Cinema of the Caribbean: High Sierra

Big Mac is dying, and before he croaks he’s going to plan one last job for old time’s sake. This kind of caper isn’t fit for today’s generation - all soda-jerkers, jitterbugs and 14 karat saps. It’s a muscle job. It needs authority and a willingness to knock off any drip who gets cute. It’s the kind of job for Roy Earle, an old-school gangster’s gangster who has just been released from a long stretch in the icebox.

High Sierra is a valedictory for the Warner Bros. tommy-gun epoch. Released less than a year before Pearl Harbor, it trumpeted a changing of the guard. The stetson-wearing punk-rockers of the 30s, mashing grapefruit halves in the face of society, were gone forever. It would soon be a time for antiseptic war films; less than noble instincts would have to be filtered through the grimy prism of film noir.

There are more than a few winks and nods to the graveyard of heavies left behind in the previous decade, as well as their now-unemployed associates. You can actually see Humphrey Bogart holding back a laugh in scenes like the one where he bumps into an old on-the-payroll doctor:

Doc: Roy Earle, the old boy himself.

Roy: Hello, Doc.

Doc: The last time I saw you, I was taking slugs out of Lefty Jackson’s chest. Those were the times!

Roy: Mac tells me you’re doing all-right, Doc.

Doc: This is the land of milk and honey for the health racket. Every woman in California thinks she’s too fat or too thin or too something.

Top-billed British actress Ida Lupino plays Marie, a dime-a-dance floozy who hangs around with Babe and Red, two low-level hoods who are hired to play back-up to Roy Earle when he takes down Big Mac’s score. Shortly after meeting Roy, Marie immediately offers up that she is stringing both guys along just for kicks. "I can make Red think what I want," she smilingly says.

This foursome, together with a small mongrel dog who may or may not be cursed, set off to hold up a swanky resort hotel. The twist comes when Big Mac kicks off sooner than anyone really expects, and the scaffolding of his criminal network comes crashing down on the heads of Roy and his gang.

The film was directed by Raoul Walsh, the legendary pirate director who was D.W. Griffith’s assistant during Birth of a Nation and was still making Cinemascope westerns in the 1960s. Despite that resume, however, his direction of the film is overshadowed by the fact that here began the collaboration between Bogart and then studio hack writer John Huston.

Was three a crowd? Quite possibly. High Sierra made the career of Huston, but he devotes only half a page to the film in his mammoth autobiography. It was also a tempestuous shoot for other reasons. The production was briefly put on hold when Bogart was called before HUAC chairman Martin Dies’ anti-communist committee to answer questions about some vague involvement in a lettuce worker’s strike.

In many ways, Bogart’s career also began with this picture, but this was the peak of Ida Lupino’s career; she made only a handful of memorable films anyway. It’s a shame - she’s a much more engaging actress than other Bogart co-stars that would come after her. She was also more of a battler than a smoldering sex goddess, which suits Bogie. At the time of High Sierra’s filming, he was married to a knife-brandishing maniac named Mayo Methot, and he seems so on-edge in some scenes that you wonder if it’s acting.

On-edge Bogie was always better than the suave Bogie of Casablanca and Key Largo. Before he died of cancer in the late 50s, he would swing back around to make more films that showcased his nervous, twitchy side like The Desperate Hours and The Caine Mutiny. Anyone who enjoys High Sierra should consider those two as video recommendations.

If you’re like me, you think that once movies are finished, they should be left alone completely, safe even from the hands of the director, and not subject to endless "versions." High Sierra is a movie that puts that theory to the test. It is marred by a heavily dated subplot involving a family of rubes, with a daughter who represents normalcy and stability. Roy, of course, is the monster who thinks that he can ingratiate himself into this normal family, but in the end, decency spits him out. (It’s interesting to note that both Joan Leslie, who plays the daughter, and Ida Lupino were suspended from Warner Brothers for refusing to take crummy roles.)

The whole subplot plays badly, with ham-fisted comedy and unnecessary complications. Without knowing the real story, I can almost see Raoul Walsh and John Huston clashing over this issue. Huston movies are famously lean and often have no more than two or three major speaking roles. Walsh was more of a landscape painter, but with something of a blind spot when it came to handling smaller roles and capturing regional authenticity.

But then again, this movie was made back when forensic, shot-by-shot examination was unheard of, and handling the small things well was probably its own reward. High Sierra works - it has some great moments, and it’s mandatory viewing for anyone who counts gangster films among their top genres. The scenes with Barton MacClane as a corrupt ex-cop are my favorite, and the actor who portrayed Big Mac, Donald MacBride, was an old vaudevillian who played it to the hilt. I also like the moment where Roy fossicks around in a pile of stolen loot to find a wedding ring for Marie. Most of all, it’s just a joy to watch Bogart chew up the scenery like nobody before or since.