High Sierra (1941)

Roy Earle, a man out of prison and out of his time.

Thanks to a rather shifty pardon, Roy Earle Is released early from prison. A job is out here waiting to be done - maybe Roy's last one before finally finding love and straightening out? But Roy is finding out that this is a different world to the one he left behind, the one before he entered the Big House for his stretch. There are crooks he's not familiar with and women turning his head, hell even a canine has him at odds with his machismo sensibility, but all of it will come crashing together amongst the magnificent High Sierra!

It's a really funny thing now, you buy two DVDs and they both tell you that the respective film from 1941 is the breakout role for Humphrey Bogart. I am of course referring to both this fabulous film and the equally brilliant Maltese Falcon, what a double that is eh! Truth is, is that both films merely showcase what a talent the great man was, and crucially, that he could imbue his characters with terrific pathos and emotive drive. Here as Roy Earle Bogart gives one of his best 40s performances, this on a CV that has many other great turns. Made to look far more aged than he was (well done Perc Westmore), he manages to make Earle a tough and gritty man, yet at the same time he pulls the audience on side with a hardened professionalism that has us admiring the obvious qualities that reside deep within him.

Directed by directing great Raoul Walsh, scripted by one John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart, it's obvious that this take on W.R. Burnett's novel is in safe hands. Playing out as one of the gangster genre's last hurrahs, it's clear to me that some future great Western directors were taking notes, for what drives High Sierra to being so gripping throughout is the man out of his time pulse beats, sensitivity seams through the picture without ever cloying the tension and feel of the pic. The best Adult Westerns coming in the next two decades would grab this thematic arc with genre bolstering aplomb.

Backing up Bogart is the top billed Ida Lupinio (as we would come to expect she's strong and perfect foil to her lead man), while the likes of Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Hull, Cornel Wilde, Henry Travers and Joan Leslie (badly overacting but amazingly not hurting the production) help to put High Sierra firmly in the drawer that holds classic crime pictures from a golden age. Not just content to be a close look at deep and elegiac characters, High Sierra does not lack in the action department either, in fact Walsh does an incredible job of knitting together heart and gusto for dramatic entertainment purpose.

Come the finale at Mount Whitney (High Sierra a constant looming presence in the film, a key character}, the thrills have more than catered for the inclined seekers of that particular bent, but ultimately as the credits role, Walsh's camera leaves us in no doubt as to what has driven Roy, and High Sierra, to its point of meaning, leaving us with a special and great movie indeed. 9/10