Greatest Film Scenes
and Moments



Dark Passage (1947)

 



Written by Tim Dirks

Title Screen
Movie Title/Year and Scene Descriptions
Screenshots

Dark Passage (1947)

In Delmer Daves' dreamy, expressionist noir-thriller, one of four films made by Bogart with Bacall:

  • during the film's first hour of restricted perspective, the many subjective POV camera angles - from the viewpoint of wrongly-accused escaped San Quentin fugitive Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart)
  • the newspaper photo of Humphrey Bogart's character Vince Parry (Frank Wilcox) before the surgery - in many headlines, one of which read: "ESCAPED KILLER IN S.F. - Police Dragnet Spread Throughout Bay Area For Fugitive Murderer"
  • a lonely San Francisco taxi-driver's story to Parry about taking goldfish for a ride to the Pacific: "You should see the character I had for a fare yesterday. Picked him up at the Ferry Building. Standin' on the curb with a big goldfish bowl in his arm, full of water. Two goldfish. Climbs in the back of the cab, sits down and puts the goldfish bowl in his lap. Where do you think he wants to go? To the ocean. Clean from the Ferry Building to the Pacific Ocean. But he doesn't know that there's seven hills. Seven steep hills in between. So we start off. Up the first hill, slippity slop, down the hill, slippity slop. Water all over the back seat, the goldfish on the floor. He picks 'em up, puts them back in the bowl. Up we go again, slippity slop, water all over the -- You never saw such a wet guy in your life when we got to that ocean. And two tired goldfish. But I like goldfish. I'm gonna get a couple for the room. Dress it up a little bit, it adds class to the joint. Makes it a little homey"
  • the kaleidoscopic, surreal sequence of Parry's facial plastic surgery by a clandestine "SPECIALIST" Coley (Houseley Stevenson)
Creepy Plastic Surgeon
With Bandages after Plastic Surgery
  • the scene in an apartment when Parry - with his face obscured by shadows or bandages after facial plastic surgery - was hiding out with the supportive assistance of sympathetic and attractive artist Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall), and being fed out of a glass tube (a symbolic umbilical cord)
  • the confrontational sequence of evil Madge Rapf (Agnes Moorehead) with Parry, who tried to force her to sign a confession (he told her: "I've got to make you confess it" - for committing two murders for which he had been framed); as she backed away from him and yelled out: "They'll believe me, they'll believe me!", she ducked behind a window curtain - where she crashed through a window and fell to her death many stories below onto the street, and he looked down at her demise
Demise of Madge Rapf (Agnes Moorehead)
  • the sequence of rebirth 62 minutes into the film when Irene unwrapped Parry's facial bandages and his face was revealed in a mirror - and he uttered his first reaction: ("Same eyes. Same nose. Same hair. Huh! Everything else seems to be in a different place. I sure look older. That's all right. I'm not. If it's all right with me, it ought to be all right with you") - and he was renamed Allan Linnell
  • the happy ending phone call between Parry and Irene, who made plans to separately flee to Paita, Peru - and then after a time-dissolve (and an end to dialogue), the pair were seen meeting up and dancing in an oceanside cafe to the song Too Marvelous for Words, and the film's fade to black

Fugitive Headlines

Taxi-Driver's Goldfish Story

Irene Jansen
(Lauren Bacall)


Removing Facial Bandages


Phone Call - Plan of Escape to Peru

Happy Ending: Oceanside Cafe Rendezvous

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