Key Largo (1948)



Director: John Huston

Honors:

The movie star couple of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are paired on screen the forth and final time as they co-star alongside the legendary actor of Warner Bros. classic gangster pictures Edward G. Robinson in the John Huston directed noir Key Largo. For a picture adapted from a play set primarily within a confined location, the film’s cast shines through the production delivering performances beyond that provided from the film’s script. For director John Huston, this gem picture would prove to be another triumph, yet a process that proved so upsetting for him to eventually sever his association with Warner Bros. Studios.

Key Largo is a noir crime drama about a disillusioned war veteran who finds himself at odds with a vile gangster and his cronies while held up in a remote hotel during a severe tropical storm. Jaded WWII veteran Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) pays a visit to the wife, Nora (Lauren Bacall), and father, James (Lionel Barrymore), of a fallen war companion at their family ran hotel in the Florida Keys only to find the establishment being strong armed by a series of toughs. The men are led by the notorious and exiled gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), utilizing the seasonally closed hotel for a temporary hideaway for himself, his men, and his alcoholic girlfriend Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) while waiting for associates to help him skip the country.

Trouble arrives as a hurricane descends upon the region delaying and complicating the situation for the fugitive, Rocco who threatens McCloud, Nora, and James through the dangerous storm while battened down in the hotel. After the storm passes the disillusioned McCloud feeling responsible to protect, whom he has come finds himself falling in love with, James, and their hotel. Recruited to pilot Rocco’s boat to Cuba, McCloud leads the boat to sea and to confront and slay Rocco and his men onboard with a gun slipped to him by Gaye. Following the physical and emotional relief of the confrontation McCloud sets course back to Key Largo and to Nora.

This film outplays itself in production quality. With a script, co-penned by director John Huston, that appears to lag at times, Huston was able to assemble a film that plays well with the building tension between the characters. His visual style enhances his actors, whose performances dominate the simplicity that this script delivers. The film comes of almost as a tribute to the gangster roles of Robinson’s past, once again allowing the actor to shine. It also accentuates Bogarts mastery of potraying flawed and jaded characters. Lauren Bacall’s performance adds a certain flare to a rather bland female character, resulting in a role that goes beyond that found in the script. Overall the result is a confined picture that builds well beyond what is superficially observed with an underlying tone that is absolutely palpable.

For John Huston, Key Largo was a different filmmaking experience than he would have liked. Adapted from the 1939 Maxwell Anderson play, Huston was limited by the studio production-wise after displeasing Warner Bros during his most recent picture. Huston shot Treasure of the Sierra Madre on location in Mexico, leaving the studio out to the loop during production, going over schedule and over budget during a time when the studio was cutting costs. Despite Treasure of the Sierra Madre becoming a massive hit, the producers kept a tight leash on Key Largo, keeping Huston’s production on the studio lot the entire time to keep and watchful eye on him and the picture. Huston would alter the original story, the names of the characters, turning what were Mexican bandits into American gangsters to make the picture more relevant in his mind. After production Huston’s found his picture edited down by the studio, upsetting the director for his loss of creative control on his product, a move that would help encourage the filmmaker to depart from Warner Bros. soon after.

In all fairness this feature is more a Bogart-Robinson picture than a Bogart-Bacall film. For the fifth time Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson are featured together in the same movie, but this marks the first time Bogart is not a supporting player, but rather the star. Despite Bogart and Bacall technically receiving co-top billing as the husband/wife couple as most recently been, Robinson, the third lead, saw his name place in the middle and in larger print on promotional material out of respect for his history with Warner Bros. gangster pictures, as well as Bogart’s massive respect for his co-star.

Robinson’s performance is powerful and menacing, homage to all his prior gangster work, but ratcheted up with the direction of John Huston. Bogart brings the troubled angst from his performances in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca to to his role as McCloud, a character that does what he feels is right when he could have easily fled the troubling situation that he had nothing to do with. Bacall’s performance is a bit underwhelming, but in hindsight she had very little to work with. For a script that gave her a character with little appeal, Bacall makes it her own. While not being suggestive she is alluring as a widow who comes to have some interest in McCloud as a friend and a hero figure.

Even the supporting cast shines in this drama. Lionel Barrymore, long affected by his arthritis, is confined to his wheelchair that many may associate with his Mr. Potter role in It’s a Wonderful Life. Here he uses his ailment to dramatic affect as his character is left in a pitiful situation in moments of anger, delivering and determined, but sad performance. Despite Barrymore being hindered by his physical condition, his most dramatic scene has him take a pitiful swing at one of the criminals in a moment of anger that leaves him looking helpless.

Fellow supporting player Claire Trevor also displays a pitiful creature, she being the emotionally broken girlfriend of Rocco, Gaye, a former singer now driven to drink as her only means to escape. At first her role appears out of place in this crime drama as the washed up singer and eventual moll, but as her character pines over what she once was. Through the build of the movie Trevor’s performance becomes much more powerful. She delivered the most heartbreaking moment of the picture as Rocco demands her to sing for her drink, which she relents into doing in her humiliation, singing pitifully in a cappella with glimmers of the talent of what she once was, but hearing her fall out of tune multiple times, keeping herself from breaking down into tears. Stories have that John Huston got this performance out of Trevor by surprising her the day of shooting with the plan to film this scene, leaving her ill prepared and highly nervous, exactly what Huston wanted out of her. In the end Claire Trevor would win great praise from peers and critics alike, ultimately earning her the Academy Award for her performance.

Key Largo was yet another success for John Huston and Warner Bros, earning over $3 million in profit and being one of the studios greatest money makers of the year. 1948 was a huge year for the director as after the success of Treasure of the the Sierra Madre, Key Largo proved he could produce films even under tighter constrictions, despite the animosity it created between filmmaker and studio. Regardless of this not being Bogart and Bacall’s most romantic film pairing, it sadly would be their last on the silver screen as Bogart would pass away before the two saw the chance to work together in a fifth motion picture. For Edward G. Robinson, this may have been the last great starring role of his career as political issues would eventually cause him trouble as he fell into the supporting roles in the years to come. Today Key Largo remains a strong crime drama years beyond the heyday of the genre, a grand tribute to the career of fine roles for Mr. Robinson in a chilling character found in the tight confines within this story.

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