Bogart And Bacall Signature Collection - The Big Sleep/To Have And Have Not/Key Largo/Dark Passage DVD

The Big Sleep:One of the most satisfying and sheerly entertaining movies ever to come out of Hollywood this marvellous 1946 classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled novel is the perfect vehicle for the real-life team of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall whose sultry zingy dialogue adds spice to what has to be the most intricate and most exciting thriller plot ever filmed. In the hands of screen play writers William Faulkner Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman and master director Howard Hawks who slings the lamps low and keeps violence crackling this... movie zips along down Chandler's mean Los Angelino streets as Bogie's world-weary cynical private eye Philip Marlowe begins a search for a missing chauffeur that turns into a blackmail hunt with a pretty girl at each turn and a corpse on each corner. The sexual undercurrents are torrid the repartee remarkable the whole just simply terrific. To Have And Have Not:Help the Free French? Not world-weary gunrunner Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). But he changes his mind when a sultry siren-in-distress named Marie asks ""Anybody got a match?"" That red-hot match is Bogart and 19-year-old first-time film actress Lauren Bacall. Full of intrigue and racy banter (including Bacall's legendary whistling instructions) this thriller excites further interest for what it has and has not. Cannily directed by Howard Hawks and smartly written by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman it doesn't have much similarity to the Ernest Hemingway novel that inspired it. And it strongly resembles Casablanca: French resistance fighters a piano-playing bluesman (Hoagy Carmichael) and a Martinique bar much like Rick's Cafe Americaine. But first and foremost it showcases Bogart and Bacall carrying on with a passion that smolders from the tips of their cigarettes clear through to their souls. 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 (Lauren Bacall) 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 Award winning performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted boozy moll. In Huston's hands it becomes a powerful sweltering classic. The Dark Passage:Bogey's on the lam and Bacall's at his side in Dark Passage Delmer Daves' stylish film-noir thriller that's the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. Bogart is Vincent Parry a prison escapee framed for murder who emerges from plastic surgery with a new face. Bacall is Irene Jansen Vincent's lone ally. In a supporting role Agnes Moorehead portrays Madge a venomous harpy who finds pleasure in the unhappiness of others. The chemistry of the leads is undeniable and they augment it here with exceptional tenderness. Exceptional too are the atmospheric San Francisco locations and the imaginative camera work that shows Vincent's point of view - but not his face - until the bandages are removed. Lest Irene get ideas the post-surgery Vincent tells her: ""Don't change yours. I like it just as it is."" [show more]

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