Word: gangsterisms
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...historical approach to Bogart is possible this spring because the Brattle has programmed thirteen (count 'em) of the master's movies in one-day shots, guaranteed to ruin any carefully planned study schedule. The interested viewer can follow Bogie from his bit roles in George Raft type gangster films through the "classic" private eye series of the 'Forties to the start of his final ("warning" or "mature," depending on your preference) period...
...Casablanca (1943) and Big Sleep (1946), and a number of clever near-misses like To Have and Have Not (1945), Key Largo (1947), and Dark Passage (1947) brighten the canon of Bogie films in the 'Forties, which includes a good number of dull patriotic epics (Passage to Marseilles) and gangster potboilers. During the making of the cinema landmarks, a famous team of Bogart, Lauren Bacall ("If you want anything, just whistle."), Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Peter Lorre gathered together. The swansong of the team, its leader, and the whole crime movie genre came with Beat the Devil...
Fred Gardner's story "Admiration" talks about the seamy side of garment worker society in the Depression. Gardner's hero is a Jewish gangster, with a heart, naturally. "Admiration" is not a world-shaking story, but Gardner writes Yiddish dialogue with accuracy and verve...
...galleries of the shelter. The tycoon's blonde daughter. The tycoon's colored butler-old-fashioned enough to do a bit of praying. The butler's honey-colored sexpot daughter. The Japanese gardener's son. A dreamy Hawaiian-Chinese girl. An Italian-American gangster-gigolo type with a switch knife. A gas-meter reader. An Ivy League dope engaged to the tycoon's daughter...
...Untouchables' Bob Stack (Eliot Ness) attributes her success to the fact that as an actress "she knows when some thing would feel uncomfortable on a performer." She is also famed for her "glue," her ability to link scenes smoothly, as when the distorted image of a gangster in a funhouse mirror gives way in an eyeblink to a beautiful girl looking in a mirror at a new fur wrap. She rules more by sex appeal than by fiat. "Can we try it this way, darling," she will murmur, "or would you hate me for that, sweetheart...