February 8 2008

In the early days of American movies, the split between screen heroes and villains was clear.  Heroes were played by handsome actors like Gary Cooper or Douglas Fairbanks who were shown as always noble and sincere. Villains were dark and shifty looking guys who strangled kittens and sold their mothers into slavery for money.

During the 1930s, things changed. James Cagney and John Garfield played decent men who had been forced into crime by a social system that wouldn't give them a break.  Because of the movie censorship of the times, these outlaws always had to die or go to prison in the last reel, but a public shellshocked by political corruption and economic collapse in real life found them to be sympathetic. Cagney and Garfield were the prototypes of the anti-hero or "good bad guy", but the model changed again with the coming of Humphrey Bogart.

In most of his early films, Bogart was cast as slimey gangsters who deserved to go down in a hail of bullets at the end.  With the film High Sierra, Bogart's roles began changing to outlaws or private eyes who were more complicated.  Unlike Cagney and Garfield, Bogie didn't play an outsider forced into a life of crime.  He was something more dangerous to the Establishment, an insider gone sour.  In real life, Bogart had been born into a well to do family and, even when playing gangsters, he always gave a hint that he had known something better. His character knew all about High Society and hated it.

Despite all his sneering at conventional morality and his claims to be looking out only for himself, Bogart usually played a man who was driven by an inner moral code that he wouldn't admit.  A good example is a scene ifromTo Have And Have Not.  In this movie, Bogart played Harry Morgan, a gun runner who liked to think he would do just about anything if the price were right. Hired to help Resistance fighters escape from the Vichy Government, Morgan is hiding a wounded man after Morgan's boat was fired on by the Vichy.

When the man thanks Harry for his help, Morgan says," Don't thank me too much. I could make a lot of money by turning you over to the Vichy."

"I'm not worried," the wounded freedom fighter says.  "You are a man who would do many things, but you would never betray a friend."

Harry looks startled, then he nods in agreement.  He loathes traitors and would never be able to face himself in a mirror if he became one of them.  Harry has discovered something he won't do for money.

Audiences loved the anti-hero.  After Bogart died, a crop of younger actors took up the torch, including James Dean, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.  No matter how angry and cynical these men were in a movie, you knew they'd do the decent thing when it counted.

Because of the sexism of the times, women didn't get to play anti-heroes.  Instead, they were cast as femme fatales. but that will be a separate post.

Do you have a favorite "good bad guy"?  Who and why?

George

Visit my site at www.checkmatefiction.com