Humphrey Bogart as Roy Earle in Raoul Walsh’s gangster moviePHOTO:
CRITERION COLLECTION
By Kristin M. JonesOct. 9, 2021 WALL ST JOURNAL
A notorious desperado, Roy Earle ( Humphrey Bogart ), is released from prison, and the first thing he wants to do is take a walk in a park. Asked if he is feeling all right, he says, “I will be, just as soon as I make sure that grass is still green and trees are still growing.” Bogart’s Earle breathes in the free air and becomes a character to remember.
A notorious desperado, Roy Earle ( Humphrey Bogart ), is released from prison, and the first thing he wants to do is take a walk in a park. Asked if he is feeling all right, he says, “I will be, just as soon as I make sure that grass is still green and trees are still growing.” Bogart’s Earle breathes in the free air and becomes a character to remember.
Made for Warner Bros. and adapted from a novel by W.R. Burnett, who wrote the screenplay with John Huston, “High Sierra” has the fluid storytelling, visual beauty and emotional and physical momentum characteristic of Walsh’s work. Earle is set free only to hurtle into darkness and a harrowing showdown on a mountainside.
Humphrey Bogart as Roy EarlePHOTO: CRITERION COLLECTION
Bogart was eager to be cast as Earle, after many less challenging parts. In Walsh’s electrifying “The Roaring Twenties” (1939), he played a gangster who is hard to the core. Earle is more complex—an Indiana farm boy turned bank robber who endured over eight years in prison and, set loose again, can’t help searching for what he lost along the way. Ida Lupino, who, alongside Bogart, had delivered a strong performance in Walsh’s darkly gripping trucking-world drama “They Drive by Night” (1940), also starred, receiving top billing.
After his release, the aging Earle drives west to carry out a jewel heist at a California resort hotel for an ailing friend who bought his pardon, Big Mac ( Donald MacBride ). He meets up at a mountain camp with two young, hotheaded gang members and a woman one of the men picked up in a Los Angeles dime-a-dance joint, Marie (Lupino).
After his release, the aging Earle drives west to carry out a jewel heist at a California resort hotel for an ailing friend who bought his pardon, Big Mac ( Donald MacBride ). He meets up at a mountain camp with two young, hotheaded gang members and a woman one of the men picked up in a Los Angeles dime-a-dance joint, Marie (Lupino).
Ida Lupino as MariePHOTO: CRITERION COLLECTION
Marie is a kindred spirit—smart, tough and vulnerable, with a similar urge to break out of unbearable situations. Earle lets her stay. The two become a makeshift family with a stray dog, Pard, although Earle wastes attention on Velma ( Joan Leslie ), a sheltered and ultimately ungrateful young woman he met along his journey. After the caper goes wrong, hope waxes and wanes as the story moves toward a breathtaking climax, shot brilliantly on location.
In a small but unsettling comic role, Willie Best plays Algernon, a superstitious young handyman at the camp. The Criterion release includes an interview with the film and media historian Miriam J. Petty, who speaks about this talented Black actor’s career and the legacy of such limiting and stereotyped roles in Hollywood. Noting how this flattened character highlights the depth of Earle’s, she says: “He’s not there to show us things about Algernon. He’s there to reveal things about Roy Earle.”
In an excellent discussion between the critic Farran Smith
Nehme and Dave Kehr, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, that is included with the release, Mr. Kehr says: “Everybody has their own idea of what the essence of cinema is. And I think, to me, it’s Raoul Walsh—it’s movement, it’s matching shots, it’s moving through space, it’s texture and light and sound.”
In a small but unsettling comic role, Willie Best plays Algernon, a superstitious young handyman at the camp. The Criterion release includes an interview with the film and media historian Miriam J. Petty, who speaks about this talented Black actor’s career and the legacy of such limiting and stereotyped roles in Hollywood. Noting how this flattened character highlights the depth of Earle’s, she says: “He’s not there to show us things about Algernon. He’s there to reveal things about Roy Earle.”
In an excellent discussion between the critic Farran Smith
Nehme and Dave Kehr, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, that is included with the release, Mr. Kehr says: “Everybody has their own idea of what the essence of cinema is. And I think, to me, it’s Raoul Walsh—it’s movement, it’s matching shots, it’s moving through space, it’s texture and light and sound.”
