Dark Passage
Short description
Vincent Parry, serving life in San Quentin for the murder of his wife, escapes and is picked up on the road by Irene Jansen, a woman who followed his trial and believes he was wrongly convicted. She gives him shelter while the police close in, and he turns to plastic surgery to change his face before setting out to find the real killer.
Delmer Daves directed and wrote the screenplay, with Jerry Wald producing for Warner Bros. It was Daves's second film as director, following Destination Tokyo in 1943 and preceding Broken Arrow in 1950. Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent and Lauren Bacall plays Irene, their third pairing on screen; the credited cast of 28 also includes Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead, Tom D'Andrea and Clifton Young. The film runs 106 minutes and was made for about 2 million dollars, taking roughly 3 million at the worldwide box office.
On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 24,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 out of 10 from 363 votes. A critics' rating of 7.7 out of 10 from 31 reviews places it slightly above both audience scores, which sit close to each other.
What's left behind the scenes
- The plot of the film is based on the eponymous novella by David Goodis.
- In one shot, Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) sees his photo in the newspaper, depicting him before plastic surgery. The photo features character actor Frank Wilcox.
- This is the third of four films made while Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married.
- Warner Bros. paid $25,000 for the rights to David Goodis’s novella “The Black Friday.” The work was published in installments in The Saturday Evening Post from July 20 to September 7, 1946.
- Humphrey Bogart's fully visible face can only be seen at the 62nd minute of the film, after his character removes the bandages and looks in the mirror. All preceding scenes with the character are shown either from his point of view (using the 'subjective camera' technique) or in such a way that his face is hidden by shadows or bandages.
- The voice on the car radio reporting Vincent Perry's escape, while Humphrey Bogart and Clifton Young are driving, belongs to the actor Dane Clark.
- Warner Brothers President Jack L. Warner disliked the fact that Humphrey Bogart's face, a major star of his studio, was not shown on screen even once during the first half of the film. By the time he found out, it was too late to change anything, as many key scenes had already been shot.
- A photograph of Vincent, as played by Humphrey Bogart before plastic surgery, is shown, among other places, in a newspaper clipping. It was the pinnacle of photomontage for its time – using double exposure and meticulous retouching. The lower part of the face belongs to actor Kenneth McDonald, the upper part (from the middle of the nose and above) to Bogart.
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