Another noir with Bogart in the lead, here in the role of American painter who marries a rich English woman. He plays it his way of course, scruffy and hard-nosed, always on the edge of being abusive, and this is the main tension here.
It starts with him wanting to leave one marriage for another. We assume he's been swept by newfound love, the kind that maybe has come a bit late but here it is at last and tough choices have to be made back home. Except no sooner are the two illicit lovers back from their tryst than it starts to devolve. Instead of getting a divorce, poison is procured from a shop.
The shift is made, from temptation and how it weighs on the conscience, to overt and blatant evil. About halfway through, he has turned into a complete villain, Bogart excels in the malicious role, and Stanwyck is her own sublime self, fresh and gently spirited whilst in love but losing her grip in the house as her partner does.
The most interesting bits all revolve around Stanwyck in this house, a spacious mansion in the countryside, as she begins to piece the story and come to realizations. Wind blows all through the night, church bells chime in the distance. The center piece is a game of cat-and-mouse around the house in the middle of the night that plays like in a horror movie and there's a scene where Bogie is unveiled standing before an open window that shows he could have made a marvelous Dracula.
But the point remains, that it makes a very thin sense to have Bogie's character the way we do and the clumsy attempts to explain him (artistic madness) are no better.
See, the greatest attribute of noir is that desire may sneak up on you or me and a small slip that seemed not that big a deal in the moment can have cosmic repercussions down the line. It's the notion that taking this money, or sleeping with that other woman, can maybe go unseen this one time. It's why noir exists in the first place and is so deeply entwined with life in the big city; one rife with opportunities for hidden self and multiple lives, for both good and ill. That's a story for another day but the gist of it is, the noir protagonist is a schmuck, not a villain. It might be all his own doing, and some noirs make the moral point less stridently than others, but we can buy that we could be him on a bad day.
Nora Prentiss, another noir from the same year that I saw together with this, also goes far in how it twists and turns. But the slip into desire is so well handled, it's easy to accept that part. I have seen my share of film noir and would advise you to skip this one.
It starts with him wanting to leave one marriage for another. We assume he's been swept by newfound love, the kind that maybe has come a bit late but here it is at last and tough choices have to be made back home. Except no sooner are the two illicit lovers back from their tryst than it starts to devolve. Instead of getting a divorce, poison is procured from a shop.
The shift is made, from temptation and how it weighs on the conscience, to overt and blatant evil. About halfway through, he has turned into a complete villain, Bogart excels in the malicious role, and Stanwyck is her own sublime self, fresh and gently spirited whilst in love but losing her grip in the house as her partner does.
The most interesting bits all revolve around Stanwyck in this house, a spacious mansion in the countryside, as she begins to piece the story and come to realizations. Wind blows all through the night, church bells chime in the distance. The center piece is a game of cat-and-mouse around the house in the middle of the night that plays like in a horror movie and there's a scene where Bogie is unveiled standing before an open window that shows he could have made a marvelous Dracula.
But the point remains, that it makes a very thin sense to have Bogie's character the way we do and the clumsy attempts to explain him (artistic madness) are no better.
See, the greatest attribute of noir is that desire may sneak up on you or me and a small slip that seemed not that big a deal in the moment can have cosmic repercussions down the line. It's the notion that taking this money, or sleeping with that other woman, can maybe go unseen this one time. It's why noir exists in the first place and is so deeply entwined with life in the big city; one rife with opportunities for hidden self and multiple lives, for both good and ill. That's a story for another day but the gist of it is, the noir protagonist is a schmuck, not a villain. It might be all his own doing, and some noirs make the moral point less stridently than others, but we can buy that we could be him on a bad day.
Nora Prentiss, another noir from the same year that I saw together with this, also goes far in how it twists and turns. But the slip into desire is so well handled, it's easy to accept that part. I have seen my share of film noir and would advise you to skip this one.