The Big Shot

A near perfect blend of noir and gangster elements, Lewis Seiler’s The Big Shot features Bogart, just off his smash success in The Maltese Falcon (1941), as Duke Berne, a desperate ex-con tempted into one last armored truck robbery (a familiar noir set-up) arranged by corrupt attorney Martin Fleming (Stanley Ridges) whose wife Lorna (Irene Manning) is Duke’s former lover. Narrated in flashback, the first ten minutes are noir at its peak: an anxious, alienated Duke wanders shadowy city streets, followed by oblique camera angles and disturbed by oppressive, unrelenting memories of his three prior prison sentences, ending up in an empty hole in the wall where he’s mocked as a has-been by tough guys Frenchy (Joe Downing) and Sander (Howard Da Silva). Accompanied by Adolph Deutsch’s beautifully tense score, Seiler knows how to direct action for maximum excitement, notably a wild car and motorcycle chase on snowy mountain roads and a prison escape scene where spotlights chase men in their desperate attempts to clear the wall.