Retro Reel: High Sierra

Posted on Feb 18, 2008 By Martha Garvey

Warner Home Video, 1941, 100 minutes - add this title to your Netflix queue

There are lots of tough guys in the classic 1941 gangster movie High Sierra, but only one of them has four paws, scraggly fur, and an overslung jaw that would make Edward G. Robinson jealous. His name is Pard, which I suspect is short for Partner, which is what he becomes to star Humphrey Bogart, a bad guy with a dog-sized hole in his heart.

Bogart, playing Roy Earle, a notorious Midwestern bank robber who has bribed his way out of prison, first meets Pard when Roy is holed up in rustic cabin in the High Sierras. Campground caretaker Algernon warns Bogart that every single person who has adopted Pard, a stray terrier mutt, has met a bad end, but Roy shakes it off. After all, we learn, beneath Roy's criminal exterior is the soul of a Midwestern farm boy.

Pard, for his part, proves astonishingly resilient in the face of menacing punks, inept jewel thieves, and an armada of state police. The only thing Pard doesn't seem to abide is substandard food. In a masterful bit of dog acting, Pard, played by gifted mutt Zero, actually turns away from a tasty bit of bacon - because he's gotten used to higher cuts of meat. (Internet sources suggest that Zero was actually animal lover Bogart's dog - whatever the truth, Bogart and Zero have terrific man/dog chemistry.)

As with the very best of crime movies, this film resonates on several levels, and Pard plays a part in this, too. Bogart's Roy Earle is no psychopath, but an aging professional forced to work with two testosterone-loaded thugs to pull off what he hopes will be his last big score. In the end, only two creatures stick by Roy, whom the press inaccurately dubs "Mad Dog" - lonely, damaged, dime-a-dance dame Marie (expertly played by Ida Lupino), and the scraggly dog who insists his place is by his master's side . . . even when there are bullets flying.

While nearly everything in this movie holds up beautifully, there is one embarrassing stereotype, as gifted African American actor Willie Best must play caretaker Algernon as a shuffling dolt. This is an Achilles' heel in an almost timeless film that frowns on animal cruelty AND manages to take a moral stance, even as Bogart's character remains sympathetic. If you screen this film with young children, be sure to take the time to talk about this.

Presence of dogs: