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The introductory view of the hitchhiker among tumbleweeds is varied by Ford in The Grapes of Wrath, and there's Charley Grapewin with memories of the wild frontier. "Last Chance" in Black Mesa or so reads the diner's marque on the edge of the desert, the proprietor (Porter Hall) is a "tin-horn patriot" running around with a vigilante militia, his daughter (Bette Davis) waits tables while dreaming of France. In strolls the wandering windbag (Leslie Howard), not English but "American once removed," squashed novelist and effete gigolo and part of "a vanishing race: I'm one of the intellectuals." An Arizona outpost is as good a place as any for a dilettante to consummate his death drive, a pact is made with the mad-dog fugitive who's his opposite number (Humphrey Bogart). "Do you believe in astrology?" "I couldn't say, pal." It takes a rugged studio to negotiate prolix allegories, Robert E. Sherwood's play filmed at Warners by Archie Mayo means a tug between high-flown abstraction and hard-boiled pulp. The desperado as distinct from a gangster, Villon verses to "take the stink of gasoline and hamburger out of the system," a sandstorm against painted backdrops vividly remembered by Altman (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean). The gas-station musclehead (Dick Foran) fumbles his act of heroism, the affluent hostage (Genevieve Tobin) would rather lam it with the hoodlum than linger with the humdrum husband (Paul Harvey). Bogart's stylized menace versus Howard's lofty stupor comprise the dyad, reflected on the margins by Black henchman (Slim Thompson) and Black chauffeur (John Alexander): "Ain't you heard about the big liberation?" A dollar in the dust, or Hollow Man meets Billy the Kid. "You know, you talk like a darn fool." Huston carries Bogart over to Key Largo, and there are echoes in Bitter Victory, Il Grido, The Fire Within... With Joe Sawyer, Adrian Morris, Eddie Acuff, and Nina Campana. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |