High Sierra ushered the gangster genre into the forties, and the gangster himself into the role of existential anti-hero. Bogart's Mad Dog Earle, hiding out in the Sierras following a robbery, is in a no-exit situation that ends in a mountain shootout. Lupino is the hard-bitten cabaret singer who falls in love with the Mad Dog. Bogart and Lupino are magnetized by being outcasts-though he is wanted, both are essentially "not wanted." Manny Farber, writing about actors' space in his book, Negative Space, commented: "Ida Lupino, an unforgettable drifter in a likable antique, High Sierra, works close and guardedly to the camera, her early existentialist-heroine role held to size: she's very unglorious, has her place, and, retracting into herself, steals scenes from Bogart at his most touching."