Discount Shopping Online :: VHS High Sierra (1941) : : Raoul Walsh

High Sierra (1941)
starring: Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie
directed by: Raoul Walsh

Used Price: $2.42
Collectible Price: $19.98
Third Party New Price: $2.89

Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780790747156
Format: Black & White, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, NTSC
ISBN: 0790747154
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Release Date: March 07, 2000
Running Time: 100 minutes
Sales Rank: 25155
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: January 25, 1941

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
This 1941 melodrama is memorable for both its strong central performances and their intimations of how the previous decade's crime dramas would evolve into film noir--no accident, given the solid direction of veteran Raoul Walsh and the hand of screenwriter John Huston, who teamed with the author of its novelistic source, W.R. Burnett (Little Caesar). In the central character of Roy 'Mad Dog' Earle, a fictional peer to John Dillinger, Humphrey Bogart finds a defining role that anticipates the underlying fatalism and moral ambiguity visible in the career-making roles soon to follow, including Sam Spade in Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon.

Earle suggests a prescient variation on the enraged sociopaths that were fixtures of the gangster melodramas that shaped Bogart's early screen image. Pardoned from a long prison stretch, the weary robber is clearly more eager to savor his new freedom than immediately swing back into action. But his early release has been engineered by a mobster who wants Earle to pull off a high-stakes burglary, setting in motion a plot that is a prototype for doomed-heist capers--a small, yet potent subgenre that would later include Huston's The Asphalt Jungle and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.

What gives High Sierra its power, however, isn't the crime itself but Earle's collision with the younger, brasher confederates picked to help him, and the hard-edged but vulnerable taxi dancer they're competing for, played forcefully by Ida Lupino, who actually received top billing. Her attraction to the reluctant Earle is complicated by a convoluted subplot designed to showcase then starlet Joan Leslie, but the movie finally moves into its most gripping moments when the wounded Earle, pursued by police, flees ever higher toward the mountains. His final, suicidal showdown would become a cliché of sorts in lesser films, but here it provides a wrenching climax sealed by Lupino's vivid final scene. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Life on the edge
This famous 1941 film not only cemented Humphrey Bogart's superstar status (after spending most of his earlier years playing only supporting heavy roles), but it also signaled the end of the long run of Warner's gangster movies since the early Thirties and the beginning of the studios' move to film noir. Unfortunately, without much of a knowledge of its revolutionary status today it does not play either as one of the better gangster films or one of the better noirs; the director, Raoul Walsh, does not seem fully in control of the material. The central plot involving a recently released convict (Bogart) and his small gang stationed up high in the Sierras to rob the safes of a luxury lodge is terrific, but all of this is intercut with kinds of bizarre other elements: a comic lodge employee (Willie Best), a monkey-faced dog with a curse, a screaming hotel guest wearing what looks like taffeta wings, and, worst of ... Read More

Rating:

- High Sierra
ESSENTIAL MOVIE!!! High Sierra was the movie that finally catapulted Bogey into a major star. The role of Roy Earle was one he had campaigned to get but almost didn't. Bogey recognized the role as being one that was complex & challenging. Yhis was also the last film that Bogey didn't get top billing, Warner Bros. had decided to give Ida Lupino that distinction though her role was subordinate to Bogey's.

Roy Earle is a bank robber that has done several years incarcerated. at the opening of the film we see Earle being released on a pardon. A friend, Big Mac (Donald MacBride) has worked hard behind the scenes to secure his release. But it's not just generosity, Big Mac wants Earle to go to California for a sure-thing heist. From the very beginning we see the complexities of the Earle character. Immediately upon his release he wants to "see if the grass is still green & if the trees are still growing." ... Read More

Rating:

- "CLASSIC CRIME DRAMA"
Roy Earle is released from prison and is preparing for his final heist. Screenplay by,W.R.Bernett&
John Houston. Directer;Raoul Walch. Lupino&bogart with a great cast. I call this movie;Sympathy
for the criminal film. (You're brought into their world.) This is a well crafted movie from the
40's.
The most subtle scene is,Bogart at the cigaret counter.
Check my review of;"I died a 1000 times."(remake.)
Extra's:Interviews,which includes Joan Leslie. Trailers,etc.

Rating:

- The film that made a star out of Bogart...and his dog, too!
"High Sierra" is an important film in many ways. It was the bridge between 1930's gangster movies and 1940's film noir. It was the first instance of the romantic, sympathetic criminal. It was also the pivotal movie of Bogart's career. It was the first time the studio's publicity department promoted him as a "star" and the last time he didn't receive top billing in a film. He deserved the attention he received for pulling off the character of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle; he was able to make this Dillinger-with-a-heart-of-gold believable.

The film benefits from a lot of top drawer talent; directed by Raoul Walsh from a screen play adaptation by John Houston. Bogart and Ida Lupino were reunited from their previous successful teaming in "They Drive by Night." The strong supporting cast includes Joan Leslie as the girl Bogart wanted to marry, and Cornel Wilde as the "inside man" on the planned heist. Even the ... Read More

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