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As a noir enthusiast and Soderbergh fan, I was really excited about The Good German. Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors whose failures (some of them at least) are often more interesting than the successful efforts of other people. So this homage was a must-watch as far as I was concerned.

The movie’s cast certainly didn’t do it any disservice. Although I’d never thought of Cate Blanchett, much as I love her, in terms of Ingrid Bergman or Marlene Dietrich, once I saw the stills and trailer the comparisons became absolutely understandable. As more than one dazzled reviewer has noted, she has a face that is perfectly structured to take maximum advantage of shadows and light. Tobey Maguire did throw me for a second, especially after I saw that over the top reaction shot in the bar in one of the clips but I think he acquitted himself rather well. George Clooney, of course, has been hailed as a Hollywood throwback so often (Clark Gable, Cary Grant to name a few) that I was by now conditioned to swallow the tie to Humphrey Bogart without a blink.

In the weeks leading up to the release, however, my alarm bells were set off as more and more people began to bandy about one name: ‘Casablanca’. The reason is simple – you can talk ‘homage’ till you’re blue in the face but when you tackle a movie that has reached an unassailable iconic status (such as Casablanca), you have to step very carefully indeed if you don’t want to get pilloried from the get go. And then of course, the infamous poster came out.

It was an excellent one and generated a lot of interest thanks to its obvious inspiration. It was a slicker, more dramatic version of Casablanca’s. Unfortunately, from that moment on, The Good German might just as well have been a remake. In fact, it wasn’t until I began research for this piece that I found out that Soderbergh even looked at other films prior to making his movie.

I was still excited when I sat down to watch.

Halfway through The Good German, however, something was just not working for me. It wasn’t the black and white, which I found marvelous or the outdated techniques employed by Soderbergh, which I loved right down to the juxtaposition of the actors in front of a “moving screen” every time they jumped into a car. And I didn’t find, as some reviewers moaned, the story too complex for my feeble intelligence. Neither was I thrown by hearing cuss words or by watching Spider Man as a sociopath. I could even get over my annoyance at seeing Clooney go down every five minutes to absolutely anybody who swung a fist.

No, actually, back up a minute. I take that back. I am bothered by Clooney’s glass jaw. It’s not that I think the leading man should always be the winner in every fight or that I think he’s too pretty to be knocked about like that (well, maybe a little) but it interferes with that Casablanca image in my head.

Gradually, it dawned on me that the problem with this movie was that my expectations from it and what I’d been handed, were two completely different things. I was ready and primed for a Bogart special but what I was watching on screen was a Joseph Cotten performance.

By his own admission (video below), Clooney has certain limitations as an actor: unlike his co-star Blanchett, his personality forms the bedrock of every performance he gives onscreen. It is fairly impossible to forget that you are watching George Clooney – and that’s not always a bad thing. In the case of The Good German, it even works to his advantage because it is a role that requires star wattage. After all, Bogart was also one of those actors who brought along his personality as a package deal.

In this movie, however, they seem to have captured the image but left the personality behind. Unlike Clooney, Bogart showed every one of his excesses on his face and always had a suggestion of brutality about him. In the years since his death he has been transformed into some kind of dashing figure but the cold fact is that the few times you saw Bogart in a tux, like in Sabrina for example, he looked like he couldn’t wait to rip it off.

The man who played Bogart’s role in Sabrina on stage, however, was Joseph Cotten. Like Clooney, Cotten had an all American face and exuded a sort of manly dependability. He’d come on screen and you’d instinctively know he was the good guy. He could be an aristocrat if he chose but he was really the guy next door. Bogart only looked “classy” with a couple of actors in his life – one of them was Lauren Bacall, another was Ingrid Bergman. These two ladies in particular shared a chemistry with him that allowed him to be the scruffy beat up tough he so patently was while managing to bring out a hidden tenderness that made movie-goers swoon.

In The Good German, the roles are reversed. Clooney is the guy who softens Blanchett’s Ice Princess act. His looks are at once more wholesome and optimistic than Bogart at his best. Bogart expected the worst of his women even when they were on the up-and-up. Clooney knows his Lena has something awful up her sleeve but still wants to give her a break, much like Cotten once did. With Bogart there was always a suggestion of bawdiness about the banter; Clooney plays it like a gentleman.

When you saw Bogart with his women, you couldn’t help but think that these two must be having a hell of a time in the bedroom. And of all their contemporaries, Bacall and Bergman were exemplary in their ability to hint at a carnal appetite while playing ladylike characters. When Clooney finally gets his hands on a willing Blanchett he treats her as if she were made of porcelain. I guess that’s a good way to treat a rape victim but rationality isn’t what makes a great noir movie as The Big Sleep has taught us all.

This is why it’s such a relief when Lena’s hooker-in-arms roommate (a wonderful Robin Weigert) Hannelore pricks the bubble. She’s stuffing herself greedily with ‘real’ ham, procured for them by Geismar and generously offers some to Lena when she wakes up. Blanchett, in full Dietrich mode, flicks both Hannelore and Geismar an icy glance and seems inclined to favor some coffee over the ham when he asks her about a box full of documents that belonged to her missing husband.

Lena (abruptly gliding away with her husband’s effects): What do you think you will find in here? It is all I have left of him. Hannelore (disgusted): Hey-yi-ie! So dr-a-ma-tic, the princess!

When I later found out that The Third Man (available for download here) was one of Soderbergh’s influences, I wasn’t surprised. I do wish, for the sake of the movie, that he’d made that a little more clear rather than playing up the Bogart-Bergman-Casablanca angle. I found that I enjoyed the movie more once I didn’t have Bogart’s distracting… er, bogey casting a shadow.

In fact, this schizophrenia – the image is Bogart, the character is Cotten – arbitrarily frozen in time is a real shame, because a single sexy love scene between Clooney and Blanchett would have made all the difference. Not just to all the women out there who went to see the movie with stars in their eyes for The Sexiest Man Alive, but to the story itself – everything was geared towards the two main characters coming together in an explosion of emotion.

Soderbergh had already introduced us to the twin 1950s taboos of sex and cussing, so it wouldn’t have felt out of place for these two to do what Bogart and Bergman could only have hinted at. Throughout the movie there are various references that Clooney’s Geismar thought Blanchett’s Lena was “the best lay [he]’d ever had” and letting the audience peep in would have allowed Blanchett to put aside that iciness to show us what would bring a man back to Berlin over London at the end of the Second World War.

It would have been lovely to watch Clooney soften Blanchett up like they didn’t do it in the days of old.

[Reviews of The Good German have been mixed: some thought it worked, while others felt it didn’t but the consensus rating seems to be a middle of the road 3/5]

The Good German:

Clooney on his limitations: