Späte Sühne

One can't help wondering, while watching this movie, whether one has seen it before. Not for the first time is Bogart out to avenge a friend's death. He's gone after polished, Continental Mr. Big types before, too; and Lizabeth Scott looks an awful lot like Lauren Bacall. Some of the dialogue seems to have been lifted in toto from earlier Bogart films. Yet for all this, Dead Reckoning is still entertaining. Its cliches are at least agreeably packaged, and the setting, the Gulf Coast South, is unusual. Bogart brings sublime integrity to his world-weary and life-battered persona, and however artificial and predictable the story might be, the star's authenticity is absolute. One believes what's going on because one believes Bogart.

This kind of thriller, which now falls under the general rubric of film noir, was losing a little steam by this time. For one thing, Morris Carnovksy's character of Martinelli had been done to death in the previous five years by everyone from Sydney Greenstreet to Otto Kruger. Marvin Miller's hulking, seemingly emotionally disturbed thug had become a commonplace fixture in such films; and while Miller is unique in his heavy-set, Orson Wellesian appearance, there's little that's new here, either. One can imagine script conferences of the day, with young screenwriters falling over one another trying to come up with a new psychological "complex" for the bad guy to be suffering from. Fortunately for the viewer, cliched though this movie is, it was made with extreme professionalism. Leo Tover's cinematography is understated, and nicely suggests the equatorial. John Cromwell was an old stage and movie pro by this time, though his usual magical touch with actors failed him with Miss Scott, he handles the tough guy stuff with suave authority.

So, why does war hero Johnny Drake (William Prince) take a fast train away from the nation's highest military honor. It's an intriguing premise and the next 90 minutes tells us why. The movie's got noir icons like Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, and Morris Carnovski, plus a mysterious past, a smoky night club, and a barbecued corpse. In short, this ought to be classic noir, but in my little book it's not.

I've got two basic gripes. First, Scott may look the part, but she's no Jane Greer (Out of the Past. 1947). Above all, noir's spider women have to be good actresses so that we never know their true feelings. That trickiness means we can get suckered along with the hero. But it also means we get suckered against our better judgement because we and the hero suspect their sincerity all along. Scott's performance lacks that crucial element of trickiness-- hers is essentially a one note performance with no hint of a gap between how she feels and how she behaves. Thus, there's no real revelation at the end because she looks and acts the same as before. As a result, the betrayal is all in the script and crucially not where it belongs-- in the performance.

Speaking of the script-- the banter is too cute by-half. Practically every line out of Bogart's mouth shouts clever writer's device, whether it's baseball metaphors (strike one, strike two, etc), car metaphors, or the various other false rhetorical notes. For me, it gets tiresome, Bogart or no Bogart. Then too, Carnovski's queasy racketeer is made to enunciate his lines with perfectly parsed diction. Of course, that makes him a more interesting character and criminal mastermind. But, this again amounts to a device that calls attention to the words being said instead of to who is saying them or how the plot is helped along. It seems to me that a good script carries a story without competing with it.

These are my two main gripes. There are other reasons I think the movie doesn't get beyond second-rate noir, such as uninspired direction (whether Cromwell's name is elevated above the title or not), overly long love scenes (after the point has been made), and menacing figures who don't really menace (Carnovski & Miller). Together these undercut the strong points, such as the train scenes (how Prince & Bogart have bonded) or certain good story points (the unidentifiable corpse, the poignant last scene).

In passing-- this is not a gripe, but I suspect Columbia was using Bogart to build Scott into another Lauren Bacall. The two look somewhat alike, sound somewhat alike, and both built careers on appearance and attitude rather than ability. Here Bogart ends up calling Scott's character "Mike", just the sort of sidekick affection he shows for real life wife Bacall in their several movies together. Nothing obvious hangs on this, just a surmise that the movie may have been shaped for more than one purpose. However that may be, the movie amounts to okay but unmemorable noir entertainment.

One of Bogart's best, a brutal Film Noir with a surprising ending, & filled with sharp, witty dialog. Lizabeth has never looked more beautiful than here, & although her acting ability is overmatched by Bogart, she would improve in her later films & she's adequate in this role. There's glimpses of the basic "Maltese Falcon" plot here: Bogey searches out & seeks revenge for his partner, even some of the dialog is similar in that respect. If you like Bogart or if you like Film Noir, you can't go wrong with this one! And by the way, this is a REAL Film Noir, not in the newer use of this phrase (recently, people have been calling any B&W crime drama made in the 1940s a "Film Noir"). This film has all the classic Film Noir elements: lots of shadows & stark contrasts (in the beginning, Bogart speaks from shadows so dark that one can hardly see his face), a spoken narrative, a "hero" who works outside the law, a murder mystery, & a heroine who may not be a heroine.

This mediocre film noir, involving the usual tangle of murder and deceit, is notable mainly for Bogart's presence. He's an army captain who sets out to solve the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a buddy. There's the usual quotient of danger and deceit and, of course, a femme fatale, well played by Lizabeth Scott who seems to have been born for this kind of part. Many of the plot points are either hard to follow or hard to swallow, and it's all much too talky, but it does have a memorable closing line! Worth seeing for genre buffs.

By the way he talks Humphrey Bogart thinks he's still Sam Spade and that Lizabeth Scott is Mary Astor but "Dead Reckoning" is no "Maltese Falcon". Nevertheless this convoluted film-noir is still extremely enjoyable if a little hard to follow. It was directed by John Cromwell in 1947 and while Mr Cromwell was no John Huston he was no slouch either so the film moves at a fairly professional clip and is never less than entertaining.

If there's a problem it probably lies in the over-egged script and the purple prose, courtesy of no less than five writers and that includes producer Sidney Biddell who came up with the original story. Bogart is excellent as always and there's nice work from Morris Carnovsky as a bad guy but Lizabeth Scott was certainly no Mary Astor and at times you wonder if her 'bad acting' is bad acting or just 'bad acting', if you get my drift. For some reason the film isn't much seen these days which is a pity because, while no classic, it really is a lot of fun.