(no subject)

Forgot to blog about watching Dark Passage a few weeks back. Sovay wrote about it in 2013*, and describes it well – my only additional comments are that the plot seems to run on coincidence, but that I’m not sure if this counts as a flaw or works with the dream/nightmare noir mode. Parry (Bogart) doesn’t seem to have ever met Irene (Bacall) until she helps his prison escape, and yet she’s quite ensconced in his former social circle – she’s frenemies with Madge (Moorhead), the woman whose testimony convicted him, and kinda-sorta dating Madge’s ex – all of which would be understandable if the script ever suggested she Irene has deliberately cultivated these people in order to further investigate, or just bask in, the murder case she admits to being obsessed with; but the suggestion never comes up that I noticed. We learn Irene’s father was convicted of murdering her stepmother, but we don’t know if her belief in his innocence is correct, or who else might have done the deed. My two favourite characters, the taxi driver and his plastic surgeon buddy, get no backstory whatsoever – possibly that’s the appeal: for all the movie tells us, they could be otherworldly agents who specialize in helping the cause of justice through indirect and dodgy means. *https://sovay.dreamwidth.org/544032.html No attempt to embed the link seems to work.