Key Largo
Everyone likes Key Largo (1948). There is not much more to say about it. Key Largo is a good film and enjoyable to watch, but not a great film. Although it is chock full of good actors, all the characters are stereotypes. Edward G. Robinson is the amoral, tough-guy gangster; Humphrey Bogart is the heroic but disillusioned ex-soldier; Lauren Bacall is the good-looking, spirited woman ready to fall in love with a hero; Claire Trevor, up from the B-movies, is the gangster’s moll turned lush. Bogart’s war vet goes beyond a stereotype in that he is disillusioned by WW II yet deep down still a good and admirable man. This leads to the movies theme, best stated by Bogie: “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”
Bosley Crowther’s 1948 review for The New York Times said this theme generated too much “pompous and remote” philosophical talk. But the characters have to do something as they sit and wait, wait and sit, until the action at the end of the film. The theme also addresses a feeling that may have been widespread: The war stopped Hitler but it did not make America a much better place. This was certainly on director and co-screenwriter John Huston’s mind when he, Bogart, and Bacall returned to California in 1947 after testifying at the House of Un-American Activities Committee. The three of them had gone as concerned citizens but were soon tarred with the label of Communist sympathizers. A lot of the talk and bickering in the Key Largo hotel is raising the question of what American citizens, like Bogart, should do in the face of fascist politicians, represented by Robinson’s gangland dictator.
Key Largo is often categorized as a great film noir, and I’m ok with people calling it a film noir, but it lacks as many noir elements as it displays. It has the gangland element, but the gangsters are in the Florida Keys rather than in the urban jungle. It has black and white cinematography replete with shadows, but many of the shots are rather soft as if shot through 100-percent humidity. This gives the movie quite a different feel from the cold, harsh glare of big city neon. While a film noir need not have any particular kind of music, the sound track is often sparse and certainly not standard Hollywood orchestration. But Key Largo features Max Steiner’s over-emphatic score. Probably most contrary to noir films is the ending. The strong moral themes running under the surface come to the fore, and we have an over-the-top happy ending. The alcoholic gun moll, who instantly has a soft spot for Bogie, slips him the boss’s gun as Bogie is forced to captain the gang back to Cuba. Bogie kills the entire gang single-handedly, and then he phones back to the hotel even though the phone lines have been knocked out by the tropical storm. Bacall joyously opens the shutters and light streams symbolically in. Musical strains swell and love and justice are in the air. Not typical noir fare. Actually, maybe not even a credible ending to a drama.
I enjoyed the movie and I never thought for a minute that it was not shot in some old hotel in the Keys. But the hotel and the beach were in the Warner Brothers lot, and the storm was stock footage not used in another Warner Brothers’ 1947 movie.