Key Largo (1948)

Director:

John Huston

Writers:

Maxwell Anderson (play)
Richard Brooks (writer) ...

Release Date:

31 July 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

Tagline:

A storm of fear and fury in the sizzling Florida Keys !

Plot:

A man visits his old friend's hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other.

Plot Keywords:

Hotel | Gangster | Hurricane | Alcoholic | Key Largo

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 1 nomination

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Frank McCloud
Edward G. Robinson	...	Johnny Rocco
Lauren Bacall	...	Nora Temple
Lionel Barrymore	...	James Temple
Claire Trevor	...	Gaye Dawn
Thomas Gomez	...	Richard 'Curly' Hoff
Harry Lewis	...	Edward 'Toots' Bass
John Rodney	...	Deputy Clyde Sawyer
Marc Lawrence	...	Ziggy
Dan Seymour	...	Angel Garcia
Monte Blue	...	Sheriff Ben Wade
William Haade	...	Ralph Feeney

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Sweden:15 | West Germany:16 (nf) | South Korea:15 (2003) | Australia:G (cable rating) | Australia:PG (original rating) | Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #12932)

Filming Locations:

Florida Keys, Florida, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

In the film, James Temple describes the 1935 hurricane that devastated Matacumbe Key. This was one of worst hurricanes in U.S. history and many of the victims of the storm were World War I veterans who were building the Florida Keys portion of U.S. Highway 1, also known as the Overseas Highway. A portion of the highway is seen in the film's opening. The storm also produced the lowest-ever recorded barometric pressure over land in the North American continent.

Goofs:

Plot holes: Near the end the sheriff tells Mr. Temple, Nora and Gaye that the state police have picked up Ziggy and his henchmen as they were about to cross the border into Georgia. It's about 1000 miles from the Keys to the Florida-Georgia border. As Ziggy and his men drove away not long before Rocco and his men left on the boat, and Frank had shot Rocco and his men only about 12 miles off shore, it would not have been possible for Ziggy and his men to reach the border of Georgia by car in so short a time.

Quotes:

Deputy Clyde Sawyer: Down in the lobby, I ran up against these two.
[indicates Toots and Curly]
Deputy Clyde Sawyer: Well, they didn't look right to me, so I asked them a few questions. By the way they answered me, I knew there was something fishy. So I put in a call to Ben Wade, but before I could get through, the lights went out on me. I woke up in there. Rocco was standing over me. I recognized him right away from the pictures. I made a break for the door, and the lights went out again.
Toots: I'm the electrician.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Bullets Over Hollywood (2005) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Moanin' Low

The film may lack substance and coherence but it is first-rate drama and entertainment…

It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours" with John Huston's "Key Largo."

Here again the drama arose when a gangster and his thugs sought a temporary hideout by moving in on an innocent family, and were unable to get away until a raging hurricane had blown itself out…

The family were Lionel Barrymore, complete with wheelchair, and Lauren Bacall, apparently without make-up—stunningly attractive… Their home was a small hotel in Florida, and "just passing through" was a tough and somewhat mixed-up good guy Humphrey Bogart… The gangster was Edward G. Robinson…

For Bogart "Key Largo" was another "The Petrified Forest," but this time he was the disenchanted idealist and Edward G. Robinson the vicious, antiquated symbol of raw brute force…

Paul Muni had appeared in the original Maxwell Anderson play in 1939, and director John Huston and Richard Brooks updated the piece to make it more contemporary… As a film, it was treated in a slightly heavy-handed, overly talky manner, displacing action in favor of strong character studies of a group of disparate individuals trapped by a kingpin gangster…

Claire Trevor won an Academy Award as Gaye Dawn, Rocco's boozy mistress who was willing to lower herself to any depths for the mere expedient of getting a drink… She is finally pushed too far by Rocco, has accepted too many insults and been rejected once too often, so she decides to help the besieged prisoners…

Lauren Bacall was Nora Temple, an antiseptic dreamer who persisted in believing that evil should always be opposed by a valiant Sir Galahad and temporarily has her illusions shattered when Bogart apparently doesn't agree to fit into her mold…

As Bacall's grandfather, Lionel Barrymore was another heroic figure who, could afford to be a verbal hero, knowing that a retreat to the safety of his confining wheelchair could protect him…

Edward G. Robinson as Rocco was a mass of contradictions… Brutal with a gun safely in his hand, dreaming of the glories he once knew in the good old days when he was a big shot, all he has left are the memories… He was a man whose criminal wisdom permits no ethics and few feelings… He offers Bogart an empty gun to shoot it out with him... He is also a man afraid, who sweats when the hurricane approaches and poses a threat to his safety... He detests Bogart because of his wartime heroism, mocking and taunting him because his courage is something differing in Rocco's own unheroic life…

As war hero Frank McCloud, Bogart was the most complex character of all… Disillusioned, tired of his war-induced killings, unwilling to risk himself in any new test of courage ("One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for"), he is now a complacent shadow of his former noble self… He, like Barrymore, seeks an idyllic world where "there's no place for Johnny Rocco." However, his pattern has been too well established… He, like Claire Trevor, can be pushed only so far and then reason and restraint seem no longer acceptable as an alternative to action…

With such a cast "Key Largo" could not fall to hold the attention… Yet, for all its workmanlike craft, it did not reach the level of Wyler's "The Desperate Hours." Bogart, as a disillusioned war veteran who could not rouse himself to action until the last few minutes, left one frustrated: looking for the vicious power that he was to show as the gangster in the later film…

Edward G. Robinson, commanding, convincing, was still not so coldly frightening a villain as Humphrey Bogart… And, one can imagine how the idea of the storming hurricane appealed at the time… The violence and the drama outside, as the wind tore at the palm trees and the waves threatened to swallow the little wooden hotel, would surely underscore and heighten the tensions within... Not so! And not only because the studio storm was not always up to nature's level...

What William Wyler realized was that the suspense of innocence trapped as hostages by wickedness was vastly heightened by the contrast with a quiet, undramatic, everyday setting… No hurricane was needed to put the desperation in "The Desperate Hours."