"Actor: Patricia Clarke"

• Humphrey Bogart Crime Collection | DVD | (06/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  THE BIG SLEEP: L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe takes on a blackmail case...and follows a trail peopled with murderers pornographers nightclub rogues the spoiled rich and more. Humphrey Bogart plays Raymond Chandler's legendary gumshoe and director Howard Hawks serves up snappy character encounters (particularly involving Lauren Bacall) a brisk pace and atmosphere galore in this certified classic. KEY LARGO: A hurricane swells outside but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) holes up and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart). McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco. But the postwar world's realities may have taken all the fight out of him. John Huston co-wrote and compellingly directs this film of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play with a searing Academy Awardwinning performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted boozy moll. In Huston's hands it becomes a powerful sweltering classic. THE MALTESE FALCON: A gallery of high-living lowlifes will stop at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon. Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) wants to find out why - and who's gonna take the fall. This third screen version of Dashiell Hammett's novel is a film of firsts: John Huston's directorial debut rotund 62-year-old Sydney Greenstreet's screen debut film history's first film noir and Bogart's breakthrough role after years as a Warner contract player. When George Raft refused to work with a first-time director Bogart took on the role of Spade - and launched the most acclaimed period of his career.