1941’s High Sierra was the last time Humphrey Bogart took second billing to anybody. It’s clearly his film yet Ida Lupino got top billing, playing a gangster’s moll. Neither the star nor the moll has very much to do and it’s pretty clear that Lupino’s part has been pumped up a bit to justify her position on the credits.
As said, Bogart’s film, and it’s his character’s story too, the noirish, fatalistic tale of a life-serving criminal who is pardoned in the film’s opening moments. Which seems remarkable until we learn that a very big Mr Big in the criminal underworld wants Roy Earle (Bogart) on the outside so he can supervise a grand felony of extraordinary ambition.
Or so you’d think. In fact Roy doesn’t bring much to the job that any number of other career criminals couldn’t have brought. And it isn’t much of a job – breaking into strong boxes at a health resort for fancy Californians and stealing their jewels.
The reason for the film’s continuing resonance is down to two things: Bogart’s remarkably terse performance, uttering his lines through clenched teeth like a bad Bogart impersonator. And the film’s portrait of a group of people all trapped in situations allotted to them by fate.
Roy Earle, modelled on John Dillinger, is a career criminal who can do nothing else. Marie Garson (Lupino), a gangster’s moll who finds Roy irresistibly attractive because he’s top dog and she’s a gangster’s moll – that’s her programming. The other members of the gang, Red (Arthur Kennedy) and Babe (Alan Curtis), are also trapped in their roles as henchmen and will fight each other and sniff around Marie but never challenge Roy.
What trapped actually means, properly physically trapped, is highlighted by a huge subplot that almost overwhelms the rest of the film, about Roy’s feelings for a pretty waif with a club foot. Velma’s life is constrained by her disability, which Roy offers to sort out by fronting up the money for an operation, only to find that the sweet kid (Joan Leslie) doesn’t respond to in the way Roy had hoped.
There’s a one, two, three to the film. One – the gang up in the hills getting the plan together, Red and Babe fighting over Marie, Roy fighting off Marie, Roy getting cute with Velma, and so on. Two – the job, which goes badly wrong, at about the same time that Roy’s plans regarding Velma go awry. Three – everyone accepting their stuckness, Roy and Marie becoming some sort of unit as the forces of law and order assemble and chase Roy up into the mountains for the fateful showdown, where he ends up trapped behind some rocks as the police arrive with sharpshooters, a physical expression of the film’s theme.
The high sierra forms the backdrop for the conclusion of this psychologically driven drama, in which an existential hero of sorts is confronted with his choices – none – and the only way to get free is to die. “Free” is the last word uttered after the inevitable conclusion.
John Huston did the rewrite on WR Burnett’s original story (which formed the basis of two later films, 1949’s Colorado Territory and 1955’s I Died a Thousand Times), pumping up the role of Marie to justify Lupino’s largely ornamental presence, fabulous though she is with her liquid eyes. All that said, it’s Lupino’s tiny scene with Joan Leslie’s Velma that’s the best moment in it – a look, nothing more, on both sides. Leslie is quietly magnificent throughout, it must be said.
There is a lot of quiet magnificence in this film though. Raoul Walsh directs unobtrusively, leaving the actors to do the work and avoiding the artificiality of the studio by shooting out in real locations whenever possible. Breathtaking scenery.
It’s been restored, which points up how good Tony Gaudio’s cinematography is – sharp and punchy. If you’re looking for a physical copy, the Criterion version is as good as they get if you’re going to give it a go.
High Sierra – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
