Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by jamesgarvin (A) on April 20, 2005 at 12:53:54

In Reply to: Re: In a Lonely Place posted by JefferyK on April 2, 2005 at 10:43:23:

For the first half of the film, I thought that Bogart's character was similar to his other roles: A basically good, but flawed, human. The man whose life runs very close to the legal/illegal line, but when a good deed must be done, he does it, willing to sacrifice himself. In this film, he was a flawed man, but his flaws were not harmful only to himself. Rather, his violent temper harmed and scared those around him. Ironic, that in this film, he has close friends who think much of him, even though he willing to harm them, whereas in his other work, he has very few people who are close to him.

I did not mean to imply that I did not like his character, only that his character was not likeable. I must say that Bogart is probably my favorite actor of all time, and I doubt that I could not like like any of his characters.

When he is walking down the walkway alone at the end of the film, I did not feel sorry for him, because I felt that his loneliness was earned by his actions, despite him apparently not being able to control them. I certainly pitied him. But those feelings are not the same.

I did find the film interesting. My only caveat was that it should not be compared with Casablanca or the Maltese Falcon, to use two examples. Those are great films by any measure. If compared to those, then I think it falls a little short, which really is not a critism, because most films, even very good ones, which this is, fall short of those by comparison. Standing on it's own, it IS very good, and very recommended.