Peter B loved this film, its kinetic energy, and tried to emulate the high speed car chase (in which those cars are really flung round corners in a way you don't often see as good) in Targets.
Fresh out of prison, Bogart is sent to California to hold up a swanky hotel, paired with wild Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis, with dancer Ida Lupino hanging around. Then there's a side story about Bogie befriending poor folk heading west, Henry Travers and his grand-daughter club-footed Joan Leslie, how he tries to help them. This involved somewhat shady doctor, who I could have sworn was Walter Huston, but turns out to be Henry Hull (Lifeboat, The Return of Jesse James and many other westerns, The Great Gatsby, Hollywood Story, ending up in The Chase). Cornel Wilde is the inside man at the hotel, Barton MacLane the former cop, Willie Best plays 'Algernon'. The dog 'Pard' is played by Zero.
It was only afterwards that I figured the Lupino character and the dog are essentially the same, unloved, passed from pillar to post, but loyal and desperately wanting to be with Bogie (and each other).
Written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett. Huston spares it a few lines in his autobiography. Says he admired Burnett's novels (this was an adaptation; he also wrote 'The Asphalt Jungle'), was pleased that Paul Muni turned down the lead and that Bogart took it - it was the film that made him a star, though in fact Lupino is top billed. So it's perhaps from Burnett that Huston's familiar theme of a band of criminals falling apart actually comes from.
Beautifully shot by Tony Gaudio, locations giving it a point of difference, with music from Adolph Deutsch. Produced by noir proponent Mark Hellinger.
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