BurlFilm

Dir Delmer Daves, 1947, B&W, USA

Bogart and Bacall

Viewed at Cinmatheque June 2004

Tremendous plot, very clever camera work. Figure, whose face we are not allowed to see (using in some cases some ‘first person’ camera work, seeing through the man’s eyes), escapes from prison and is picked up mysteriously by the beautiful and stern L. Bacall.

She has been watching his case, and has a personal interest – he is an accussed murderer. He gets, on a tip from a taxi cab driver, an ‘underground’ plastic surgeury facelift – and low and behold, when the bandages come off, it is Bogart. The final scene is ridiculously and artlessly sentimental; however a supurbe and in several ways innovative film. Five Stars.