High Sierra

The Brattle management has at last supplied us with conclusive proof that all the old Bogart movies are not great. The proof is High Sierra; it is a shuddering loser.

Even the adepts of the Bogart cult had best stay away from this one, for they will not enjoy seeing Bogie in so dismal an undertaking. The fault, to be sure, is not his; he is in good form, and gets in some good gunplay, first-rate pistol-whipping, and concludes with a chase in the grand manner through the California mountains.

But writers W. R. Burnett and John Huston have supplied him with lines which are, after some twenty years, acutely embarrassing. They cannot, for that matter, have been very absorbing when they were brand new.

Bogart is further encumbered with an unfortunate supporting cast. They play a variety of mawkish roles, including a folksy old man from Ohio, a beautiful crippled waif, and the inevitable bad girl with the good heart. Ida Lupino, who plays the bad girl, might be described as a very square Laureen Bacall. She emotes.

Most of these people are involved in a robbery, with Bogart as the kingpin. The robbery succeeds, but once again crime does not turn out to be a blue-chip enterprise.

The old man and the waif, who like to be called Pa and Velma, are not mixed up in the crime; they are in the film only to serve as handy objects of Bogart's generosity--for his heart is at least as good as Miss L's. Bogart is equally generous to a little dog named Pard; here he shows bad judgement, Pard being enough to make any sensible man turn vivisectionist.

Eventually Velma turns Bogart out, and when, a little later, he jumps out of his hiding place to look for Pard, he is shot dead. There may be a lesson in this.