THE STORY – Filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson explores the remarkable life and legacy of Hollywood legend and cultural icon Humphrey Bogart, narrated in his own words.
THE CAST – Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall & Ingrid Bergman
THE TEAM – Kathryn Ferguson (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
The scene begins at a funeral. In black and white footage, familiar faces begin to appear: Marlene Dietrich, Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, and more. As the somber attendees arrive, we hear a voice say, “Funny, I never considered myself particularly well-liked. I never really knew before just how many friends I did have.” The voice belongs to Humphrey Bogart as though commenting on the footage from the grave. This is not only a great bit of editing but speaks to how special this film will be. While the star passed away in 1957, Kathryn Ferguson’s “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes” brings the star back to life with his own words, and using previously unseen footage, letters, and interviews, to become the definitive documentary on one of cinema’s greatest actors.
When we think of Humphrey Bogart, we think of the film noir detective; we think of “Casablanca” and “Bogie and Bacall,” but there’s more to him than any of that. Ferguson’s documentary aims to and succeeds at creating a rich portrait of the man behind the star – one that didn’t take the “movie star” business seriously. His love of acting and desire to make good movies, at a time when studios cared about quantity over quality, were of more importance than the glitz and glamour. Bogart takes us from his childhood to his theatre beginnings and his Oscar win for “The African Queen.” But he also speaks intimately about his flaws and vices, fears about fatherhood, hatred of censorship, and love of the sea.
While film clips, personal images and videos, interviews with friends and collaborators, and societal context added by biographers and historians bring as much as they can to create a full portrait of Bogart, they’re the standard fare you would expect from a documentary like this. It also falls victim to reenactments that don’t add anything to the story. However, surrounded by all the typical beats is, of course, the treat of having audio recordings made by Bogart, but also how this telling of his life always goes back to one thing: His women. For a documentary about one of the coolest, hard-boiled private eyes to hit the screen, what makes the film most compelling is how it intricately weaves together his most important relationships and how they shaped him as a person and an actor. The relationships he had with his first three wives and his mother were all incredibly flawed, sometimes even violent, and then, of course, there’s Lauren Bacall, making her entrance by asking for a match in “To Have and Have Not” – and the rest is history.
This isn’t just a documentary about the Golden Age of Hollywood but about one of the men who helped shape that era and the loves in his life who helped shape him. It’s a fresh, romantic perspective on someone who played many “heavies” in his career. At one point in “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes,” the actor says, “Do you realize you’re looking at an actor who has made more lousy pictures than any other in history?” That’s never something the audience thinks about when we think of Bogart, and it takes much vulnerability to admit that he didn’t think he would make it. Hearing him speak on the lessons he learned of both failure and success brings him down from the level of icon to a regular guy who is just trying to figure out who he is and what he wants.
