Ann Savage as Vera in "Detour" (1945)“Of course the stumbling block for Europeans in America is, as they’re constantly reminded, the American failure to understand irony — as though it matters. First, this is probably not true; and out west, anyway, they don’t need it — they have space and they have gaze and horizon; they don’t need the artificial distance of irony. Real space and real emptiness make such conceits redundant. Irony and desert operate as polar extremes.” -Christopher Petit's film theory, in "Negative Space" documentary short (1999).
Humphrey Bogart with "High Sierra" director Raoul Walsh (1941)"Whereas Walsh bends atmosphere, changes camera, singles out changes in viewpoint to give a deeper reaction to specific places, The Big Sleep ignores all the conventions of a ganster film to feast on meaningless business and witty asides. Walsh keeps re-establishing the same cabin retreat; Hawks, in another spatial gem, gives the spectator just enough to make the scene work.
One of the fine moments in 1940's film is no longer than a blink: Bogart, as he crosses the street from one bookstore to another, looks up at a sign".
Bogart as Roy Earle and Ida Lupino as Marie in "High Sierra" (1941)"There is as much charm here as Walsh manages with fifteen different positioning setups between Lupino and Arthur Kennedy in a motel cabin. All the unbelievable events in The Big Sleep are tied together by miserable time jumps, but, within each skit, there is a logic of space, a great idea of personality, gesture, where each person is". -"Negative Space" by Manny Farber (1998)
"In this appreciation of Bogart 50 years after his death, American film critic Richard Schickel observes that of his cohort of male stars, which includes Astaire, Cagney, Tracy, Gable, Cooper, Grant, and Wayne, Bogart now glows the brightest. Projecting tough romanticism in sympathetic roles and evoking unsympathetic characters' demons without negating their humanity --think of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place (Schickel's pick as Bogart's best performance)--
he forged a masculine persona that continues to be the envy of men and irresistible to women. In his review of Bogart's life and career, British film critic George Perry points up Bogart's real personality--preferring privacy and nonactor friends, unwise in marriage until wedding Lauren Bacall, hard-drinking and smoking, impatient with fools and bullies, genuinely gentlemanly in his manners. While evaluating certain films differently (Perry is kinder to more of Bogart's lesser efforts), the two critics together make this a quite satisfying commemoration of a thus-far unforgettable figure".-Ray Olson Source: www.booklistonline.com
Humphrey Bogart with wife Lauren Bacall and son Stephen in his Jaguar XK 120
Humphrey Bogart (with Lauren Bacall inside the Jaguar) leans to kiss his son Stephen
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