Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

mikerosslaw There are two items which reveal Warner Brothers' cheap-skate stagecraft and lack of continuity among their "pulp" film productions like "Conflict": First, Bogart's wife in pic is wearing the actual same sparkling brooch that Ingrid Bergman wore in her first scene of "Casablanca" - this jewelry is so unique and distinctive (and would be a near-priceless auction item nowadays) that it is as iconic as the film "Casablanca" itself; and Second, - believe it or not - the actual "Maltese Falcon" statuette from the eponymous film is perched on top of a filing cabinet in a scene at police headquarters. Was some wardrobe mistress or grip playing a tasteless joke? Or was WB so stingy that they couldn't afford separate jewelry or props for different films? Did they think we wouldn't notice such visual gaffes? Unpardonable.The Premise of pic is that Bogart's character is a man who sees his temporary incapacity from a broken leg as an alibi in his plan to rub out his shrewish wife and then hook up with her dazzling younger sister. Picture Bogart as a closet Walter Mitty character with pathetic delusions of romantic grandeur. Seriously?Bogart is miscast as the villain, visibly uncomfortable without the armor of his usual dour anti-hero persona. Bogie tricks his wife into going on a trip without him, but later confronts her suddenly on a dangerous mountain road (what a coincidence!), killing her and pushing her car with her body in it over a cliff. Sidney Greenstreet is also miscast as a perspicacious yet compassionate psychiatrist (picture Jabba the Hut from "Star Wars" with a heart-of-gold) who sniffs out Bogart's mendacity about his wife's disappearance, and then goes on to orchestrate an elaborate "Gaslight" plan with the police to trip up Bogart's character and have him tip his hand. Guess who wins?In real life, the younger sister (and I do mean younger - the dazzling Alexis Smith at twenty-four was in her prime and 22 years younger than the aging, sickly-looking Bogart) wouldn't give a second glance to a humorless, gloomy old geezer like Bogart. Bogie finally confesses his love to her during the search for her sister, and then mercilessly cross-examines her about why she should love him when she rejects him. Even the most perverse, masochistic woman wouldn't tolerate Bogie's nasty hectoring. It was like he was trying to verbally beat a confession out of a criminal rather than win the affections of a woman who looked young enough still be in college. Bogart was always miscast as any kind of a ladies' man. This film really shows Bogie's inability to charm anyone, much less either of the two principal leading ladies. Add to this the glistening, disgusting drool he always has in the corners of his mouth, like that of a die-hard chewing tobacco addict. Bogart always comes off as a man totally who is uncomfortable with women - i.e., a real man's man. Bogart doesn't play the villain well either. Besides his heartless demeanor with Alexis Smith as the woman for whom he invented the entire murder plot of his wife, he actually made a woman playing a bit-part scream for help, he was so intimidating. His tough-guy persona informs every facet of all of his performances, however inappropriately, as here.Bogie's man's man image does work wonderfully in guy-flicks like "The Caine Mutiny," "Sahara," his first big movie role, "The Petrified Forest," and Bogie's best performance ever, that of the psychotic gold prospector Fred C. Dobbs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." To bad Bogie didn't stick to the roles that suited him, not ridiculous melodramas like "Conflict" where his character needed to be able to charm a woman.

merrywater Great actors, great story, good pacing, however...there's something wrong with it. It doesn't deliver the whole way through. I don't know exactly what is wrong with Conflict, it just leaves me unsatisfied.It might be that the musical score - the usual highfaluting 40s score - is less suited for this kind of surrealistic psychological drama than for the other Bogart movies.It might be the dialogue, rather uninspiring, definitely neither Chandleresque nor Hitchcockesque.It might be the unconvincing love story between Bogart and his sister-in-law.Compare it to Spellbound and you'll get my point.

brekalo_rtf Speak as a Bogart fan must say that this one is for me in the better half of Bogart filmography and I saw many of his films. For me a perfect movie, and I do not understand why this movie has "only" this grade which is very good but for me it has a lot of material and a lot more, I even included it in the Top 250 with no problems. Film style irresistibly draws on films of Alfred Hithcock you believe that a man he did not know the director of the film after watching the same very likely say that this is a Hitchcock movie, I think this is enough said. The script is for a clean 10-house as well as top-notch acting. All in all my film is pure quality and I recommend it to fans of Bogart and those of Hitchcock films.

Spikeopath Conflict is directed by Curtis Bernhardt and collectively written by Arthur T. Horman, Dwight Taylor, Robert Siodmak and Alfred Neumann. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith, Sydney Greenstreet, Rose Hobart, Charles Drake and Grant Mitchell. Music is by Frederick Hollander and cinematography by Merritt B. Gerstad.Still under exposed after all these years, Conflict is deserving of reappraisals by the film noir crowd. Plot has Richard Mason (Bogart) stuck in a loveless marriage to Kathryn (Hobart), with his misery further compounded by the fact he's in love with his sister-in-law, Evelyn (Smith). Finally having enough, Richard murders his wife and intends to woo the younger Evelyn into his life. However, when Richard starts glimpsing his wife out in the city and little items of hers start turning up, Richard starts to doubt his own mind.In essence it's a psychological thriller spiced with German Expressionism, perhaps unsurprising given that Bernhardt and Siodmak are key components of the production. The psychoanalysis angle played out would of course become a big feature in the film noir cycle, and here it makes for a most interesting story as Bernhardt and Gerstad dress it up in looming shadows, rain sodden streets and treacherous mountain roads. The pungent air of fatalism is evident throughout, the pace of the piece purposely sedate to marry up with the sombre tones as Richard Mason, a disturbed menace, him self becomes menaced.OK, you don't have to be an ace detective to figure out just exactly what is going on, so the reveal at film's closure lacks a bit of a punch, but the atmospherically tinged journey is well worth undertaking regardless. Bernhardt's camera is often like some peeping tom spying on the warped machinations of Mason, and all the while Hollander adds thematically compliant music to proceedings. Bogart was pretty much press ganged into making the picture, but come the final product it's evident that even though he may have been unhappy initially, he ended up delivering one the most intriguing turns in his wonderful career.Greenstreet is his usual presence, here playing the psychiatrist family friend who delivers the telling lines whilst being ahead of the game. Unfortunately the two principal lady characters aren't done any favours by the otherwise taut screenplay, especially Evelyn, who as the catalyst for the sinister shadings never gets chance to build a strong emotional bridge to Richard Mason's psychological make-up. Still, when you got Bogart as an unhinged killer attired in trench-coat and fedora, and a director who knows how to place him in the right visual scenarios, the flaws can't kill the film's strengths. 7/10