Displaying items by tag: Kathryn Ferguson

BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES

UK, 2024, 99 minutes, Colour.

Directed by Kathryn Ferguson.

A very enjoyable 99 minutes documentary for film fans.

Bogart was a key figure in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, dying in 1956. This documentary, by Kathryn Ferguson, Irish director who had previously made a documentary about Sinead O’Connor, is an interesting and entertaining portrait of Bogart, initially an unlikely Hollywood star.

The advantages for this documentary is that there is a wide range of clips from his films. And, there is a considerable amount of home movie footage of his early life, and his life beyond the camera.

The film offers a generally linear portrait of Bogart, the background of an affluent family, a very strong-minded mother, his joining the Navy, moving to the theatre, part success, some early film roles with his move to Hollywood, the key performance in The Petrified Forest leading him into a number of villain roles but, eventually, stardom. Performance in the 1943 Casablanca, with Ingrid Bergman, was a culmination of successful presence in a number of crime films at Warner Brothers. He continued in quite a number of dramas, film noir after World War II, and then, perhaps unexpectedly, his winning the Oscar for Best Actor in 1951, The African Queen.

While he continued to make the familiar dramas, he moved to other studios, including MGM with Battle Circus, a war romance with June Allyson. But, towards the end of his life, the key performance was Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny and some comedy in We’re No Angels.

So, an enjoyable revision for film buffs looking at Bogart’s career.

However, there is a real-life framework for the portrait, the initial relationship with his mother and its difficulties. Then there were his three marriages which were unsuccessful, to Helen Makin, an actress with whom he worked, with Mary Phillips, and then with the temperamental actress, Mayo Methot. But, in the 1940s, in preparing for Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, the meeting with Betty Bacall, Lauren Bacall, quite an age difference between them, yet somehow or other a rapport between them, appearing in several films together, then marrying, their son Stephen Bogart who provides some commentary for this documentary.

There are no talking heads as such, rather clips from archives with opinions and views from friends, celebrities, academics. And, with the voice of an actor, the style of the film has Bogart narrating his own story in his own words.

Not the last words or images about Bogart, but an interesting and enjoyable 99 minutes.