Dark Passage is the greatest classic bad movie ever

I'm watching this classic black and white movie Dark Passage (1947, Delmer Daves) and something weird happens. The camera adopts the point of view of Humphrey Bogart's character... and keeps showing us only this FPV... I'm intrigue cause it's very odd for an oldie. Sure, there must be some precedents! There always are. But like, some people think Hardcore Henry, a last year movie, was being innovative and experimental and we are talking about the 40s here!

So, 20 minutes into the movie, everything looks clean and sharp and the camera is doing some nice tricks and stuff (way better than Henry) and I'm beginning to think that this is a gem or something... Boy, I was wrong!

Ok. They don't show you Humphrey Bogart's face and adopt the FPV cause supposedly his character, Vincent Parry, looks like an entirely different person. He was convicted for killing his wife and escaped from San Quentin prison... This runaway is receiving the help from Irene Jensen (Lauren Bacall). She helps him cause her own father has been falsely accused of murdering his wife... so Irene becomes obsessed with Vincent's case a man she believes to be innocent too.  I mean, doesn't know for sure, could be assisting a cold blooded murderer for all she knows, but fair enough...  

Then he doesn't want to implicate her any more, so prepares to leave the city and seeks for refugee in a friend's apartment, some trumpet amateur player named George.... 

And this is the precise moment the movie becomes totally insane, like absolute madness, for a good chop of 30 minutes or so. I couldn't believe my eyes! It's glorious...

Vincent decides to have a... Plastic surgery!!! (Tchan!) But the man that advices him to do so is... the Taxi Driver!!! (Tchan!); just this casual taxi driver that is taking him out of the city, now finds him a plastic surgeon and even for cheap, cause the surgeon is... an old friend of his that Would take "just a couple of hundreds"... (I supposed he's been taking a lot of clientele to the illegal clinic or something). This Taxi driver helps him cause he certainly understands how things are:

"I figured you slugged her with that ashtray because she made life miserable to you. I know how it is. I lived with my sister and her husband. Now, they get along fine, so fine that one day he throws a bread knife at her... she ducked. 

That's the way it goes. Maybe if your wife had ducked, there be no trial, no Quentin, no on the lam... That's life"

I can't believe he says all this. I mean, what are the chances that a psychopath cabbie that knows a plastic surgeon, decides to help a convicted runaway on murder... and for free?!!! I guess: That's life... never ceases to amaze you.

So, they go to the illegal plastic clinic "up in the alley"... Vincent confesses to his new pal the Taxi Driver that he's a little uneasy  (I'd be nervous before a massive facial surgery in a dumpster!!!), but the cabbie re-assures him: 

"Don't be nervous. I know how bad this things can be. Just a couple of weeks ago I picked up a dame in my cab... She must've had her face lifted by one of them quacks. She got caught in the rain and the whole thing dropped down to here. She should've left it unlifted. But this guy is great. And no quack."

The camera shows the plastic surgeon, smoking...

I can't be sure they're being intentionally funny or not, yet... 

Of all the looks from all the people, in all the towns in all the world, the surgeon picks Humphrey Bogart's face. 

                   Magically turning this...   ... into this

A person with this ability could make you look like Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Greg Peck... But no, he chooses Bogart! 

HB is maybe in the top three of the greatest male celebrities of all time, it's a cultural icon... but he achieved that in base of his personality, huge talent, screen presence and magnetism, not looks! I mean, at least not GOOD looks, you wouldn't call Humphrey Bogart handsome...or if you do, is just handsome in the ugly kind of way... like those cute ugly puppies that attracts hotties in the park.  So yeah, in my opinion the surgeon fucked up. The movie even addresses this cause made the doctor say: "you'll look older, but feel 10 years younger" He doesn't look older to me... he looks slightly ugly. Like, they knew Boogie looked like shit... they also knew he didn't match with Lauren Bacall, he's old enough to be his father! Maybe even his grandfather (I know they were married! But as our Taxi pal says: That's life... this is movies) 

Whatever. That's when it hit me. We are 40 minutes into this movie and we haven't seen the lead's man face yet, (mind that Classic Hollywood is very heavy celebrity driven); and the whole thing keeps going cause now we got Humphrey Bogart in some laughable bandages that looks like an orthopedic cast or something... and we even stop hearing his voice, cause the surgeon forbids him to talk!!! Crazy. Like, can you believe this shit?

Back to his friend's apartment, George, only to find out he has been murdered (Tchan!)... In the previous scene in the apartment (before the surgery) I was wondering, Why are they showcasing this trumpet in the middle of the room? and even talking about it, like, Why so much emphasis on it?...Ok who cares, your friend is a trumpet player, who caaaares!!! 

This is why. He was murdered.... with his own trumpet! Not a gun, not a knife, not a rock, not poison or by choking him with hands or a rope... his trumpet!!! We see a fucking dented trumpet in the murder scene.

And Vincent of course picks up this "weapon" leaving fingerprints all over it.

What mind of a madman could think of something like this? Maybe Delmer Daves... he was also the scriptwriter... maybe the original novelist. 

        

Come to think of it, might be really clever, cause Vincent was convicted of murdering his wife with an ashtray... which is already a weird weapon in itself. So, maybe is like a sign card of this killer to hit its victims with odd choices of weapon. 

Naaah the fucked up: they pick a killing trumpet.  

Back to the only place left for him to go: Irene-Lauren Bacall's place. But the effort of walking there makes him vanish (the poor fella is just out of a very very dangerous 90 minutes unhealthy surgery). So, Irene assist him and then we got this wonderful scene, where Lauren Bacall is holding a porcelain cup of tea and giving him to drink with a straw and through a little hole on Boogey's bandages...

And one of the finest moments, when he's explaining things to Irene through a notebook and a pencil, and she's reading. How could someone explain any of what happened?... like this:

"Taxi driver helped me. Tooked me to a plastic surgeon. Bandages stay on till the twelfth. I'm to eat only liquids."  

The whole thing is so bizarre, so surreal. And it keeps going, cause after hydrating, now of course he wants to smoke, so... Lauren Bacall lights a cigarette for this badly hurt man, and puts it on a funny ladies-holder and into his mouth...

Next day. Now, the good doctor allowed him to smoke and drink, he can walk a mile or two and even climb one of San Francisco hills... but for some reason he's not allowed to sleep upwards down (it might turn his face into something more ugly than Bogart's face?) ... So... the logical thing happens: Vincent Parry must be tied to a bed in order not to accidentally turn over... I think you can identify this as the moment where Jack Warner finally came into the production and said: 

Guys... What a fuck are you doing?  You can't see Bogie's face, he can't talk, and now he's not allowed to move?: Why's Humphrey Bogart tied to a fucking bed?!  

Cause from this moment on the movie... doesn't turn good, there're many many things that are wrong and weird (like Boogie's wig), but let's say begins transiting through at least more normal ways. 

Still they somehow managed to smuggle this Romantic candle dinner scene between Lauren Bacall and Mummy Bogart, where they talk about baseball, baseball!!!

Then it follows your typical Noir plot until the end; you can see Warner's hand now... they even pull a reverse Casablanca thing as

an ending... with Vincent waiting at some bar for her (with the exact same white suit, Ricks wears)

Well, that's it. Funny, funny bad and classic. I still love you, movie.

The Theatrical Cut of Blade Runner is the one you should watch

Director's Cuts are a blatant Scam even when they're supposedly need it, like in the case of Blade Runner. There are at least five different versions of the movie (Seven and maybe even more if you want to be extremely precise).

Back in 1982 the studio decided to kick Ridley Scott out, and make their own cut. They were a bit scared cause the Workprint prototype didn't exactly got positive responses from the preview audiences... Who can blame them, right? this is a weeeeeird fucking movie. And so they did, a very short and competent version; They cut the Unicorn dream sequence (supposedly) , inserted a Harrison Ford narration voice over to explain us, dumb people, things, and gave the movie a happy ending.

Ten years later while gaining cult status the studio wanted to make a new release of the film (and a laser disc)... so Ridley Scott was called in, but he was busy at the time... doing?..., so he just gave some of his notes and make us believe he was behind the whole thing calling it "The Director's Cut". (But he wasn't, it was some curator or something).

Now 15 years later Blade Runner is considered one of the Best Science Fiction movies ever made, and it always sells well in home format... So they make a new edition, and now they really bring Ridley Scott back to make a Director's Cut but Scott can't call it that because it'd mean admitting that all of them lied back in 92; so they very cynically called this "The Final Cut" like a big Fuck You to us all, right?!

And the fans are ok with this, and these days most of them believe this "Final Cut" to be the definitive version of the movie. 

But I'm here to tell you that the original theatrical release is a superior version of Blade Runner, and that the changes made when Scott was fired just improved the quality of the film.

1st) Because that Unicorn dream sequence sucks.

I mean is so out of place. Seems taken from a completely different movie (like from Legend 1985, Scotts next project... like he mixed things, too much bourbon or something, he got confused,

You got this dark, depressing, wet, greasy, dirty, nauseating vision of the future against a Beautiful magical white unicorn running through the wilds and I guess he wanted to establish that contrast... But I still feel the whole scene is rather fake, I simply cannot believe a human being of this world could have such a dreams (a bit Shakespearian here...)

That's the whole point you'd said, because he's a replicant! Garth or Gerth... The latino blue eye's guy later leaves in Deckard's apartment one of his origamis in the shape of a unicorn. That means he knows Deckard's dreams, that means these dreams were implanted, ergo Deckard is a replicant. But I don't like that!!!

Well, first of all: you just simply cannot make a unicorn with origami! Is already really hard just to draw a horse, imagine what takes to make it with paper... Ok whatever, but my point is that you can't really tell that's a unicorn what's he's holding in his hand (for all you know it could be a rhyno); whitout the dream sequence seems more like a generic animal shape origami. 

Some people say the first origami, is an owl, (representing the one we later see on Tyrrel's office). Call me crazy but that paper figurine looks like a chicken to me.

And the little man with his cock out... that's not an origami!!!... Well I think is not pledged paper at least (by the way, were Garth last twist and turns made on his little tiny paper cock?)

When I first saw that final scene I said: "Oh, Garth was there, that weird guy that likes to make origami and shit: cool!"; maybe felt a little danger and when I saw Harrison Ford smiling I understood that Garth wasn't going to hunt Rachael's fuck down. That he let her go (let's not forget Garth is a Blade Runner wannabe)... that's a nice message there: all of them by the end of the movie gain a little bit of humanity. (By the way his name is Gaff, right? Fuck!). 

But the unicorn dream sequence introduce definitive prove that Deckard is a replicant. 

The power of this movie lies on the idea that an artificial organism, the replicant Roy Batty, loves life and understands what means to be human way better than a human being. 

Deckard blew a female's tit shooting her in the back while she was running away from him, running for her life!...  Instead with his last breath Roy decided to save Deckard from falling and a certain death.

But if Deckard is a replicant, then what's the merit in it? Roy was just saving one of his own kind. Besides in that case, was he in real danger? What's the merit on Deckard loving Rachael? They're just two robots malfunctioning and fucking each other.  (well you can argue if he's not a replicant, then he's weirdo fucking a sex doll... but lemme tell you: that's a godamn hot sex-doll that you can definitely fell in love with) 

The whole point for me is that we don't know for sure... that it is left ambiguous... or better said, that he IS a human... but he has lost all bonds with his own humanity, and sometimes acts like a sonofabitch cold machine, colder even than a replicant inside Chew's laboratory. Or maybe he IS a replicant, I don't know! Ambiguity!

Its Ok to use a special mirrors to make Deck's eyes to sometimes look like the ones from a doll, (the Schüfftan process thing)

Or making Holden the blade runner (the guy interviewing Leon) act, sound and look slightly like Harrison Ford, suggesting they are both industrial models designed to search for replicants: subtle, like in subtlety, y'know?.

But a rainbowbright horse running through the wild magical forest, that's too much, too obvious. Disgusting. Fucking disgusting. I hate it. I hate it!!!

It baffles me how Ridley Scott wanted that thing to be re introduced in his 1992 "Director's Cut" and then again in the 2007 "Final Cut", cause that means he doesn't understands shit about what makes his own master-piece tick.

Maybe it means that all the great movies are just a by-product of... randomness... chance... Or maybe it means all the great minds behind their creations are subjects to the same laws of decay that we are, and finally 20 or 30 years later they don't have a fucking clue on how to make a good movie (judging by Exodus: Gods of Egypt that seems to be the case)... Depressing... even more than that elevator door ending. Which takes me to my next point.

2) The Happy ending it's a great ending, so Fuck You if you don't like it

First, the air shots were made by: Stan Kubrick, yeah he made those for The Shining main title sequence and didn't use them. Arguably Stanley Kubrick is a better director than Ridley Scott. I always imagine Kubrick wanting to explore on A.I. similar problems to what Blade Runner present us... Like a weird story about a robot boy that feels he's a human; weeeird and creepy, a Kubrick thing... you know what I mean? A Kubrick thing!... instead we got... I don't know what we got: That! You can only wonder what could have been... But yeah, sadly Death came a knockin' by his door: 

How lightly life away is taken, 

    How cometh Death in stealthy guise...

I'd be really proud that a master film-maker, and also the creator of Space Odyssey a modern founding stone in the genre, agreed on including that shots as an ending... Besides, a little known fact: it wasn't the studio who asked Kubrick for permission to use that, it was Scott! (I mean Kubrick was a dick and all but not that of a dick with his colleagues) Scott was planning to use those... And where u gonna use that? That was his original ending! 

So yeah, why change it? Because he's an asshole. Back in 1982 he was just trying to make this weird Science Fiction movie... In 2007 he's coping with the ideas of a lot of people of what this "Masterpiece of a film" should be about, "one of the very best of all time", with great philosophical ideas and shit...

So he made it artsy fartsy: "The elevator door shuts" "Vangelis exit music plays"... 

So he's definitely a replicant because of the unicorn thing, they are both robots, don't know how much time they got, and people are gonna hunt them down. Really dark, I grant you that...

But the so called happy ending is not all that happy... I mean, Gaff is not chasing them, but still they're runaways; and maybe Rachael doesn't have a 4 year lifespan "no termination date", but we don't know for sure exactly how much time she got... But then again, who does, right?  Again: subtle.

Instead we got: an elevator door shutting! Is the only case I know of a movie's ending that got chopped, and people just praised the whole mess!  Let's make a Director's Cut of Artificial Intelligence and cut all the alien ending shit -they really are very advanced robots not aliens-, yeah lets end it at the fair! 

Let's cut every fucking movie that has been done, because they have things in them that people don't like! Or let's make it like these days, when you pay for your admission but you won't get "the full experience" at the Theater... oh, no, no... you have to wait two months for that, and then pay them again for the BluRay Ultimate Director's-Assembly-Redux-Let's-Try-Again-Because-We-Fucked Up Cut!!!!

3) Last: the voice-over is perfect for the film

Like, Harrison Ford said that he didn't want to do it, and fought it really hard, but once it was decided he was a professional and made it to the best of his abilities... He says...

I call that Bullshit! I mean, there's definitely something odd about the way he delivered the lines. Maybe he wasn't consciously boycotting the whole thing, but when you are really against something like this, you can't just pretend everything is Ok, right? His narration feels the way he's been acting since the 2000's and that's not a compliment.

So, why I like it? 

Blade Runner is a neo-noir film or whatever, and one of the things you identify as classic in a film noir is the detective telling us the story in off... When you see that you automatically think of a noir... you put yourself in the mood, right?

It's so classic! And that's beautiful. 

And again, this was Ridley's original idea, he wanted to make this classic film noir-ish narration thing in a dystopian futuristic movie. It was not a decision made at the last minute by the studio. It was Ridley Scott's idea; and later in the production... supposedly... Scott discarded this idea... Supposedly... we don't know cause he got fired...

Look at this:

- Skin-jobs, that's what Bryan called Replicants. In history books he's the kind of cop used to call black men niggers. 

- Tyrell really did a job on Rachael. Right down to a snap shot of a mother she never had.

- I didn't know why a replicant would collect photos. Maybe they were like Rachael, they needed memories.

- The report would be "routine retirement of a replicant" which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back.

- I didn't know how long we had together... Who does?  

- I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life. Anybody's life. My life. (The original lines, only used in the workprint, are at least as good as the ones that got into the film: I watched him die all night. It was a long slow thing... and he fought it all the way. He never whimpered, and he never quit. He took all the time he had, as though he loved life very much. Every second of it... even the pain.Then, he was dead.) 

This is good writing. Adds so much to the Movie!!! There're a lot of things you people wouldn't even begin to comprehend without this lines... Why da fuck would you want to take all this out Because it was a bad performance?... I mean if we're gonna start chopping movies cause the actors didn't gave their very best... jizzz...

And I would even say that it adds to the character a little, cause Deckard -not like Roy- he's tired of life... And yeah that's the way a guy that doesn't give a fuck anymore would tell us his story.

In any case is not a perfect movie... but then again, what's perfect? 

(I need to stop doing that, I'm beginning to feel like the Sphinx here)

Anyway. The good thing is that in the 2007 edition we also got the original theatrical cut. So, yup. That's the one you should watch.