High Sierra (1941)

After spending eight years in prison, a career criminal (Humphrey Bogart) is released. But he needs one last big heist to set him up for life before he retires. To this end, he falls in with an inept group of thieves planning a hold up at a posh lodge in the Sierra Nevada. Based on the novel by W.R. Burnett (THE ASPHALT JUNGLE) and directed by Raoul Walsh (WHITE HEAT). This was Bogart's breakthrough role after years of playing supporting parts, usually gangsters. He wasn't even the studio's first choice for the role and the fact that although he is the star of the film and gets second billing after leading lady Ida Lupino, it shows Bogart's position at Warners at the time. After this, he never got second billing again. It's a perfect part for him and in what could have been played as a cookie cutter gangster, Bogart's performance elicits great empathy from us. He's matched by Ida Lupino's lovely performance, a bruised girl looking for a way out of her dead end existence. One of the classic gangster films (though often bunched in with film noir). Remade by Walsh in 1949 as a western, COLORADO TERRITORY and again in 1955 (not by Walsh) in CinemaScope and color as I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES. With Joan Leslie, Arthur Kennedy, Cornel Wilde, Henry Hull, Henry Travers, Elisabeth Risdon, Isabel Jewell and Donald MacBride.