Kathryn Ferguson’s very serviceable and enjoyable documentary about Humphrey Bogart takes us through his extraordinary, almost mythic life story; it uses clips, voiceovers and existing interview archives (including the inevitable and indispensable Dick Cavett) but no new on-camera material.
Bogart was the son of a distinguished New York surgeon and a refined artist, illustrator and suffragette and might easily have become a bland east coast bourgeois professional, were it not for his academic underperformance and love of acting which took him from Broadway to Hollywood. The accident of his rugged looks and unmistakable voice brought him tough-guy roles under the whip of studio boss Jack Warner, and he became the face of heroic masculinity – what Helen Hayes called Bogart’s “plain old shoe face” – which was called for in the 30s and 40s when the US stood up to fascists, the apotheosis of course being his grizzled patriot-romantic Rick in Casablanca.
