Filmmaker Raoul Walsh’s 1941 gangster/Western mash-up, based on the 1940 novel by W.R. Burnett (who co-wrote the screenplay with John Huston), features Humphrey Bogart in his breakout role (albeit receiving second billing to Ida Lupino). Bogie is Roy Earle, an aging midwestern criminal shanghaied into making one more big score: a grab-and-run heist of valuables at the upscale Hotel Tropico resort, nestled in the shadow of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
Driving west, he has a near accident with another car carrying an elderly, Depression-stung farming couple and their granddaughter, the lovely young Velma (Joan Leslie), who has a clubfoot. Roy bonds with the family and meets up with them later, eventually becoming smitten with Velma. Holing up at a camp with cabins, Roy and his comrades in crime—a pair of hotheads (Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy) and a “dime-a-dance” gal named Marie (Ida Lupino)—wait for a signal from an inside accomplice (Cornel Wilde) as tensions mount.
High Sierra benefits from strong performances by Bogart and Lupino, as well as a bad-luck dog, christened Pard, who plays a prominent role. Modern audiences will be put off by the May-December potential romance between Roy and Velma, the casual misogyny, and Willie Best’s eye-rolling stereotypical racist role as camp layabout Algernon. But the evolving relationship that develops between lonely hearts Roy and Marie is compelling and the masterfully edited climactic chase scene in the mountains is gripping.
Presented with a new 4K digital restoration, extras include Colorado Territory (Walsh’s 1949 western remake of High Sierra), a new conversation on Walsh between film programmer Dave Kehr and critic Farran Smith Nehme, Marilyn Ann Moss’s 2019 documentary The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh, a 2003 “making-of” featurette, the 1997 documentary Bogart: Here’s Looking at You, Kid, a new interview with film and media historian Miriam J. Petty on actor Willie Best, a new video essay featuring excerpts from a 1976 American Film Institute interview with W. R. Burnett, a 1944 radio adaptation of High Sierra, and a leaflet with an essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith.
Both a fine showcase for Bogart and Lupino and a tragic valentine to the cult-hero gangsters of the ‘30s (Earle’s character was inspired by John Dillinger), this Criterion offering featuring an excellent set of extras is recommended.