Dark Passage is a 1947 American film noir by director Delmer Daves and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The film is based on the 1946 novel of the same title by David Goodis. It was the third of four films real-life couple Bacall and Bogart made together.

The story follows protagonist Vincent Parry's attempt to hide from the law and clear his name of murder. Bogart himself had read the book and wanted to make it into a movie. At the time that Dark Passage was shot, Bogart was the best-paid actor in Hollywood, averaging $450,000 a year. and by the director Rouben Mamoulian for the first five minutes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Film critic Hal Erikson believes Dark Passage does a better job at using this point-of-view technique, writing, "The first hour or so of Dark Passage does the same thing—and the results are far more successful than anything seen in Montgomery's film."

According to Bacall, in her autobiography By Myself, during the filming of Dark Passage, Bogart's hair began to fall out in clumps, the result of alopecia areata, although photos from their 1945 wedding show Bogart to be losing his hair two years earlier. By the end of filming he wore a full wig. Bogart eventually had B12 shots and other treatments to counteract the effects, but was forced to wear a full wig in his next picture, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Filming locations

Parts of the film were filmed on location in San Francisco, California, including the Filbert Steps and the cable car system. The elegant Streamline Moderne Malloch Building on Telegraph Hill was used for the apartment of Irene Jansen where Parry hides out and recuperates from his surgery. Apartment Number 10 was Jansen's. The current residents of that apartment occasionally place a cutout of Bogart in the window. The tiny diner was "Harry's Wagon" at 1921 Post Street, a long-closed beanery in the Fillmore District of San Francisco.

Reception

Box office

The film earned $2.31 million domestically and $1.11 million in overseas markets, for a worldwide total of $3.4 million.

The Chicago Tribune laid out the plot's many implausibilities:

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:

On Rotten Tomatoes the film held an approval rating of 90% based on 31 reviews as of 2022 and beyond, with an average rating of 7.7/10. Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

See also

  • The Man with Bogart's Face

References

  • Dark Passage trailer at Spike TV
  • Dark Passage trailer at YouTube