Cynical Cinema

Humphrey Bogart might now be considered the greatest actor of all time, but there was a time where he was considering giving up movies for good. Two starring roles convinced him to stick around. The Petrified Forest and High Sierra. High Sierra was a gangster movie in an era where gangster movies reigned supreme. James Cagney was the biggest star in Hollywood thanks to gangster roles in the Public Enemy and The Roaring Twenties. And Bogart had been his second fiddle for a while. As the lead in High Sierra, Bogart showed he was a legitimate star in his own right. He’s the leader of a gang looking to knock off a hotel, and Ida Lupino is terrific as the girl who complicates things.

Things progress toward a you’ll-never-take-me-alive-copper ending where Bogart is at his very best, holed up in his mountain hideout, with Lupino and a bad-luck dog coming to find him.

High Sierra is dark, intense and, for it’s time, fairly bad-ass.