Fearful of overstocking the market with the crusty growls and efficient gunplay of Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers has forsaken thrillers for the more artistic character study. Producer Jerry Wald would more happily have retained the perennial favorite, for "Dark Passage" comes to the screen as a castrated hybrid with neither excitement nor perceptible depth. Brilliant in spots, Director Delmer Daves weaves a tenuous, confusing story that becomes bearable only through the most strenuous efforts of an excellent supporting cast.

An attempt to reveal the frustration of an escaped convict unable to trap the killer who has framed him becomes lost in a maze of bewildering side issues and incredible coincidences. Taxi drivers, plastic surgeons, small time grifters, and Lauren Bacall flit through the story in a circus parade of confusion that subordinates the basic theme to the point of obscurity. There seems no attempt to produce a graceful transition from seene to seene. Each skit drops down out of thin air, rumbles along to its maximum dramatic intensity, and then slowly sinks over the horizon.

Not content with a disconnected cluster of acts, Mr. Daves has hamstrung his movie by injecting a series of truly fascinating coincidences into the plot. Lauren Bacall just happens to be near San Quentin when Bogy escapes, a blackmailer just happens to pick him up in a car, thereby wasting thirty minutes of story time, and the killer just happens to cheat justice by carelessly stumbling out a twenty-five story window.

The amazing paradox of "Dark Passage" is that some of the seenes, although destroying the movie, are superb. One incident involving Bogart and a lonely taxi driver has brilliant dialogue and real human feeling. This and the splendid acting of Agues Moorchead as a pestiferous, petulant "femme fatale" give the show its only speed. When Bogart and Miss Bacall get together the picture moves along at a lazy snail's pace. During the last reel the two lovers hike off to Peru, presumably forever. This seems like a very fine idea.