 | |
List Price: $52.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 38913
Released: September 5, 2000 |
| Our Price: $67.95 |
| Used Price: $57.06 |
|
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
A great giftset with four of Humphrey Bogart's most classic films. These include: The Big Sleep, Casablanca, Key Largo, and the Maltese Falcon.
Description of The Humphrey Bogart Collection (The Big Sleep/The Maltese Falcon/Casablanca/Key Largo):
The Maltese Falcon
Still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood's official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing "gunsel" played by Elisha Cook Jr. It's an action movie of sorts, at least by implication: the characters always seem keyed up, right on the verge of erupting into violence. This is a turning-point picture in several respects: John Huston (The African Queen) made his directorial debut here in 1941, and Bogart, who had mostly played bad guys, was a last-minute substitution for George Raft, who must have been kicking himself for years afterward. This is the role that made Bogart a star and established his trendsetting (and still influential) antihero persona. --David Chute
Casablanca
A truly perfect movie, Casablanca (1942) still wows viewers today, and for good reason. Its unique story of a love triangle set against terribly high stakes in the war against a monster is sophisticated instead of outlandish, intriguing instead of garish. Humphrey Bogart plays the allegedly apolitical club owner in unoccupied French territory that is nevertheless crawling with Nazis; Ingrid Bergman is the lover who mysteriously deserted him in Paris; and Paul Heinreid is her heroic, slightly bewildered husband. Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt are among what may be the best supporting cast in the history of Hollywood films. This is certainly among the most spirited and ennobling movies ever made. --Tom Keogh
The Big Sleep
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. --Tom Keogh
Key Largo
John Huston directed this smart 1948 thriller about a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who holds a number of people hostage in a hotel in the Florida Keys during a tropical storm. Humphrey Bogart is the returning war veteran who takes on the villains, and Lauren Bacall is on hand as one of the people on the wrong end of Robinson's gun. Somewhat similar in tone to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (which also featured Bogart and Bacall), this moody movie captures a certain despair offset by the bond between individuals united by common purpose. Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for her part as Robinson's alcoholic girlfriend. --Tom Keogh
The Humphrey Bogart Collection (The Big Sleep/The Maltese Falcon/Casablanca/Key Largo) Reviews:
Great collection 
2007-08-29 - Has any other actor played in so many great, genre-defining films as Humphrey Bogart? Three of the four films in this collection are certainly among the best films ever made, and the fourth (The Big Sleep) is a solid, if complex, Bogie/Bacall film. I was born long after these films were made, and after Bogie passed away, but I view these films as old, sure friends. They can be watched over and over again and you'll never get tired of them. If you're reading these reviews and thinking about buying this collection, I'm sure you don't need plot reviews, you've probably seen them all a thousand times already. These are the types of films that make me cringe when I look at the product being made in Hollywood today. Whatever happened to acting, dialogue, and atmosphere? Hollywood today puts too much emphasis on fast action and shallow, trite love affairs. My only negative comment is that some of the films in this collection are duplicated in some of the other Bogie collections, forcing one to buy multiple copies of the same film. This isn't really a problem if you are looking for just the Bogie classics as these can also be purchased individually, but for some of the harder to find Bogie films in the other collections, it is rather foolish to have to buy two or three copies of The Maltese Falcon. Bottom line though is that this is a great collection from a simpler time when Hollywood actually knew how to make films.
quintessential Bogie...
2007-06-01 - A great collection for any Bogart lover. My 2 personal favorites are included in this package, Casablanca and Key Largo. The Big Sleep directed by Howard Hawks, with Bogie and Lauren Bacall is a film classic. The Maltese Falcon with an incredible cast including Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Ward Bond. Enjoy this incredible collection of four films that deserve to be placed on anyone's Top 100 list.
Bogart collection 
2007-05-17 - I thought the movies would be presented in their original format, however they appear in standard TV format. For those with widescreen TV's (like me)you will be disappointed.
Bogart The Best
2006-11-10 -
These are some of the best acting films of Bogart's career!, plus some of the finest supporting actors
you will ever find.
Got more than i bargained for
2006-08-25 - I originally bought this set for Casablanca, and I wanted to get an idea for his other movies.
I got quite a lot more than i expected though... I learned that oldschool movies are just plain better than the new ones.
There may be many explanations for this, but the main differences I observed were different mannerisms/speech patterns, and more complicated plot-lines.
Maltese Falcon is a particularly wonderful story, much more complex than today's typical blockuster, and Big Sleep/Key Largo were classics in their own right.
