Saw All through the night. At the brattle theatre in Cambridge. A unique Bogart movie – quite humorous. He plays the New York tough maybe for the last time. He is a star. This is after Casablanca. But it is a warners bros b. helping the war effort Jackie Gleason and Phil silvers and William Demarest in the most expansive film role I have seen him play. More than a passing nod to Damon Runyon.
It was about a .. well not a gangster .. a gambler. Who investigates a murder of a local baker. There is a dame involved. He gets pinned with a murder which leads him to uncover a secret ring of Nazis. He disrupts their plot to blow up a battleship in New York harbor.
It’s always stayed with me. It starts with the simple act of a murder of a cheesecake baker [by no less than Peter Lorrie, under employ of no less than Conrad Veidt]. Has a plot. But more than that it has characters. Takes place in a single day and night. All through the night an apt title. Great black and white. Getting toward the acme where Hollywood had refined light and dark presentation. Influenced by Hitchcock and in turn German expressionists cinema. It’s a world of gamblers nightclubs and maybe gangsters. Of docks. Of warehouses. An underworld. A mood. More a mood than anything. Which is what I like best about it.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0034449/maindetails
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