![]() Though she’s billed below her, Claire Trevor actually has a far more active role in Key Largo than the putative leading lady. The portrayal of their relationship here is miles away from their outrageously sexy “Anybody got a match?” repartee in To Have and Have Not, released just four years earlier, but it’s no less bewitching for its serenity. They’re so deeply a duo, they don’t need to shout about it. And yet, from their matching outfits, to the ease with which she helps him tie up his boat before the hurricane hits, there’s a quiet simplicity to their partnership that is lovely to watch. Key Largo was the last of four movies that Bogart and Bacall made together, and by some measure the one in which they share the fewest scenes-unlike in the earlier three, their romance is still just incipient by the time the credits roll. Frank has remembered what it feels like to be courageous. Johnny immediately slaps him three times across the face in quick succession, but it doesn’t matter. Frank, despite the daunting volume of bad guys with guns who are watching him, strides behind the hotel bar, pours a drink, and gives it to her. Johnny, who gets off on committing these acts of humiliation, persuades his alcoholic ex-songstress moll Gaye (Claire Trevor) to sing an old torch song by promising her a drink afterwards. Although no-one in their right mind could really blame him (and as it turns out, the gun Johnny offers him is empty anyway), his shirking of an opportunity for heroism still sits uneasily, and the gangster mocks him relentlessly.įrank’s “redemption” comes in an act of simple-yet, brave-human decency. ![]() Frank refuses, and his refusal is couched as a disgrace the ghost of Frank’s dead war hero friend looming. Johnny gives Frank a gun with which to kill him early in the action-the catch is, he must also die in the process. Their almost fraternal rapport makes the jousting between Johnny and Frank feel extra personal they know just where to stick their knives to make it hurt the most. Bogart and Robinson had co-starred in four films before Key Largo, and often competed for the same parts during the 1930s and early ‘40s. ![]() Frank, on the other hand, keeps all his insecurity inside, watching and assessing the players in this strange situation in which he’s found himself, choosing carefully when to step in and when to let Johnny talk himself into trouble. Johnny is all bellicosity and bluster, shot through with a streak of sadism, sure that if he carries on grandstanding as if he is still the Capone-esque figure he once was, then no-one will notice his diminished power. While they’re in the same existential predicament, they deal with it in opposite ways. Frank and Johnny are both men trying to figure out what their lives are now that their glory days-the former in the war, the latter as a notorious Prohibition-era gangster-are over. Key Largo is an actor’s piece, through and through.Īlthough every member of the impressive cast gets their time to shine, the main thrust of the action is the conflict between a peacocking Robinson and an introspective Bogart. Robinson, Claire Trevor, and Lionel Barrymore, the limited plane of action hardly matters. ![]() Much of the action takes place within just a couple of rooms in the hotel, but when those rooms contain Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. John Huston’s film was adapted from a play (Paul Muni originated the Bogart role), and he does not try to hide it. Guns are drawn, and Frank, Nora and James find themselves in a hostage situation while a deadly storm rages outside. Yet there’s a hurricane bearing down on the archipelago, and when the fuzz comes sniffing around the joint on the hunt for a different pair of perps, Rocco’s goons get nervous. ![]() Robinson) and his gang have been holing up at the establishment, hiding from the cops. After offering Nora and James a sum of money they just couldn’t refuse, notorious gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Nora and James run a hotel, which is closed-or supposed to be-for the season, and both treat Frank as a member of the family.īut there are guests at the supposedly closed hotel, who soon make their presence aggressively known. Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) heads out to sunny Key Largo to meet the father, James (Lionel Barrymore) and widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall), of a friend who served with him and was killed in WW2. ![]()
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