Kennington Noir presents Dark Passage (1945), directed by Delmer Daves and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

This month’s Kennington Noir presentation is the third of four films made by real-life couple Bogart and Bacall, and is perhaps the least-seen of the quartet (the others being To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948)). Dark Passage is a wonderfully lurid tale, set in San Francisco, where Bogart heads the cast as an escaped convict wrongly accused of his wife’s murder. Sheltered from police by Lauren Bacall at her swish art deco apartment, Bogie finds a sympathetic plastic surgeon (a splendid turn by English character actor Houseley Stevenson) who takes his money and gives him a new face so that he can seek out the actual murderer without being recognised. Meanwhile, Agnes Moorhead plays a meddling busybody who does her best to stir things up.

The first third of the film is shot from Bogart’s point of view, an unusual technique also used (although arguably less successfully) in another contemporaneous noir, The Lady In The Lake (1947).

Digital presentation. Plus supporting programme.

Doors open at 19.00, for a 19.30 start.

Refreshments will be available in our licensed cafe/bar.