Film Noir Should Have Been Named...

 ...Film De Bogart. There are few actors whose cinematic works I enjoy almost as much as I enjoy a good movie starring Humphrey Bogart. I am watching Dead Reckoning starring Bogart and Lizabeth Scott (one of the most beautiful and sultry women ever).

 

It is a great work of film noir but not my favorite Bogart movie. My favorite Bogart film of any sort is probably the Maltese Falcon. It is, without a doubt, my favorite Film Noir and Bogart along with Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook made it stunningly fabulous. Bogart though made other films from comedy to melodrama and some of those vie for his best film ever along with the Maltese Falcon. His role in The Caine Mutiny was amazingly intense, then there was his astounding performance as Mr. Allnut (I used to think it was Allnot or Allnaught but being a complete nut - as in All Nut - fit the character very well) in The African Queen. In that film's leech scene, he made me, and I daresay many others, feel the horror one would feel when climbing over the gunnel of the African Queen to get back into leech infested waters after Rosie, played by Katherine Hepburn, had discovered and pulled many leeches off of him. Then there was a movie in which he portrayed a man driven crazy to the point of being willing to murder his gold mining partners in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, truly a Bogart masterpiece because of his outstanding acting abilities. That was maybe his best acting ever, it is a tough call compared to the others already mentioned.

There are many other Bogart films, some great, some good and maybe one or two like Sirocco (where he performed with quite possibly one of the most beautiful women ever - Marta Toren -who died way too soon at 31) that were a bit disappointing. Yet, all in all, he was the driving force in what made Film Noir a whole new but seemingly everlasting genre in the movies.

If you are a Bogart fan, you know what I mean. If you are not and or have never watched any of his works but think you can watch an old movie for its fine acting instead of a modern one where acting is secondary to special effects, then sit back and enjoy something like those I mentioned above or some others like: Key Largo, Casablanca, Sahara, To Have and Have Not or any of his films listed at this link: https://m.imdb.com/list/ls077824165/, many of his older films which I need to see yet.

 

All the best,

Glenn B