Someone posted a link to The Maltese Falcon on another board I check out. Got me thinking about Bogie's best movies. The list I come up with is:

Maltese Falcon
Key Largo
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Casablanca

First 3 in no particular order, because I can't decide. Casablance is a definite fourth though.

Been a long time since I've seen To Have or Have Not, so it didn't make my list, but I'll hold an option on it.

Any thoughts?

I really enjoyed Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Tim Holt and Bogart are at each other's throats because of their greed and are completely miserable. Walter Huston (director John's Dad) didn't give a shit about the gold and seemed to enjoy being up in the mountains. That is one well made movie.

I am always willing to watch anything with Edward G. Robinson (ne Emanuel Goldenberg). I have seen Double Indemnity more times than I can count.

I'm a Casablanca man, myself. Bogart at his leaning on the bar smoking a cigarette best. "You wore grey, the Germans wore blue". Or vice versa. It's early.

You have to put The Caine Mutiny on there too.

I'll have to see the dang thing first. Thanks.

Those are all great movies of course. Don't forget some others though like African Queen. I also really like some of the lesser known ones a whole lot. In a lonely place, The Petrified Forest, The Roaring Twenties , They drive by night, Action in the North Atlantic......etc.

I'm with Barry. LOVE Casablanca.

I could do quips from that movie for hours.

African Queen is tainted by that shaky bitch. She tainted a John Wayne movie for me too. I hate that shaky bitch. Just fucking pure hate.

Off the top of my head, the only movie I liked her in, and I REALLY liked her in this movie, was "Bringing Up Baby".

I watched her with Bogart and John Wayne, but she is on my do not watch list along with such luminaries as Woody Allen, Jim Carrey and Roman Polanski.

I LOVE the early over-the-top Woody stuff: Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Play it Again Sam. The latter stuff, not so much. I do like Annie Hall and Radio Days, though.


Jim Carrey, I could mostly do without. I didn't care for his characters on In Living Color either. I thought that unattractive redhead much funnier.

I did like The Truman Show. But, the role prevented him from doing his silliness. And, a scene or two of Me, Myself & Irene [but that's usually how I feel about Farrelly Bros movies, a couple good scenes, the rest filler].


The only Polanski films I recall are Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown [which I enjoyed, but I have no need to see again] and The Pianist [which I've never seen, don't care for Holocaust-themed movies].

Caine works because it's so against type.

I know everyone goes on and on about The Maltese Falcon, but for my money, I prefer The Big Sleep. Then again, I've always dug Chandler better than Hammett. Might be that rare case where worse books turn into better films.

The Caine Mutiny is a great film also. I thought Jose Ferrer did a great job opposite Bogart. Fred McMurray is also great playing the feckless weasel that he perfected in Double Indemnity.

The Big Sleep with the Martha Vickers thumb sucking scene; pretty fucking hot. Apparently many of Vickers' scenes were cut as she was upstaging Lauren Bacall. The premise of the movie seems laughable today: loaning pornography out to men and then blackmailing them over it.

She was pretty damn hot in her younger days.

Great synopsis.

I'm with you on The Big Sleep, I was surprised no one else mentioned it yet. Also In a Lonely Place.

Not to Bogart this Bogart thread, but I just remembered a phenomenal James Cagney movie: White Heat. This is a timeless movie that is as actioned packed as any movie made today. The whole mother thing takes it to another level. Top of the world, MA! Yes indeed.

Go ahead and highjack man. Bogart is the starting point, but feel free to recommend/debate any old movies. Say keep it to B&W or pre-60's, something like that. No AMC lets redefine classic as anything over 10 years old though.

Viewed the Caine Mutiny last night. Quality flick, but didn't grab me like the ones I mentioned in the first post. Gonna do The Big Sleep again tonight.

Ahh, screw it. If someone w/stroke doesn't like it, then feel free to take them down. It is a holiday weekend.

Maltese Falcon

The Big Sleep

To Have And Have Not

Happy Memorial Day to anyone that wants a Bogie Marathon.

If we're going by those rules, I'm always at Grapes of Wrath. Carradine is amazing as Preacher Casey. The character seeking redemption that he knows will never come always appeals to me, and he just owns it. And Hank Fonda pioneers the anti- hero. He's a decent guy who "turned mean", as Ma Joad put it. The supporting cast and the eople they meet along the epic journey are really stereotyped, but for me that just adds to the watchability of the film.

^^Another one that I haven't seen in a long time.

My favorite Henry Fonda movie is 12 Angry Men. Just really captured me with its intensity.

AFI on Bogart:

#3. Casblanca
31. The Maltese Falcon
38. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
65. African Queen

Of course they named him the #1 Actor also.

Grapes of Wrath: Great movie, but it makes me too sad.

Like another Steinbeck-inspired flick, Burgess Meredith/Lon Chaney, Jr. Powerful movie, unforgettable, great performances, but I'll never watch it again.

LOVE 12 Angry Men. I can watch that over and over. Begley, Cobb & E.G. Marshall are fantastic.


Another b/w film from around the time of 12 Angry Men I enjoy immensely is Inherit the Wind. Fredric March and Hepburn-banger Spencer Tracy are fantastic.



Most of the b/w films I try to catch whenever they are on wouldn't qualify as artistic classics. They would be better labelled as just escapist favorites. These would include The Day the Earth Stood Still, Them and Miracle on 34th Street.

At the end of the day the most watchable movies are escapist. Sometimes the going for artistic value gets too heavyhanded. Pure silliness can be the best entertainment. I've been reading the Vince Flynn/ Mitch Rapp books. Pure sugar, no nutritional value whatsoever. But they allow me to shut off the real world for a little while.

If you are opening the doors for all pre-60s B&W movies then The Third Man and The Night of the Hunter are going to walk right on through

The Third Man is a very interesting movie in that the star is alluded to and mentioned constantly but doesn't appear until the third act. The Anton Karas zither music gives it a surreal carnival feel. Joseph Cotton always turns in a good performance.

A quick way to get a good film education in the classics is to set your DVR to capture the four star movies that Turner Classics Movies run from Feb 1 to Mar 3 every year. It is their "30 days of Oscar" where every film shown was nominated or won an Academy award. Every August the have their "Nights under the Stars" where they pick a star like Bogart or Cagney and show a lot of their movies for a day.

M with Peter Lorre (directed by Fritz Lang) as a child molester/killer is a masterpiece. It is great to see him act in his native language.

Very good points, KF.

Before I found "Benny Hill" on AntennaTV, often tried to DVR TCM's "Essentials" to see older movies they rate highly and I've never heard of. Now on Saturday's I mostly watch sports and DVR Benny Hill.

[Benny Hill is my favorite guilty pleasure.]

My film education came when I was a kid and PBS was airing the Film on Film series from BBC. All the ins and outs of Chaplin and other movie greats. I had an uncle video tape them for me because it came in too fuzzy at my house to record. I was always a classic comedy and horror fan, but my uncle opened my eyes to the likes of Bogie, the Thin Man series and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. It has been so long that I forget which Charlie Chan he was a fan of, Toler or Oland.

Besides the intensity of 12 Angry Men, it was just so easy to put yourself in that room. I knew nothing of it when I first saw it, late night on PBS, but I thought it would be a tremendous play. When I found out that is where it came from, I felt so proud I knew a little something. You could remake it every 15 years and get Oscar nods. Take the 12 best character actors of any generation and throw them in a room with that script, nothing but money.

I'm not the biggest Cagney guy, but the horror fan in me loves Man of A Thousand Faces.

Escapist, Treasure Island, Wallace Beery version.

P.S. I can get the people that can't sit through silent movies, some can be tedious, but when I start talking about B&W films and they say they can't watch one, it drives me fucking nuts. Might as well tattoo "SIMPLETON" on your forehead.

Showtime did one like 10-15 years ago with Jack Lemmon [Fonda] & George C. Scott [Cobb]. It even had a relatively unknown "Tony Soprano" in it, playing the hard-working blue collar guy who sat next to Klugman part, IIRC.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as good.



An interesting twist, which I did like very much, was that the Begley "racist" was played as a Black Muslim [by the guy who did Bubba in Forrest Gump].

On the escapist front, I throw in a guilty pleasure:

Grant/Russell, "His Girl Friday", a version of "The Front Page" with the reporter as a dame, using the parlance of the period.



For anyone interested, it's public domain and in the internet archives where you can download or stream:

http://www.archive.org/details/HisGirlFriday

What does everyone think of when Turner started colorizing them years ago? That was an abortion that should've never happened.

The merger with AOL was his punishment for colorizing those movies. I forget what the trigger was, maybe when he left the company because the AOL guys wouldn't listen to him, but in one day he lost a billion in net worth. Fuck him.

He also edited the movies when he colorized them.

I look at it like New Coke: Something best left forgotten.

That was out also out of Atlanta at about the same time, no?

Maybe there is some kind of conspiratorial connection ...

Nothing guilty about His Girl Friday, it's one of my favourite comedies and one of the best comedies out of Hollywood, I think. Also great is another Grant screwball comedy The Awful Truth. It Happened One Night still stands up too.

About Grapes of Wrath, Ford's original cut was the shot of Joad walking away into the sunset (makes sense visually too, as it opens with Joad walking towards the camera on the road if I remember right). But Zanuck wanted a more 'upbeat' ending and called Ford, who was out on his fishing boat, and told him to come back and re-shoot the ending but Ford refused and told him to shoot the ending himself if he wanted it so Zanuck did just that!

That was more upbeat than walkin into the sunset? Wow.

I caught the end of the original "King Kong" the other day.

I LOVE the model animations. Especially the scene where Kong puts an end to the midtown el train. And, this was made the year my dad was born.


I was also thinking that good number of today's porn girls are cuter than Faye.

Touch of Evil - by Orson Welles.
Third Man, already mentioned, is just a beautiful piece of art.
For Bogart, I like Key Largo.

Creepy b/w film - Carnival of Souls. Would have been a gynormous hit if Orson Welles had directed it.

I saw the so-called "directors cut" on that a few years back. Loved it.

He never got to finish the movie the way he wanted (studio overrode him) but he wrote a 50 page letter detailing how he had wanted it all to be put together. Someone found that letter and was able to piece together enough of the original film stock to remake a director's cut that is far closer to his original vision.