99 minute running time … I never liked Humphrey Bogart or saw his appeal, he often played a tough, but he always struck me as a little, weasel-like, weird guy … this was an unusual movie though (thanks to David Lehman for the reco), I didn’t hate it, but it also wasn’t good enough to recommend. “Look, she’s a cripple too!” Interesting class commentary from 40s America: “What’s an outfit like that doing in Tropico anyhow?” And the cop sniveling around the rich guy.

Excerpts from Imogen Sara Smith’s essay: High Sierra: Crashing Out

“The film is many things: a hybrid of gangster movie, western, and proto-noir; an elegy for the Depression-era archetype of the noble outlaw … America’s perverse love affair with violent men … Nostalgia pervades the film, for both a lost world of agrarian innocence and a vanished age of outlaw glory [well said!] … Roy’s foolish reverence for middle-class respectability and ‘decency’ inspires a grotesque fantasy of marrying the daughter of the family, Velma, who is happy to accept his charity but repelled by him as a suitor. [right, good ] … outlaws are romanticized, demonized, and commodified, packaged as entertainment and edifying moral lessons … The big shot’s downfall is a kind of ritual, a collective reminder not just that crime does not pay but that ‘crashing out’ is only a fantasy that keeps you going as you serve your time.”