The Humphrey Bogart vehicle All Through the Night is sometimes overlooked thanks to Bogie’s array of top notch films, but it’s one vintage cinema fans should make the time to see. It’s a wartime thriller and mild propaganda piece dealing with a self-interested NYC gambler who discovers his inner patriot.This is a character evolution Bogart made several times, for example in Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. It all begins begins when the beloved old neighborhood baker who makes Bogart’s favorite cheesecake is murdered. Bogie is compelled to find out who did it, and what develops is an amazing hard boiled thriller-cum-comedy, a visually dynamic, fast-paced flick that starts a mile a minute and picks up speed from there.
But there’s even more to it than meets the eye (to quote Bogart), something that will dawn on you as you notice the preponderance of foreign accents from Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Peter Lorre, et al. Hmm. What the heck are all these continental types doing in Bogie’s neck of the woods? Later one of the great reveals in vintage cinema history involves a painting of a highly newsworthy character and brings everything into sharp focus. That a film of such broad subtext begins when Bogart can’t get a piece of cheesecake is one of the many quirks of All Through the Night. Entertainment with a message isn’t always easy to accomplish. This film makes it look easy.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also note that, due to a scattershot script that seeks laughs everywhere, you’ll get to see one of the more infamous racist gags of the era, one that’s even been included in documentaries on the subject. Everyone in the film is a caricature except Bogart, but in early cinema, white characters were portrayed as a vast array of personalities, while the few-and-far-between black characters were never explored with more than superficial interest. This is still something of a problem today, in our opinion. All Through the Night takes the bigoted route, but thankfully it’s brief, and we’d argue that it remains a movie to be seen. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1942.
