being over the hill. It's here at the dog, Pard, is introduced. He's a lovable & intelligent mutt that has taken up with other people previously. Algernon (Willie Best) informs Earle that Pard is bad luck, every person the mutt has stayed with has died. Now we have the harbinger of death. But Pard really takes a liking to Earle & it's mutual. We see the good side of Earle again; you can't be all bad if a lovable mutt takes a shine to you, can you?
The heist has an inside man, Louis Mendoza (Cornel Wilde - in only his second movie), who works the counter at the rich resort Earle has been hired to rob. Once again, Earle suspects Mendoza as a snitch & sees him as being a weak link in the plan. Earle subtly threatens Mendoza with a story about another snitch who was killed with a machine gun which Earle has just produced in a musical case.
Earle falls in love with Velma & feels that Velma should have an operation on her foot. He brings along Doc (Henry Hull) to examine her. Though Doc can't do the operation himself, he tells Earle it can be done & he knows the right doctor who can do it for $500! To complicate this Marie has fallen in love with Earle. When Earle confesses to Marie he'd like to marry her she rejects him but not without some regret. Earle rejects Marie, likewise, being honest with her about his feelings for Marie. After the heist Earle pays one more visit to the family & Velma because he had promised to see Velma after the operation. Velma is now happy & appears to be headed toward a life of partying. It appears that she's ungrateful & gets ugly with Earle.
The heist goes terribly wrong; Earle shoots a night watchman, Red & Babe are killed during the escape but Mendoza survives the car crash That killed Red & Babe. Later, while in custody of the police, Mendoza fingers Earle as the escaped robber.
The final scenes include an exciting car chase & Earle's demise at Mount Whitney.
Bogart's interpretation of the Earle character is dynamic. He's able to play both sides of the character convincingly. Lupino is excellent as is Leslie. It's unfortunate that the movie didn't receive any Academy nominations though it did receive three nominations from the National Board of Review winning two; Bogart for best actor & Lupino for best actress, the other nomination was for best movie. The screenplay was by John Huston & W. R. Burnett, author of the novel. It was a rather faithful adaptation of the book which Huston had a reputation for. High Sierra was directed by the great Raoul Walsh, one of Hollywood's best.
The disc has a bonus feature, "Roy Earle: The Story of High Sierra" that's a little less than fifteen minutes. In this feature we learn about the odds that Bogey had to overcome to secure the role of Roy Earle. The role was offered to every tough guy at Warner Bros., George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney & Paul Muni. Raft came the closest to gaining the role but balked at some points in the script. This event, & the later one where Raft turned down the role of Rick in Casablanca, led to Bogey becoming one of Hollywood's most loved & sought after actors. Thank you, George Raft!
Summary of High Sierra (Snap Case)
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 cliché 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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