Bogie in Black and White

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“You are a liar.”

“I’ve always been a liar,” she says with a sly satisfied smile, and he grins like a ghost playing charades with a charlatan, somehow seeing that the tangled twisted temptress is…  Well.  She just is.  She is Brigid O’Shaughnessy (or so she says), and she’s equal parts liar, thief, murderer, and whore.

*

“You are a liar.”

“I’ve always been a liar,” she states with candid conspiracy, gleefully appalled by her own admission.

“Well,” replies an amused Sam Spade, his laugh a huff of unexpected breath, hanging in the air between them.

*

“You are a liar.”

“I’ve always been a liar.”

“Well,” he responds with a laugh, “Don’t brag about it.”

*

I rewind the scene and play it again…and again…  And am repeatedly amazed ~ 70 years after the movie’s making ~ at Bogie’s brilliance.

There is crystal clarity in the shaded gray of black and white, in the hard-boiled soft spots of Hammett’s heros, in the timeless noir of 1941.  So I lose myself in Bogart’s breakthrough role, in Huston’s directorial debut, in the hijinx of high-living lowlifes, and I seek solace there…

If only for a little while.

0 thoughts on “Bogie in Black and White

    1. Mrs Fever Post author

      Well, if you think *that’s* sexy, you should see me read a book. 😉

      I do it in bed.

      With unbridled passion.

      Naked.

      (Excepting, of course, one necessary accessory: my glasses.)

      Feel free to visualize…

      Reply
    1. Mrs Fever Post author

      This interplay between their characters ~ three simple lines ~ tells you everything you need know about each of them, without really telling you anything at all.

      And then again, at the end, Sam says to Brigid: “I won’t, because all of me wants to.”

      Classic.

      Reply
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