Re: RARA-AVIS: Dark Passage by David Goodis (1946) & Thieves' Market by A.I. Bezzerides (1949)

From: Brian Thornton ( tieresias@worldnet.att.net)
Date: 08 Jan 2003


At 12:01 PM 12/30/02 -0800, you wrote:
>Goodis's books have been described as being long
>suicide notes. His post-Hollywood paperback
>originals, set in an unnamed Philadelphia, are elegies
>of tragic lives with little to no redemption.
>
>Dark Passage is different. More of a suspense novel,
>it is less bleak and poetic, but still a good yarn.
>An innocent man, framed for his wife's murder, escapes
>from prison, alters his appearance through surgery and
>sets out to clear his name.
>
>Goodis, in his last few years, litigated the producers
>of the TV show The Fugitive for plagiarizing Dark
>Passage and won a settlement.
>
>I had held back on reading Dark Passage after seeing
>the Bogart film on late-night cable. The film
>employed a camera-as-first-person perspective for the
>first twenty minutes until the bandages came off
>revealing Bogart's mug.

The Bogart/Bacall angle and the fabulous Agnes Morehead's window jumping scene notwithstanding, the film is terrible. A real disappointment to this long-time Bogart fan.

All the Best,

Brian

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