Dark Passage: Book & Film

Dark Passage (1946) is a David Goodis novel that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, and then sold to Warner Bros. for the film that Delmer Daves directed, even before it appeared in hardback. It is interesting to compare the film "Dark Passage" (1947) with the Goodis book, because the director had to make a number of cinematic changes in order to get at the essence of the novel's prose and technique.

Goodis writes his novel in the third person, and his clipped sentences make it a perfect vehicle for a film noir: "It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life." (Goodis 7)

In the film Bogart plays Vincent Parry, who escapes from San Quentin in order to prove his innocence in the murder of his wife. Lauren Bacall plays Irene Jansen, who helps him because she had followed his trial and knew that he was not guilty.

Daves uses a subjective camera, which was also a technique in another film noir, Raymond Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake," to show Bogart before his plastic surgery and after. This creates suspense in the film mode, and it approximates the paranoid voice that Goodis used to show that Parry was both uptight and determined to prove his innocence.

"Delmer Daves followed the scenes and the dialogue of the novel very closely, as well as Goodis's strict attention to topography." (Ottoson 52) Daves did this because Goodis's writing methods lent themselves ve

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America and start a new life with Irene. In the book Goodis allows for a happy ending in that Parry and Irene agree to rendezvous in Patavilca, Peru. Daves uses this story device to indicate the fresh start that the two will be able to make, and at the same time he doesn't conclude with them safely in the new country. This is effective film noir because it let the viewer know that Bogart and Bacall still had one more "dark passage" to make before they could set themselves free. Pauline Kael did not see either the book or the film as effective entertainment, saying that "throughout most of this miserably plotted picture, Bogart hides out in Bacall's fashionable San Francisco apartment while recovering from plastic surgery; with his head bandaged, he can't do much except nod appreciatively while Bacall feeds him through a glass straw." (Kael 133) This seems to miss the point that Goodis was interested in Parry's feeling of claustrophobia. There still was suspense in Bogart's portrayal and Daves' reworking of the novel, because the subjective camera divided the action into two distinct sections. However, Kael does point to Moorehead's excellent performance, and her "sensational exit through plate-glass windows." (Kael 134)

Category: Film - D