Key Largo ***** (1948, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G Robinson) – Classic Movie Review 1345

Co-writer/director John Huston’s deliciously atmospheric, cynical and world-weary 1948 film noir thriller is the fourth and final film pairing of married actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, after To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Dark Passage (1947).

Bogart stars as ex-major Frank McCloud, a World War Two veteran who arrives at the Hotel Largo in Key Largo, Florida, to meet his killed-in-action war buddy’s widow Nora Temple Bacall) and father James (Lionel Barrymore), who owns the hotel. The six guests there – the dapper Toots (Harry Lewis), the boorish Curly (Thomas Gomez), stone-faced Ralph (William Haade), servant Angel (Dan Seymour), attractive Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), and a sixth person secluded in his room – claim to have come to the Florida Keys for a fishing trip.

Soon Bogart finds himself grappling with what turn out to be Johnny Rocco (Edward G Robinson)’s gang of mobsters in the end-of-season Florida Keys hotel, awaiting news of a hurricane.

Huston’s film is admittedly quite a stagey and wordy version of Maxwell Anderson’s stage play that’s low on thrills at least until the climax. But the movie is tense, involving and intriguingly premised. The sharp, cynical, intelligent dialogue captures the imagination and lingers in the memory, while the dream-team performances from a peerless and iconic cast are superlative. Bogart and Robinson are on their finest form.

It seems like Huston knew how great all the actors and crew would be and so he just worked on the script, then relaxed, sat in his director’s chair and let them all get on with it.

Claire Trevor really deserves her Best Supporting Actress Oscar as Robinson’s alcoholic former gangster’s moll, ex-nightclub singer Gaye Dawn. Trevor’s performance climaxes when Gaye is forced by Rocco to sing a song a capella before he will allow her to have a drink. Trevor had to perform the 1929 song Moanin’ Low with no notice and without any rehearsal. It’s a song about a woman trapped in a relationship with a cruel man. Trevor’s voice falters with emotion and Bogart pours her a stiff drink, saying: ‘You deserve this’.

Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Gomez also star to great effect, while the cast is rounded out by Jay Silverheels (aka the Lone Ranger’s Tonto), Marc Lawrence, Harry Lewis, John Rodney, Dan Seymour, Monte Blue, William Haade and Alberto Morin.

The movie is adapted by Huston and Richard Brooks from Anderson’s 1939 play, which enjoyed a respectable run on Broadway for 105 performances in 1939 and 1940.

The boat used by Rocco’s gang to depart Key Largo, with McCloud at the helm, is named the Santana, the same as Bogart’s real-life 55ft sailing yacht. Exterior shots of the hurricane are footage from Night Unto Night, a 1948 Ronald Reagan movie.