7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.1 |
A man convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and works with a mysterious woman to prove his innocence.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett (I), Agnes Moorehead, Tom D'AndreaFilm-Noir | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
BDInfo verified. Spanish = Latin & Castillian
English SDH, French, Japanese, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Of all the leading roles played by Humphrey Bogart, none is as vaguely defined as Vincent Parry
in Dark Passage. Except for an unhappy marriage, Vincent has no back story; we learn almost
nothing about his life before the incarceration from which he escapes as the film opens. Neither a
hero nor an anti-hero, Vincent is motivated solely by his immediate predicament, which is to
avoid being recaptured and returned to prison.
The indistinctness of Vincent's character is matched by the film's radical approach to telling his
story. Writer/director Delmer Daves (The Red
House and 3:10 to Yuma) keeps
Vincent
off the screen for the film's first act, except for a few shots where he is shrouded in shadow. Vincent
spends the second act deprived of speech with his face swathed in bandages. Not until the final
thirty-five minutes of Dark Passage does Vincent appear onscreen with Bogart's familiar face,
which is a risky narrative gambit for a film promoted as a vehicle starring one of Warner's most
popular screen icons. Studio head Jack Warner was appalled when he saw the film, and
audiences were disappointed. Of the four projects pairing Bogart with Lauren Bacall, Dark
Passage was the least successful at the box office.
Today, though, viewers are more accustomed to "point of view" photography; indeed, the found-footage genre has made it such a gimmick that the
restraint of Daves' approach is refreshing. Dark Passage also benefits from an elegant performance by Bacall, who had become
choosy about her parts after being miscast by the studio in Confidential
Agent (necessitating a career reboot, aided by reshoots, in The Big Sleep). Bogart spotted the potential role for his new wife when he first read the novel by David Goodis
on
which Dark Passage is based, and he was instrumental in persuading Warner to make the film under the direction of Daves, who had
co-scripted Bogart's breakthrough role in The
Petrified Forest. Despite the film's initial poor reception, time has ratified Bogart's instincts, because Bacall's ambiguous heroine, part
guardian angel, part femme fatale, gives Dark Passage its emotional core.
Dark Passage was photographed by Sid Hickox, the cinematographer of To Have and Have Not
and The Big Sleep. A newly developed
handheld camera was used to capture the many point-of-view shots. Director Delmer Daves was allowed to shoot much of the film on location in San
Francisco, which made Dark Passage one in a line of notable films (including Vertigo and
Bullitt) that have exploited the city's distinctive topography for
visual interest.
For the film's Blu-ray debut, the Warner Archive Collection has newly scanned (at 2K) a recently
manufactured fine-grain master positive made from the original nitrate negative. As with all
films of this vintage, the negative had accumulated substantial wear-and-tear, necessitating
extensive restoration work to repair damage and remove dirt and scratches. The result on this
1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a lustrous black-and-white image that deftly handles Dark
Passage's mixture of film noir shadows and brightly lit indoor and daytime scenes. Superior
detail enhances the many shots in which the camera remains fixed on the face of someone
speaking to Vincent, seen from his point of view. The creases and crags on Dr. Coley make his
jokes about the ease with which a plastic surgeon can ruin someone's face all the more
intimidating, while the delicacy of Irene's features brings out her radiance (and sometimes makes
her seem too good to be true). The San Francisco locations are reproduced with picture-postcard
clarity, including the distinctive Art Deco building used for Irene's apartment, which
subsequently became a tourist attraction. Blacks are deep, whites are accurate, shades of gray are
well delineated, and the film's natural grain pattern is finely resolved. Even the opticals depicting
Vincent's anesthesia-induced nightmare are remarkably crisp and detailed. Only the sequences
utilizing rear projection show a drop-off in quality, and that is inherent in the source.
WAC has mastered Dark Passage at an average bitrate of 33.91 Mbps, which is slightly under its
usual target but is sufficient to ensure a superior encode.
Dark Passage's original mono soundtrack has been derived from the optical track of the master positive and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. Digital cleanup has eliminated any pops, clicks or hiss, and the track cleanly reproduces the film's dialogue and sound effects, including the threatening sirens triggered by Vincent's escape. The score by the prolific Franz Waxman (Suspicion) plays with good fidelity and dynamic range for a soundtrack of this vintage, contributing both suspense and, when appropriate, tender emotion.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's DVD of Dark Passage, first released in 2003
and reissued in 2006. Both the trailer and the cartoon have been remastered in 1080p.
With the release of The Big Sleep, Key
Largo and now Dark Passage, WAC has nearly completed the quartet of films pairing Bogart and Bacall, one of Hollywood's
most
storied couples. Only the film that started it all, To Have and Have Not, remains unreleased on Blu-ray
(an omission that I expect to be remedied soon). The boldness of Dark Passage's stylistic
experiments may have dampened the film's original reception, but they have also kept it novel
and intriguing. WAC's presentation is first-rate and highly recommended.
Warner Archive Collection
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4K Restoration
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4K Restoration
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Arrow Academy
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Reissue | Special Edition
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Hot Spot
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