H'wood Says Hopefully, You Can't Get Away With Murder (1939)
Warner crime movies, and I mean primarily the cheap ones, could be humorless affairs. You'd open on John Garfield and Priscilla Lane happily planning a future, and five minutes later they're lamming just ahead of police sirens. What was it Bogart as Sam Spade said: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter? Bogie says plenty that's gaudy in You Can't Get Away With Murder, so much so that he went up constantly on lines and began rebellion that characterized a career with Warners. A miserable "B" as Bogart saw it, Murder was made for $274K, barely saw profit, and found most of its audience decades later on late and later TV berths. You have to be an HB nut, or just nuts, to watch it, even when Warner Instant offers HD stream (one thing you can say about even lowliest programmers: They sure look good when properly presented). This was another where Bogart corrupted youth; one look (and listen) to Billy Halop and you ask, where's the loss? He was a most competent of Dead End Kids and might have made dramatic grade had they been able to cast him outside Hell's Kitchen. Knowing Bogart's attitude toward the material makes it seem he's sending it up, or playing tobitter irony. Either way, time passes quicker from viewing in that, or those, spirits. Murder is like two featurettes strung together, a first half on pavements, the second in stir. No subtleties here: Bogart's a lowdown no-good rat, and that's the end of it. Did he plead with director Lewis Seiler for more shading?
