High Sierra (1941)

High Sierra is a fine film, its only real story is a love story though, formed through persistence. The love of Marie and the love of Pard, who keep forcing themselves into Roy's life. All the other stuff is pretty uneventful and lackluster. Roy's goons losing control of the car, while not being chased, catching fire was utterly ridiculous. I liked that Velma didn't want to be with Roy, she wasn't very nice about it, but people aren't always nice. Nearly every Bogart film, women are throwing themselves at him, it was good to see at least one turn him down, even though he still got the better deal. Ida Lupino was very alluring. People sure do love Humphrey Bogart, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" I think is his best work from what I have seen, probably mostly due to believing him in that role and not the role of a gangster or a detective, but this would be among his better performances. In all seriousness though, Pard stole the show.

" . . . that wasn't wrong," confesses ten-cent hooker "Marie" (Ida Lupino) to Public Enemy Number One "Roy" (Humphrey Bogart). HIGH SIERRA reveals that gasoline cost about 24 cents per gallon in the high mark-up area of California's desert, but obviously inflation has pumped up the price of sex even more than that of gas since WWII. Roy is a poor sap who's been watching too many doctor movies, and believes that he can get a girl half his age simply by underwriting a little cosmetic surgery. Of course, Humphrey himself is so soft that he felt terrible seeing Ida walking toward the gas chamber in THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, so he writes her a get-out-of-jail-free card toward the end of SIERRA. Unfortunately, Ida's dog "Pard" (Zero) eats Humphrey's homework, so SIERRA concludes with Ida once again chamber-bound. Hanging, frying, or gassing women was a frequent theme of American flicks from this period (remember Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON, among others), since it was the only way one infamous member of the MPAA censor board could get off. This Perv had little interest in seeing the MEN actually most guilty getting their just desserts on film: Note how "Louis Mendoza," SIERRA's "inside man," gets off Scot Free, along with ALL of the well-heeled Crime King Pins wearing suits more expensive than Roy's.

The movie mentions that the dog belonging to Earl is named "Pard". They seem to imply that it is a strange name. In "The Virginian" (1914), a silent film, they use "Pard" to mean "Partner". Since this is set in the West, it may have been a common term in the past. Sorry, I need 10 lines. There seems no way to avoid getting trapped on the big mountain. It also would seem that the girlfriend, played by Lupino, would be charged today with aiding a criminal. There are several ways that could phrased. It is a shame that the 2 leads did not appear together again. Being trapped up there with no food or water, and no warm clothes at altitude could have been fatal.

I believe a serious study should be made about how deceiving this film is.we're meant to root for a bank robber even as he plans one last heist, in the process lamenting the film noir crook, while no reason is given why we should.nostalgia for older, simpler times, presumably when his type could freely roam the open prairie, on the other hand no one forces his type to hold-up banks.there is a crippled young girl that Roy helps out, a very decent farm girl, only to turn bitchy and petulant when her leg is fine, and of course suddenly there is a loving boyfriend who wants to pay back Roy for the medical costs, if so why didn't he take care of that all this time?a heroic last stand against police and the modern world, high up in the stark Sierras, on the other hand a cop is shot in passing and no one thinks twice about it.The problem here, as you may have gleaned, is not the amoral world, that is fine and expected from noir, even though the film comes at the start of the cycle when there wasn't any solid genre as we know it now. I'm sure the film was conceived as a gritty crime flick, typical Warner bros, the twist being that it will be told using codas from the western. The innovation is that those codas are about the passing of the West, something the western was not going to pick up until the late 50's at least.The problem is the tear-jerking sentimentality applied on noir cosmology; small human beings at the mercy of cruel gods, this is rendered as Roy being sprung from prison, given a new lease of life, but only to serve the heist.Now traditional western heroes had a mean streak in them but were basically decent human beings, so if the film rhapsodized their passing, that was okay, they were the kind of man you'd like to be or call a friend. Later in Italian westerns they were amoral scoundrels who maybe did the right thing because it was on their way to money, but Italian westerns were never sentimental about their exploits.But you can't be emotional about the noir schmuck, you can't arrive at conclusions for us. My opinion is that one has to push his understanding beyond the level of fates, beyond immediate chaos on the human level, that some of us are born bad and only rushing towards death, and grasp mechanisms that control these things. The film grasps little.On the other hand, you might want to see the classic finale, with our hero surrounded by landscape that reflects him, harsh, barren, proud, while down below watches the audience, of course expecting violence and tragedy.