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Reviews
Dangerous Passage (1944)
An OK (2-stars out of 4) adventure on a tramp freighter.
Dangerous Passage is an OK (2-stars out of 4) adventure about a US oil worker from South America who inherits $200,000.00 in 1940's dollars (equivalent to more than 10 times that today). Problem is, how can he get to the US in one piece to cash in?
To keep things interesting, Phyllis Brooks, who was the beautiful real-life Ipana toothpaste girl of the 1930's and 40's just happens to be along for the long boat ride to the US. Hard to believe that at the tender age of 30, making only 2 more movies the following year.
A couple of twists to the plot seem to come from nowhere and defy understanding. But they keep it all interesting.
Dangerous Passage is as action packed as the cowboy adventures of the era. A touch slow in spots, but it does keep moving through its 1-hour running time. If you really like this movie (and it is pretty likable), then the movie, "Captain Scarface" is also for you. Both are adventure dramas set on tramp freighters, with the tough guy and the beautiful girl... a classic combination.
Winterset (1936)
Interesting, but I didn't get it
Winterset starts out beautifully and profoundly. The story flows well, but the latter scenes are so implausibly constrained that I ended up losing sympathy for the characters. The dialog was hard to make sense of at times, and many of the movie's sequences look like dark scenes from a bad dream... you know, the kind of situation you just can't escape from.
It looks as though, in the transition to turning the stage play into a movie, the makers never gave much thought to overcoming the obvious limitations that the stage imposes on what we now think of as the "action sequences".
I don't regret the time spent watching Winterset. It was interesting, but as a movie (and even allowing for its vintage) it was just "OK".
Captain Scarface (1953)
More fun to watch this for the first time than Casablanca yet again.
This is the kind of movie Humphrey Bogart could have starred in. You just have to think Leif Erickson (the Sam Wilton Character) = Humphrey. Here you have it all... exotic locale, beautiful damsel, Communist secret agents, the mystery ship.
Captain Scarface is really fun if you watch it while imagining what it would have been like with Bogie in it.
There are only so many movies that we, today, can hold up as the icons of the era of the 1940's to 1950's. You can't idolize them all, and for some reason, just about any movie with Bogie in it seems to suit peoples' subjective criterion of greatness. The golden age of black and white movies yielded a ton of dramas that kept people heading for the local movie theater. No, they weren't all classics, but who cares? I'd much rather watch Captain Scarface for the first time than Casablanca one more time again.
The Capture (1950)
An example of thoughtful storytelling.
I purchased this as part of a 50 Movie pack of DVD's called Action Classics. While that is not the genre I'd call it, The Capture is well worth the time.
The first part of the movie deals with a US oilfield worker in 1935 Mexico. He hunts down and kills a payroll robber. The film then settles into the main part of the story. It is an introspective, psychological analysis of the consequences for himself, and those who remember the dead man. Its all about a search for meaning and truth.
The Capture left me with the feeling I used to get, watching the the short stories that were the staple of anthology drama series of the 1950's -- Twilight Zone, or Zane Grey Theatre -- but of course, this feature film has better production values than a TV series. I loved the innocent thoughtful stories that don't seem to be made any more, and The Capture is a fine example them.