favorite movie #50: dark passage

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #50 - Dark Passage (1947) - Bogart and Bacall in their third film together. It's a bit of a gimmick film — the first half is filmed through Bogart's eyes — but because of Bogie's familiar voice it works. Bacall holds her own as she carries the early part of the film, while the camera keeps her in close-up as she talks to Bogart. Dark Passage is a brightly-lit film noir, set in San Francisco. Bogart's Vincent Parry has been wrongly accused of murdering his wife. The story begins as he escapes from San Quentin and hitches a ride into the city. He is immediately recognized, but saved from having to go back to prison by Good Samaritan Irene Jansen (Bacall), who has always believed in his innocence. She is an artist, so is presented as an 'unconventional' girl. There are some other people sympathetic to his cause, like a cabby (Tom D'Andrea), his friend George (Rory Mallinson), and a doctor of plastic surgery (Houseley Stevenson), who gives Vincent a new face, one with which movie fans are quite familiar. Agnes Moorehead shows up to keep things interesting as woman scorned Madge, in leopard print and looking to cause trouble.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a dame in my cab, she musta had her face lifted by one of them quacks. She got caught in the rain, and the whole thing dropped down to here. She shoulda left it unlifted.

Same eyes. Same nose. Same hair. Everthing 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.

AI thought I had a good life here... but your going away doesn't make it seem good anymore. I've sort of joined your team and... and I don't look forward to being without you.

grannie endora

When I was a kid my favorite television show was Bewitched. Mostly because I wanted to be as cute and hip as Samantha, and be able to twitch my nose and make magical things happen. But there was also something else about the show that I liked. Endora. She was the ultimate nosy mother-in-law, and the bane of Darrin (Derwood, Darwin)'s existence. But she also represented a different kind of grandmother image. And I needed that.

A disapproving Endora (Agnes Moorehead) considers her daughter Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery).

Endora loves her granddaughter Tabitha (Erin Moran).

My dad's mom, my Italian grandmother, was everything we are brought up to expect a grandmother should be. She was a great babysitter when my parents needed her, and an even greater cook. She may not have baked cookies, but she made amazing southern Italian dishes — from caponata to pasta and beyond. She also made delicious coffee cakes.

Grandma and me. She also made the dress I'm wearing.

Glamorous Gran'mere, on vacation in Hawaii.

But my mother's mother, "Gran'mere," as we were encouraged to call her, was a different kind of grandmother entirely. She was exotic and glamorous. She was a world traveler who we would only get to see when she made it to our neck of the woods in New Jersey. She was also very loving, much like the eccentric Endora was to little Tabitha on Bewitched. Could a grannie dress in such a fancy way and still be your grannie? Thanks to a pop culture sitcom, I felt that she could.

Neither Endora nor my Gran'mere Mariette ever baked any chocolate chip cookies that I know of. But I bet if either Tabitha or I wanted some, Endora would have produced them with an elegant wave of her hand, and my grandmother would have surely taken us out, dressed to the nines, for some delicious dessert.