We're No Angels (1955)

We're No Angels is one of my favorite Christmas movies. It's a film with escaped prisoners - thieves and murderers - who enter the store and home of the Ducatel family, intent on robbing and murdering them, but are instead reformed and redeemed by the spirit of the Christmas. It's also the only Christmas story I know of wherein two characters die and everybody's lives are made better by their passing. Odd, I know, but it all works in Michael Curtiz's little known-gem of a movie.

Joseph (Humphrey Bogart), Jules (Peter Ustinov) and Albert (Aldo Ray) have escaped from prison in French Guyana and made their way into the port city of Cayene. Jules picks the pocket of a young naval officer and finds only a letter addressed to Felix Ducatel (Leo G. Carroll). The trio decide to deliver the letter themselves in order to get a reward. Once at Felix's store, Joseph signs them on to repair the leaky roof. He reasons that after dark, the three of them can sneak down into the store, kill the Ducatel's and steal everything they need to escape. From the roof, they spy on the Ducatels and discover that Felix, his wife Amelie (Joan Bennett), and daughter Isabelle (Gloria Talbott) are in serious trouble. Felix went bankrupt back in Paris, and he was bailed out by his evil cousin Andre Trochard (Basil Rathbone). In return for the favor, Cousin Andre took everything Felix owned and sent him to French Guyana to run Andre's store. But Felix has a poor head for business, the store is losing money, and Cousin Andre is threatening to throw Felix out.

The letter that the convicts delivered to Felix reveals that Cousin Andre and his nephew Paul (John Baer) have arrived in Cayenne and are waiting in quarantine on the ship in the harbor. The only person who is thrilled by this news is Isabelle, who is in love with Paul. When she reads in the letter that Paul is to marry another woman for financial gain, she faints. The three desperate criminals rush to her aide. Albert and Jules carry Isabelle to her room, while Joseph - an embezzler and forger - begins looking over Felix's books. The trio begin to take pity on the Ducatels, who are nice people caught in a horrible situation, and they decide to make the Ducatels' Christmas just a little bit better. Joseph steals a Turkey for dinner, while Jules steals flowers from the governor's garden. They cook the Christmas dinner and decorate the house. They even clean up after dinner, the whole time claiming that they're going to kill and rob the Ducatels just as soon as they wash the dishes. After the Ducatels have gone to bed, Cousin Andre and Paul arrive, and the fun really begins.

Andre is the epitome of the wrench, grasping, money-grubbing miser. He has no time for sentiment - it has no cash value. All he cares about is the bottom line, and Felix's is underlined in red ink. Joseph does what he can to help hide Felix's poor business sense, while the others attempt - without much success - to play match-maker between Isabel and Paul. When Andre discovers that the inventory doesn't tally up, he threatens to have Felix arrested. Joseph, Jules and Albert decide that Cousin Andre has lived too long, so they hold a trial, find him guilty and sentence him to death. While they're trying to decide how to kill Andre, he takes Albert's only possession - a small wooden cage containing an extremely lethal viper named Adolph. What follows is one of the best scenes in the movie, as the three calmly try to decide who is going to rush in and tell Andre not to open the cage. By the time they decide, it's too late. That night Joseph forges a new will, dividing Andre's estate evenly between Paul and Felix, but Paul destroys the will in the morning. Without a will, Paul - as Andre's closest relative - will inherit the entire estate. As our trio tries to figure out what to do about Paul, he unexpectedly discovers Adolph lurking in one of Andre's pockets, and the Ducatels are minus another nasty relative. Joseph forges another will, leaving everything to Felix. Then the three of them play match-maker once again, fixing up Isabel with the handsome, young naval officer whose pocket they picked the day before. By the end, Isabel is in love, Felix and Amelie are wealthy, and Joseph, Jules and Albert are new men.

We're No Angels is a wonderful story of redemption. The spirit of Christmas works its magic on these three hardened criminals. At the beginning, they'll stop at nothing to escape from Devil's Island. By the end, they're doing everything in their power to help three complete strangers upon whom they have taken pity. Humphrey Bogart turns in a great performance as the forger Joseph, who was convicted of fraud for selling stock in an "air factory." Aldo Ray is great as the lusty Albert, who killed his uncle when he wouldn't loan him the money he needed to impress a young woman. Basil Rathbone turns in his standard performance as the cold, distant, unfeeling Andre Trochard. But it's Peter Ustinov that steals every scene he's in as the lovable Jules, who murdered his wife on Christmas day for "giving a friend a Christmas present."

We're No Angels is also one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. The humor is subtle though, the lines delivered in a dead-pan way that makes the jokes all the more funny. When Amelie asks Joseph if he can spare her a few minutes of his time, he replies, "A man condemned to life can always spare a few minutes." When Jules goes off to steal the flowers from the governor's garden, Albert reminds him not to step on the grass. "Of course I won't step on the grass," Jules tells him. "What do you take me for." And when Andre dies, Felix tells Joseph, "It's true I never liked my cousin, only because he was not likeable. He had a number of good points, I'm sure. I just can't think of any at the moment." There's also a great running gag with Jules opening locks by simply feeling the locked object and tapping it just right. And so it goes for the entire 108 minute runtime. So if you're looking for a fun, lighthearted, feel-good movie for the holiday, then I strongly suggest you check out We're No Angels. But be careful. You too might fall in love with these three hardened criminals.

We're No Angels is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor.

To Have and Have Not (1944)

Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not spawned one of the greatest Hollywood romances of all times as well as one of the greatest lines ever uttered on screen. Adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same title, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as Harry "Steve" Morgan, a charter fishing boat captain. Based in Martinique, and so under the authority of the Vichy government in occupied France, Steve and his sidekick Eddie (Walter Brennan) try to eek out a living while dealing with crooked customers, avoiding the local authorities and dodging gun battles between resistance fighters and government agents. When his most recent customer dies before paying Steve, he's forced to take work transporting resistant fighters to the island. Into this mix of bullets and intrigue steps Marie "Slim" Browning (Lauren Bacall), a down-on-her-luck cabaret singer who's just trying to earn enough money to get back home to America. This was the first on-screen pairing of Bogart and Bacall and the electricity between them is palpable. Steve is loner and a tough guy, but Slim may be tougher than him. She casts her line and reels him in by simply telling him he can have her. "You don't have to say anything," she says, "and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." And hence history was made. But things don't go all that easily for Steve and Slim. The French Resistance fighter that Steve is transporting panics when he should keep his cool and gets himself all shot up. Then Steve has to operate on the guy and remove the lead from him. Meanwhile, the authorities are circling in for the kill. They try to get information out of Eddie by plying him with booze, but Eddie's a lifelong drunk and he can take a lot of booze. Finally, in true Bogart fashion, the evil Vichy agents are defeated and Steve, Slim and Eddie escape on Steve's boat, bound for Florida and happily ever after.


Apparently, Hemingway had bet Hawks that Hawks could never make a film of To Have and Have Not. Hawks rose to the challenge and did so, but only by cutting out most of the novel and substantially rewriting the rest. He focused on a single incident at the book's beginning, expanding and embellishing it to get a full-length movie. The setting was moved from Cuba to Martinique, and the time was moved to after the war had started. In the book, Steve hauls illegal immigrants to Florida, while in the movie he's hauling resistance fighters. He's also a much nicer guy in the movie. This film also has the distinction of being the only movie to have been co-written by two Nobel-prize winning authors: Ernest Hemingway wrote the novel on which it was based, and William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. In spite of this high literary pedigree, it turns out - according to the IMDB - that most of the dialogue was actually improvised by the actors on camera. That's okay, though. It all works out great. As does the presence of the great Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket, the pianist at the local bar. In fact, this film was my introduction to Carmichael at the ripe young age of twelve, and I have been a fan of his music ever since. And all of this is wrapped up in a cracking good yarn with bad guys you can hate and good guys you can sympathize with. You can't do better than that.

To Have and Have Not is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white. It has a runtime of 100 minutes.

The African Queen (1951)

Meet Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart). Charlie's a happy man. He's got it all figured out. Charlie owns a small steam launch called the African Queen. Charlie and the Queen make a living ferrying passengers, freight and mail up and down the Ulanga River in German East Africa. Charlie is living the good life...or so he thinks. Then World War I breaks out and everything changes. Suddenly, all of the non-German residents are enemies. When the Germans raid a mission run by the Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morely) and his sister Rose (Katherine Hepburn), Charlie comes to evacuate them. Unfortunately, he's too late to save the reverend, who dies of fever. When Charlie tries to take Rose back up river to safety, she comes up with a counter plan. She wants to sail downstream to Lake Tanganyika and destroy the Louisa, a German gunboat that plies the waters of the lake. Charlie tries to point out the impossibility of the trip: there's a German fort to get past; there are rapids; there's a dense swamp. Rose is adamant, though. They must do this for England. Reluctantly, Charlie agrees, and they argue their way down river. When Charlie gets drunk soon after they start out, Rose dumps all of his alcohol overboard. By the time they've made it past the fort and shot the rapids, both Charlie and Rose have changed. They begin to see each other in a new light. Yes, they fall in love. And the harder their journey becomes, the deeper in love they fall. By the time they finally - and miraculously - reach the lake, they are a committed pair. Charlie fashions crude torpedoes out of dynamite and oxygen cylinders, and they head out onto Lake Tanganyika to sink the Louisa. Unfortunately, a storm sinks the African Queen instead. Picked up by the Louisa, Charlie and Rose beg the ships captain to marry them before they are executed as spies. As the doomed couple say "I do," the Louisa strikes the half submerged hulk of the African Queen, detonating the torpedoes. The Louisa sinks, and Charlie and Rose swim off to safety.

Well, that - in a nut shell - is the story. It doesn't sound like much when you read it that way. You have to experience it. The African Queen is simply one of the finest movies ever made. Based on the novel by E. M. Forester, and directed by John Huston, it is the only movie for which Humphrey Bogart won an academy award during his long career. It is also a movie that nearly killed everyone involved in the making of it. The movie was shot largely on location in Africa, and dysentery, malaria, contaminated water and wild animals were a constant danger. The only members of the cast and crew who didn't get sick were Bogart and Huston who lived on a diet of baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Bogart famously said, "Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." Katherine Hepburn was so sick with dysentery during the filming that a bucket had to be kept just off camera for her to throw up in between takes. Now that's dedication. And that dedication brought forth a movie worth watching again and again. Bogart's portrayal of the lazy, drunken Allnut is one of the finest of his career, and his Oscar was well deserved. Hepburn is fantastic as the straight-laced Rose Sayer, who can't help but fall in love with her surly, pickled companion. It's fun to watch the relationship between the two characters grow and blossom into a deep abiding love. And the scenery and cinematography are amazing as well. It's just hard to imagine what Huston and his crew had to do in order to film this movie. They had to build a raft in order to float all of the camera equipment to get shots inside of the Queen when it was out on the water.

All in all, The African Queen is just a great visual feast, as well as being a whole lot of fun to watch. The movie is rated G, and it's filmed in Technicolor (it was, in fact, Katherine Hepburn's first color movie). Runtime is 105 minutes, and it's worth every second.

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Everybody knows the big Bogart films: Casablanca, The African Queen, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not. But Bogart made a lot of other films during his thrity year career in Hollywood. A few of those are stinkers. Most are pot boilers. And some are absolute gems. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa falls into the latter category. At least in my book it does. And let's face it, my book is the only one I care about. Bogart plays Harry Dawes, a washed up movie director hired by millionaire Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), who fancies himself an artistic kind of a guy and wants to produce a movie. They fly to Madrid along with Oscar Muldoon (Edmund O'Brien), Kirk's PR maven, to audition a dancer they've heard about named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner). Maria turns down all of Kirk's and Oscar's propositions, then changes her mind when Harry comes to talk to her. She makes the movie, she becomes a star, and she and Harry become best friends. Watch where you're going now. It really is possible for a man and a woman to be just friends. Besides, Harry has met and married the lovely Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars), and she's helped him get his life and his career back on track. Well, after several major movie hits, Maria begins to tire of both Hollywood and Kirk Edwards. So she and Oscar give Kirk the bum's rush and take up with millionaire playboy Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring). They go yachting about the Mediterranean for a while, until Maria begins to tire of Bravano too. He is, after all, a consummate bore. When Bravano starts abusing Maria in a Monte Carlo casino, she's rescued by Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi). He soon falls for Maria, and the feeling is mutual. Before you can say noblesse oblige, wedding bells are ringing. But marriage to the count isn't all that she dreamed it would be. The count has a secret of his own. Seems his equipment isn't quite in working order. Something to do with a grenade during the war. And he neglected to tell Maria before they were married. Ooopsy! And all those hunky young pool boys and Gypsies hanging about. What's a countess to do? Conclusions? Draw your own. Let's just say that the entire film is narrated in flashbacks from Maria's funeral. And the count's the guy wearing the cuffs. Jealousy, alcohol and a shotgun are always a bad mixture.

For Humphrey Bogart fans, The Barefoot Contessa is something of an anomaly. Here, Bogie isn't playing a gangster, or a bum, or a prisoner, or a good man gone wrong trying to do the right thing. Harry Dawes is just a nice guy who happens to work in a not very nice world. Along the way, he tries to be nice to, and help out, other people. He befriends and makes a star out of a lovely girl from Madrid. Ava Gardner sizzles as Maria, the barefoot dancer who never wanted anything more than to be truly loved. She gets just about everything in life but that. Edmund O'brien does a great job as the ever-worried Oscar, always hustling, always looking for an angle, always trying to keep one step ahead of his clients and the vox populi. Warren Stevens is delightful as the money-obsessed Kirk Edwards, who thinks he can buy anything, including love. And Rossano Brazzi puts in a memorable performance as the world-weary count, carrying his dirty little secret around with him, until it drives him crazy in the end. And here's where the film makes an interesting departure from a lot of movies that preceded it - Mankiewicz casts real Europeans to play Europeans. This is one of the hallmarks that sets movies of the 1950s apart from those of the 30s and 40s. Had The Barefoot Contessa been made a decade earlier, all of the parts would have probably been played by American or English actors. Think of Britishers Claude Reins and Sydney Greenstreet as the French Inspector Renault and the Italian Farari in Casablana. You get the picture. But realism was finally starting to creep into Hollywood. America's isolationism was over. People wanted real, foreign locales and real foreigners in them. About time too. Makes for much better movies.

The Barefoot Contessa is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor. Running time is 128 minutes.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the cinema's great adventure stories, remembered now - if it's remembered at all - for two oft-misquoted lines: "We don't need no stinking badges," and "Could you spare a dime for a fellow American who's down on his luck." I've lamented before on this blog how I think it's sad that so many people today have never seen these classic films and most probably wouldn't appreciate them if they did see them. That this movie could have been reduced to a couple of quotes is a prime example of that. There is so much more to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre than could possibly be summed up by two lines. This movie is filled with adventure, with romance, with desperation, with greed, with madness, with deceit, with kindness, with generosity, with murder, with life. It is, in short, a picture of the world as we know it today, a picture of life in the post-modern world encapsulated into a two-hour-long strip of celluloid that contains the story of three down-and-out men hoping to strike it rich searching for gold in Old Mexico. Gold they find, and all that comes with it. As Dan Fogleburg once wrote, "Balance the cost of the soul you've lost and the dreams you lightly sold, and tell me if you're free from the power of gold."

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is drifting around Tampico, Mexico, when he runs into Bob Curtin (Tim Holt). The two take a job working on an oil rig, but the boss tries to get away without paying them. This leads to a brutal fist fight between Dobbs, Curtin and their boss. They beat him senseless and take what's owed them, but soon the money runs out and they're destitute again. One night, in a flop house, Dobbs and Curtin meet an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston). He knows of a gold vein ripe for the taking, but he needs partners to help him get it. Dobbs and Curtin sign on for the job. Before long they are heading up into the Sierra Madre with pack mules laden with tools and supplies. After weeks of trudging across deserts and through jungles, they finally reach the place they're looking for. They build a sluice and start digging. Sure enough, they find gold. Soon the bags start filling up with gold dust, and their minds start filling up with suspicion. Dobbs is the worst. He becomes convinced that everyone is out to take his share from him. He even threatens to kill Curtin on more than one occasion. Into the middle of this powder keg stumbles Cody (Bruce Bennett), another American looking to find his fortune digging for gold in Mexico. He wants to join our trio. Howard and Curtin don't mind. They think there's enough for everyone. Dobbs doesn't agree. He wants to kill Cody. As they're arguing this out, all four of them are set upon by bandits. After some tense negotiating, in which the infamous line is quoted, a gunfight breaks out. The bandits are routed, but Cody is killed in the battle. They bury him, and Curtin says he's going to give some of his gold to Cody's widow back in the Texas. Howard decides to also. But not Dobbs. As they pack up and head back toward civilization, Dobbs descends deeper and deeper into madness. When Howard turns aside to save the life of an injured boy, Dobbs attacks Curtin and runs off with all of the mules and the gold. Unfortunately, he runs right into the arms of the bandits they had run off. On his own now, Dobbs is outnumbered. The bandits make quick work of him. Then they steel his boots, his guns and his mules. Foolishly, they mistake the gold for sand, which they pour out on the ground. Curtin finds Howard, and the two of them go after Dobbs. All they find, however, is his corpse. The gold dust blew away in a sand storm.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the finest films that either John Huston or Humphrey Bogart ever made. Bogart is at his best as the lunatic Dobbs. It's fascinating to watch how he begins to unravel, how little things begin to wear on him, how he becomes increasingly suspicious of every move, every gesture made by his partners, until he finally cracks. Bogart would play another neurotic - Capt. Queeg - six years later in The Caine Mutiny, but Dobbs is a much more interesting character than Queeg. Queeg is slightly nuts to begin with, so his break isn't unexpected. In Treasure, Bogart must take the apparently sane Dobbs down into his madness by slow degrees. He does a job with it too. We feel the tension ratcheting up as Dobbs slips ever further into his paranoia. When the break comes, it's almost a relief. Walter Huston (the director's brother) plays Howard as the elder statesmen of the desert. He's the voice of reason, wisdom personified, seldom getting angry, always dealing with the mishaps with a serenity that drives Dobbs mad. Howard has seen every side of men, and nothing they do surprises him. Gold does not drive him mad. It only seems to make him more generous towards the failings of Dobbs and Curtin. Tim Holt usually played nice guys in Hollywood, and Curtin is no exception. He's Dobbs' foil, always looking for the good in things and people. If Dobbs suspects everyone of trying to cheat them, Curtin never really does. In the end, even his anger at Dobbs' treachery is assuaged at the thought of doing something good for someone else. John Huston even makes a cameo appearance in the film, in true Hitchcockian style, as the American businessman that Dobbs keeps hitting up for money on the streets of Tampico. It's a rare light moment in an otherwise deadly serious film.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is rated G and is filmed in luscious black and white.

The Big Sleep (1946)

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was."

That's how Philip Marlowe sums up all that's gone before in the final pages of Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep. I include it here because the one thing I have always felt that Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep lacked was the internal monologue that narrates the novel. The film ends on an upbeat note, with Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) falling in love. The novel ends with Marlowe walking off by himself, leaving the corrupt Rutledges behind him. The novel is more effective. But 1946 was a different era. People wanted a happy ending - the bad guys all killed or jailed, the hero and heroine walking off together hand in hand, the world spinning in greased grooves once again. It was the effect of the war, I guess. The need for normalcy and happy endings. It's too bad too, because the film suffered on account of the lack of the monologue. Don't get me wrong though. I love this movie. It's one of my favorites. I just wish Hawks and screenwriter William Faulkner hadn't changed the story so much.

In the film, Marlowe is called to the home of dying millionare General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Sternwood's being blackmailed. His youngest daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) has been gambling. General Sternwood wants Marlowe to take care of it. The conversation rolls around to Sean Regan, Sternwood's right hand man. Seems he's gone missing. There's talk he ran off with Mona Mars (Peggy Knudsen), the wife of big-time raketeer Eddie Mars (John Ridgely). As Marlowe is leaving, Vivan asks him if her father hired him to find Sean. Soon, Marlowe realizes that a lot of people would like to know what happened to Sean. Later, Marlowe discovers Carmen drugged and half naked with a dead man lying at her feet. Marlowe takes her home and returns to the scene of the crime, only to find that the dead man is gone. At this point, all hell breaks loose. The Sternwood's chaufer is murdered and dumped into the ocean. Eddie Mars seems to be everywhere. Carmen keeps popping up like a Whack-a-Mole. Marlowe finds out that he's being followed by Harry Jones (Elisha Cooke, Jr.). He's trying to help out Agnes (Sonia Darrin) who used to work for the guy who was killed at Carmen's feet. Then a couple of more people get dead. Sound confusing? It is. In fact, the novel is so confusing that Faulkner and co-writer Leigh Bracket couldn't figure out who killed one of the characters. They asked Chandler to tell them who done it, and Chandler himself was unable to point the finger at the culprit. But it all works out in the end. As I stated above - a happy ending for all of the good guys and gals.

Part of what makes The Big Sleep work, in spite of its transgressions, is the incredibly snappy dialogue written by Faulkner and Bracket. There is a lot of reparte' in this film. Consider Marlowe's first exchange with Eddie Mars:

Mars: Convenient the door being open when you didn't have a key.
Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it? By the way, how did you happen to have one?
Mars: Is it any of your business?
Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Mars: I could make your business mine.
Marlowe: But you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
Mars: All right, I own this house. Geiger's my tenant. Now what do you think of me?
Marlowe: You know some nice people.
Mars: I take it as they come.

Or Marlowe's explanation of how the first two murders took place:

"You see, the dead man was Owen Taylor, Sternwood's chauffeur. He went up to Geiger's place 'cause he was sweet on Carmen. He didn't like the kind of games Geiger was playing. He got himself in the back way with a jimmy and he had a gun. And the gun went off as guns will, and Geiger fell down dead."

It's this snappy dialogue that sets this movie apart and really saves it. The film's other saving grace is Humphrey Bogart. Bogart had already established himself as the tough guy with his own code of honor in such films as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Petrified Forest. He cashes in on that persona here, playing Marlowe as smart and tough, yet sensitive to the needs of others who get caught up in the web of deceit that he finds himself tangled up in. Marlowe, is genuinely concerned for General Sternwood, as well as for Harry Jones and Agnes, two people who don't deserve the hand they get dealt. Hired to solve a minor blackmail case, Marlowe goes on to bring down Eddie Mars and discover how Sean got killed and who killed him, if for no other reason than to give the general some closure.

The Big Sleep is rated G and is filmed in Glorious black and white.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The McGuffin* is a bird. A statue of a falcon. About a foot tall. Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, covered all over with a coating of black enamel. It's value? Priceless. A thing that people kill for. The stuff that dreams are made of. So says Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at the close of John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Huston's film was the third screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's book. It was first filmed in 1931 with Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez, then again in 1936 with Bette Davis and Warren Williams. But who remembers those films? Huston shot his film almost word for word, scene for scene, from Hammett's novel. It was a smart move. It created a masterpiece. And Humphrey Bogart has become everyone's vision of who Sam Spade is, even though Bogie doesn't look anything like the character described in the book. Who cares? It's Bogart.

One day, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) shows up at the office of Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) with a cock-n-bull story about a missing sister and her evil abductor. She flashes money at them. They take the case. As private detectives, Archer and Spade are mostly honest, mostly ethical, but not afraid to bend a law, or a person, to the breaking point for a hundred bucks. Archer is killed that night. Brigid disappears. Spade finds her, grills her, is unsatisfied with her new story. Then Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) shows up, wearing a fancy suit and smelling like a rose garden. Wants to know if Sam has the bird. Is willing to pay for it. Next on the scene is Casper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.). They want the bird too. During their first meeting, they ask nicely. During their second meeting, they take their gloves off. The Falcon is delivered to Sam's office late one night by a dying man. Captain of a tramp freighter. Case of lead poisoning. Now Sam's got a bargaining chip.

Sam calls a meeting at his apartment. All of the interested parties attend. They talk figures. They need a fall guy. Sam says Wilmer is made to order. They agree to stitch him up, much to Wilmer's dismay. Sam sends for the bird. When it arrives, Gutman eagerly unwraps it. His excitement is palpable. He starts to scratch the black enamel off the Falcon, only to discover that the bird underneath is not made of gold but of common lead. But Gutman knows who made the switch, and he and Cairo head off in search of the real Falcon. Wilmer takes it on the lamb. Sam has other plan's for Brigid, and they don't include a honeymoon cottage. After all, Sam may not be entirely honest, or entirely ethical, but he does live by a code of honor. It says when someone kills your partner, they have to pay. Brigid will pay.

The Maltese Falcon is one of those Hollywood films, like Casablanca, that wasn't a big or an important movie while it was being made. But once it was finished, they knew they had a gem. The movie takes place on a human scale. No grand vistas here. Huston filmed most of the exterior scenes on city streets, at night, with lots of fog and rain. Interior scenes are filmed in cramped apartments, offices, hotel rooms. Lots of shadows. Lots of atmosphere. This is the beginning of film noir. Interestingly, this was also the screen debut of Sydney Greenstreet. He'd been a stage actor for years, when Huston cast him as Casper Gutman, aka the Fat Man. Another bit of trivia - when Sam calls Wilmer a "gunsel," he doesn't mean that Wilmer is a hired gun; he's hinting at Wilmer's sexual orientation. According to the IMDb, "The Yiddish term 'gunsel', literally "little goose", may be a vulgarism for homosexual." Who knew?

The Maltese Falcon is a fun movie that keeps you guessing right up until the end. Who killed Miles? Who killed the captain of the steam ship? Is there really a Maltese Falcon? We aren't given the answers until the concluding scenes. It's a satisfying conclusion too.

The Maltese Falcon is rated G and is filmed in deliciously moody black and white.

*McGuffin was Alfred Hitchcock's term for whatever the object or idea is that spurs the characters to action and moves the plot along.

The Petrified Forest (1936)

Far out in the Arizona desert sits a small gas station and diner. It's a dusty, ramshackle sort of place, the kind of establishment that used to dot the landscape of rural America in the days before cookie-cutter chain gas stations and fast food joints moved in. You can fill your tank, check your oil, make sure your radiator is topped off, then grab a bite to eat and be on your way again. You always go on your way again. This is the kind of place that people pass through. No one ever stops here. It's run by Jason Maple (Porter Hall), a veteran of World War I and a man of no importance except in his own mind. He's helped out by his father, Gramps (Charlie Grapewin), and his daughter, Gabrielle (Bette Davis). There are a couple of hired hands too - a cook (Nina Campana) and a gas pump attendant named Boze (Dick Foran). Together, they keep the place running, feed the hungry customers and their thirsty cars. Jason and Gramps dream of their past glories; Gabrielle dreams of her future ones. She wants to leave Arizona, wants to go to Paris where her mother lives, wants to study art. But this is 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, and money is tight. Boze thinks he knows what Gabrielle really needs. You can guess what that is.

One day, Alan Squire (Leslie Howard) stumbles into this enclave of desperation and longing. He's hitchhiking across the country, heading to California. He has a notion that he'd like to see the Pacific Ocean, thinks it would be a good place to drown himself. When Alan and Gabrielle meet, the air crackles with electricity. These are two kindred spirits, meant for each other. And in a fairer universe, they would have been. But Alan, a man who has failed at everything, is worn out, weary of the world. Gabrielle is young and in love with life and dreaming of all that she is going to do. She's not yet known the bitterness of disappointment, of failure, of love gone sour, of life's dreams unfulfilled. Life to her is still a Christmas present with the paper on it, and she's giddy with the anticipation of opening it. Alan's already opened it. All he got was coal. But Alan believes in Gabrielle. He praises her paintings. Encourages her to follow her dreams, not Boze's or her father's. She gives him a free meal and a dollar. Arranges a ride for him with a wealthy couple who are passing through. They part reluctantly.

And here the story might have ended, were it not for Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart). Mantee is a bank robber and a murderer - a character modelled on John Dillinger - on the lamb with his gang. They're heading for Mexico, when their car breaks down. They steal the car owned by the wealthy couple that Alan is riding in. While the couple's chauffeur attempts to get the stalled car running again, Alan hoofs it back to the gas station, fearing for Gabrielle's safety. When he gets there, Mantee and his gang have already arrived. Alan joins the hostages. Soon the wealthy couple shows up, and they're taken hostage too. Now begins a tense stand-off, a handful of unarmed citizens held by a bunch of armed thugs. But Mantee has a soft spot. He's waiting for a girl. Mantee, the famous killer, is in love, and that love will be his downfall. When the cops arrive, as we know they will, bullets fly. I won't say anymore. Don't wanna give away the ending. Best watch yourself to see who lives, who dies, who's stuck in the petrified forest, and who leaves.

Archie Mayo's The Petrified Forest is one of the most outstanding films ever made. Based on the stage play by Robert E. Sherwood, almost all of the action takes place in or outside of the little dessert gas station. This gives the film a claustrophobic feeling, one that is helped by the immensity of the Arizona dessert that forms the backdrop for all that happens. This was Bogart's breakout role. Of course, he had been in other movies, had made twelve films in the previous eight years, including two with Bette Davis. But his portrayal of the cold-blooded killer, Duke Mantee, is what made Bogart a household name. Bogart had starred in the stage play with Leslie Howard. When Warner Brothers decide to do the film, Howard was asked to reprise his role, but the studio wanted Edward G. Robinson to play Duke Mantee. Howard refused to do the film unless Bogart was given the part of Mantee. WB gave in. The rest, as they say, is movie history.

There's a lot of desperation in The Petrified Forest. A lot of hope and idealism too, and some pretty heroic stuff going on. You'll want to see for yourself. You won't regret that you did.

The Petrified Forest is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca. It's hard to know exactly what to say about what is arguably the greatest movie ever produced. It's right up there with Citizen Kane. I mean, they don't come any better than this. Casablanca. Even the title conjures up images in our minds - the hot sun, the stuccoed buildings, the lazily-turning ceiling fan, the crowded market place, the furtive glances, the shadowy figure standing just out of sight, the blood running between the cobblestones in the street. And yet, most people I know have never even seen the movie. And then there's that quote. You know the one. Most people get it wrong. Still, it's part of American culture.

Casablanca follows the adventures of American ex-pat Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), his one-time love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Blaine is an idealist who fought for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, ran guns for the Ethiopians, and edits a newspaper in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with Ilsa. When the Nazis invade Paris, Ilsa and Rick decide to escape on the last train out, but Ilsa never shows up. Standing on the platform in the pouring rain, Rick reads Ilsa'a "Dear John" letter. As the rain washes her words off the paper, Rick's piano-playing friend Sam (Dooley Wilson) drags him onto the train. The embittered Rick ends up in Casablanca, in French Morocco, where he opens Rick's Café Américaine, a bar where all of the hapless foreigners show up to gamble, to plot their escape, to steal or simply to drink their troubles away.

All of this is shown in a superb flashback that occurs about a third of the way through the movie. When Ilsa shows up at Rick's with Laszlo - one of the heroes of the French underground - we don't know why Rick looks like he's about to toss his breakfast, but Sam does. Laszlo needs to get to America or England. The Nazis want to stop him. The French Chief of Police, Louis Renault (Claude Reins), worries that his corrupt, albeit comfortable, life is about to be seriously disrupted. Rick has letters of transit that will get two people out of Casablanca, but he refuses to sell them to Laszlo. Rick wants to hurt Ilsa as much as she hurt him, not seeing - at least not at first - that she's already hurting just as badly. She's married to Laszlo, who loves her dearly, but she's in love with Rick, who loves her even more. The final scene at the airport is one of the greatest in all of motion picture history.

Director Michael Curtiz makes the most of Julius and Philip Epstein's screenplay, and the score by Max Steiner is one of the best ever produced. Notice how he weaves the pop standard "As Time Goes By" and "La Marseillaise" throughout the score. If you've never watched Casablanca, rent it soon. Find out what all the fuss is about. Discover for yourself why Rick wants Sam to play it again. My guess is you'll want to do the same.

Casablanca is rated G and is available in glorious black and white.