Der große Gangster

"The Big Shot" is a 1942 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Irene Manning. Bogie is a career criminal, Joseph Berne, who is sent to prison for life for something he didn't do - set up by his own attorney (Stanley Ridges), who finds out that Joe is involved with his wife (Manning). Berne's fake alibi is provided by a young salesman, George Anderson, who needed money and instead gets a year for perjury. It's George's predicament later on that gives Joe a crisis of conscience.

After years of toil at Warner Brothers, Bogart is now a star, and his image as a gangster is softening and would morph with Casablanca into an anti-hero. He does a good job in this film - his story is told in flashback from the prison hospital. The script is problematic. One glaring offense is that the police locate a criminal in a cabin. When they get there, they don't surround it, and their prey, not even aware the police are there, go out the back and drive away. Most viewers are aware that the cops surround an edifice. Not here. The movie is not particularly well directed by Lewis Seiler. There is, however, an exciting car chase.

Of interest here is George's girlfriend, the beautiful and doomed Susan Peters, who less than three years later would be paralyzed in a hunting accident. She was signed by MGM after this film. 1942 was a banner year for her, as she was nominated for a supporting Best Actress Oscar for "Random Harvest." She died in 1952. One of Hollywood's saddest stories.

You can't be mistaken by a Warner Brothers yarn from the forties or thirties, especially a gangster, crime flick. This one has no Jimmy Cagney nor Edward G Robinson as the lead, but Humphrey Bogart. He was then rising to the stardom, to the top, but he had not reached it yet...The director is Lewis Seiler, whith whom Bogie already made CRIME SCHOOL and KING OF THE UNDERWORLD. Seiler was a solid director, maybe unfairly negmected, forgotten, who gave us good war movies. However he was not Raoul Walsh nor Michael Curtiz. Bogart is here impressive, nearly terrific in a gangster role, a rough, tough hoodlum for whom the audiences can feel the greatest empathy.

The Big Shot was completed just as the USA was getting into World War II and it would be many years before Humphrey Bogart once again played a gangster role. He ended his career as Warner Brothers gangster however with a good role that more than faintly resembled his High Sierra and George Raft's part in Each Dawn I Die.

The story of The Big Shot is told in flashback as Bogart lies in a prison hospital. As he relates it, Bogey's a three time loser who if he gets another conviction it's permanent accommodations for him at the state's expense. Like Roy Earle in High Sierra, it's really too late for him to go straight.

But what a surprise he gets when he finds his former girl friend, Irene Manning, now married to big shot criminal attorney and criminal mastermind Stanley Ridges. When they start taking up where they left off, it's the beginning of the end for Bogey.

Like Roy Earle and Hood Stacey in Each Dawn I Die, there is an air of doom about Bogey's Duke Berne in The Big Shot. No matter what he does it will end bad for him as it does for those other characters. But the audience gets quite a ride. Best bit of action is that police chase with Bogart and Manning being pursued by upstate cops.

Best supporting performance in the film is that of Chick Chandler who plays another convict Dancer with whom Bogey makes a prison break. Chandler did work in vaudeville and was a song and dance man and got to use those skills in the role. Also Stanley Ridges is one mean and nasty villain.

This was the time that Bogart was between classics The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Though The Big Shot is not up there with those two, it's a lot better than other stuff he was doing at the time like All Through the Night and Across the Pacific. This is a good film for a Bogart fan to introduce someone else to the charisma and persona of Humphrey Bogart without using a classic.

HUMPHREY BOGART once admitted that he had to spend years at Warner Bros. dodging bullets and writhing around on the floor as a bullet-ridden gangster type, before being taken seriously in other roles.

THE BIG SHOT is a prime example. It came at a stage in his career where he was on the verge of becoming one of the biggest stars ever, with CASABALANA giving him the iconic role of Rick and taking him away from gangster roles for awhile. But until then, he was still a full-fledged gangster star.

Basically, it's a grade-B yarn with IRENE MANNING (who starred in "The Desert Song" opposite Dennis Morgan a year later), as his romantic interest in a cast that includes SUSAN PETERS, STANLEY RIDGES, MINOR WATSON and HOWARD DA SILVA.

Bogart is an ex-inmate, a three-time loser trying to go straight and we see his story in flashback as he lies on a hospital bed. Lured back into a life of crime when he can't find a job, he joins Da Silva's gang and has to deal with romantic complications involving ex-girlfriend Manning, married to crime boss Stanley Ridges. He gets accused of being one of the armored car bandits and has to figure a way to get himself clear of a frame-up. Ridges frames him while posing as his lawyer and Bogart gets sent to prison for a life term.

The prison break scene is the highlight of the drama and rescues the film from a slow pace that only steams up toward the conclusion. Bogart has a moral problem. A good guy (RICHARD TRAVIS) who tried to prevent Bogie and friend from making a jail break, gets accused of being mixed up in the escape. When a prison guard dies during the attempt, Travis has to take the blame.

The plot takes a turn when Bogart decides he can't let Travis, an innocent man, take the rap.

Summing up: Worthwhile for Bogie fans, but we've all seen this kind of crime drama before.

Humphrey Bogart, a master-actor of crime, did it again in this 1942 film. Ironically, it's when Bogie tries to go straight that things begin to go awry.

While we have all the familiar elements to a Warner's Gangster Film, this picture is done incredibly well. There are the small time crooks, the fancy lawyer who plots the jobs, two innocent young lovers caught up in this mess and a dame, Irene Manning, who gives a splendid performance.

Manning, the wife of the crooked lawyer, will not allow her lover, Bogart, to participate in a heist. That's when the action begins. Her husband discovers her indiscretion and makes sure that Bogart, who is blamed for being part of the robbery team, goes to prison on a life sentence as it is his third offense.

The lawyer causes more havoc until Bogie breaks out of jail and is finally able to deal with him.

With all his sinister gangster ways, Humphrey Bogart shows that he has a heart and will not let the "kid" take the rap and go to the chair as a result.