Of all of the Classic Film anniversaries brought on by this year - and they are legion, from centenaries for John Wayne and Barbara Stanwyck to 50 year-old R.I.P.s for RKO and Republic Studios - perhaps none will have as much meaning to movie aficionados as the half century anniversary of the death of Humphrey Bogart.
More than any other figure, Bogie is the face of Classic Film, the poster boy for black and white, studio-era cinema. His forlorn features, throaty lisp and forward manner combine, along with the roles he played, to create the single most distinctive persona in film history outside of Chaplin's little tramp.
It's hard to believe that so resonant a personality suffered the indignity of low reputation throughout his lifetime. To the critics of the day, Bogart was a garden variety tough guy with the ability to occasionally surprise. It would take a later, more intellectual generation, weaned on his films via television, to conduct a proper inventory of the man's talents.
The film that made Bogart a star was The Maltese Falcon. In the role of Sam Spade, he found the first onscreen part that reflected the qualities of his true self, a workaholic needler thrice divorced: a highly professional manner, occasional mean spiritedness, and a deep sadness. Above all, Bogart/Sam was a man who could survive the real world only by creating his own idiosyncratically ordered oasis within it, and adhered fiercely to a mission to protect it, brought on by the pain of its violation, at all costs.
It was this quality that prompted the anti-establishmentarians of the sixties to make him their Jesus, to populate cinemas running revivals of his films and to hang his likeness on college dorm doors.
Other figures of the same era - Cagney, Davis, Robinson, Gable - struck them as too theatrical or brash. The operative ethos among the counter-culture was "being cool." Bogie was the only persona who played it close enough to the vest to qualify.
It didn't hurt either that Bogart's big three - Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep - were the cream of Classic Film, movies of such depth of character, memorable dialogue and superior technical craftsmanship that you were happy to revisit them over and over and over again, long after you were done with other quality films, like Little Caesar or The Public Enemy.
Other generations have come along and each, though in increasingly smaller increments, has continued to take Bogie to heart. Another one is poised to do so in this, the year marking the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
No doubt Bogie is looking down on every one of them Sam Spade-style, mockingly bemused by those sorry saps who keep declaring him all theirs. When will they wise up and realize that Bogie can't be had?
