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There\u2019s a moment at the beginning of the second act of Key Largo<\/span> (the film was adapted from a play by Maxwell Anderson, and certain theatrical conventions– the sense of an act-break, the semi-proscenium blocking of some of the scenes– remain) where young widow Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), having fallen asleep during the film\u2019s centerpiece hurricane near Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart), seated watchfully next to her on the floor of the lobby of the Largo Hotel, wakes, raises her head, and looks up into his eyes, and he looks back at her. That\u2019s all. In a moment, the gangster dramatics of the film will resume, as Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his men plot how they will get themselves and their counterfeiting money to Cuba now that the hurricane has passed, but for now we can enjoy simply being privy to a key to Bogart\u2019s success: the fact that Hollywood\u2019s most legendary tough guy knew the absolute importance of tenderness.<\/p>\n Key Largo<\/span> was Bogart and Bacall\u2019s fourth, and final, film together. (A year earlier, in 1947, their third co-billing, Dark Passage,<\/span> played to less-than-enthusiastic reviews: the film, about a wrongly accused, escaped con [Bogart] who has plastic surgery in order to elude recapture, is fascinating and nightmarish; we follow Bogart\u2019s character up and down the impossible hills of San Francisco via first-person point-of-view until it\u2019s revealed midway through the film that the surgery has \u201cgiven\u201d him Bogart\u2019s face. Not having Bogart actually present on-screen for half the film\u2019s running time, as well as the script\u2019s weak ending [Bogart finds the real killer, but she commits suicide before he can bring her to the police], stifled Dark Passage<\/span> at the box office.) In real life, despite a twenty-year age difference, they\u2019d been happily married for several years, and to critics it showed: they were too comfortable with one another onscreen. The sexual spark they\u2019d displayed in To Have and Have Not<\/span> and The Big Sleep<\/span> was gone.<\/p>\n To which I respond: Stifle it, naysayers. Key Largo<\/span> is an entirely different type of animal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The opening of the film tells us that the Florida Keys are a string of islands at the southernmost tip of the United States, strung together by a concrete causeway some two hundred miles long. It is just after World War II. Frank McCloud, who served honourably as an army major in the Italian campaign, now wanders the United States in disillusionment. As befits his name, he\u2019s a drifter, but he\u2019s not a bum. He\u2019s neatly dressed; he has a worn, weary dignity. Unable to resettle himself on land in the post-war world (he was, before the war, a circulation manager for a newspaper), he\u2019s come to the Keys to try life at sea– as a hand on a fishing boat, anything. (His first love, he tells Nora– and, unwittingly, several characters less sympathetic– was a boat.) En route to Matacumbe Key, he stops at the Largo Hotel to pay his respects to the family of one of the young men, George Temple, who served bravely, and died, under his command.<\/p>\n There, he finds, things don\u2019t seem right. The hotel lobby contains no one but thuggish– if too carefully polite– men. \u201cHotel\u2019s closed,\u201d intones a young, dead-eyed dandy in wide suspenders and a broad fedora. At the hotel\u2019s modest bar, a woman, Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor, who most deservedly won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work here), a once-upon-a-time beauty who\u2019s obviously seen better days, balances fretfully on a barstool while she listens to horse races on the radio. Frank politely asks the beefy man behind the counter for a beer. \u201cBar\u2019s closed,\u201d the man replies. \u201cGive him a beer,\u201d Gaye says, her voice rising in frustrated fury when the man ignores her: \u201cGIVE HIM A BEER.\u201d<\/p>\n We might think that this is where the shooting, or at least the scuffling, should start; it\u2019s as obvious at this point to Frank as it is to us that he\u2019s stumbled into a nest of cinematic vipers. But so far the vipers are doing more slithering than biting, we\u2019ve yet to meet the big snake in charge, and Frank isn\u2019t interested in being a hero (or, as we\u2019ll see, in being a hero until he\u2019s had a chance to observe and assess the situation, a pragmatic intelligence that he insists is nothing but self-interest).<\/p>\n More importantly, director John Huston (who also co-wrote the script) has to introduce us to Nora Temple (a purely beautiful Bacall, as radiantly sleek as a mountain lion) and her crippled father-in-law, Mr. Temple (the legendary Lionel Barrymore, confined here, as in real life, to a wheelchair). The thugs seem genuinely relieved when Frank tells them he\u2019s there only to see Mr. Temple, not out of fear of Bogart, exactly, but out of practicality. We get the sense that they\u2019re only passing through, too, and that unnecessary murder would only make things messy.<\/p>\n With Frank\u2019s introduction to Temple and Nora, Huston hands us a beautifully moving series of scenes. We have to keep in mind how near the film was to the end of the Second World War, in story and in reality; Bacall\u2019s blue-gray eyes are luminous in black and white, and they shine quietly with sorrow and apprehension as Nora asks Frank:\u00a0 \u201cWere you with George when he died?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Frank replies gently.<\/p>\n A question a million mothers and wives would have yearned to ask: \u201cWas he in very much pain?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe never knew what hit him.\u201d<\/p>\n Here is where we first encounter the main theme Max Steiner composed for the film\u2019s score, a simple twenty-note melody that plays heartbreakingly on Taps. Nora looks relieved, though her face loses none of its numb grief. \u201cI was afraid he might have suffered.\u201d<\/p>\n She and Frank go to join Temple, who is waiting for them in a study on the hotel\u2019s main floor. Nora and Temple have only George\u2019s picture, a medal, and the State Department letter that informed them of his death. Frank kindly fills in details for them, telling them what a good and respected soldier George was. (And, as we\u2019ll find out later, he builds George up at his own expense.)<\/p>\n As Frank talks, director Huston gives us our first direct look at the thematic current underlying Key Largo<\/span>: heroism and cowardice come in many different forms. Foolishness does, too: it relates to both of them, sometimes detracting, sometimes augmenting, sometimes disguising itself as one or the other. Frank, here, is being as tactful and sincere as he could– and should– be. George, he tells Temple and Nora, was a born hero, always looking for ways to do more for his regiment. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t imagine his own death,\u201d Frank says. \u201cOnly dishonour.\u201d We see the struggle in his face, even if Temple and Nora don\u2019t: Frank respects the memory of the dead boy, and he certainly respects the feelings of George\u2019s father and widow. But, after what he\u2019s seen in war, after the disillusionment of peacetime, does Frank respect heroism itself?<\/p>\n We\u2019re about to find out.<\/p>\n Temple and Nora insist that Frank stay the night, but there\u2019s a storm warning in effect: a hurricane is coming. My favorite shot of the film comes when Frank and Nora go out to secure the hotel\u2019s boat. It\u2019s a simple thing, Bogart and Bacall walking side by side as the rising wind flutters their hair, but, as Steiner turns his twenty-note theme into a fully orchestrated march, we know: in Key Largo,<\/span> the good guys wear white. Or white shirts, anyway: Frank and Nora are wearing nearly identical button-down shirts, uniform and softly crisp, for the moment, even in the tropical Floridian heat. These are our heroes, the scene says, even if Frank might deny it.<\/p>\n Our villain, the chief snake in Hotel Largo\u2019s nest of vipers, is upstairs in a bathtub, trying to keep cool. He\u2019s Johnny Rocco, gangster king, and Johnny Rocco is Edward G. Robinson. It\u2019s a daringly unflattering first shot, Robinson in the tub, his barrel chest clumped with black hair, his face sheened with sweat as he sprawls with a cigar in one hand, a drink standing by on the rim of the tub. But Rocco\u2019s ego and Robinson\u2019s talent are up to the challenge. Even naked in a bath, he\u2019s very much in charge.<\/p>\n Both Robinson and Bogart were known for their onscreen villainy. That was the surface. Below it, we find men of great thoughtfulness and, offscreen at least, of great humanity and compassion. Both of them are short, homely. Bogart\u2019s head is too big for his frame; he\u2019s not leading-man handsome. Nevertheless, though he\u2019s known for the snarling, paranoid animalism of characters like Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest<\/span> and Fred Dobbs, the gold prospector driven mad by greed in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, <\/span>the set of his mouth– precise, sculpted– belies his sensitivity, as do his eyes, dark and basset-mournful. Robinson\u2019s face, like his body, is broad, blockish; his mouth is wide, a gash or a perpetual sneer. He looks like a toad. The joke ran that he and Bogart alternated shooting each other in the films they made together. In Key Largo,<\/span> both of them end up shot, but only one of them– only one of their characters, of course (not only are we well into the Production Code era, so we never see blood on a torso, but Robinson and Bogart had a genuinely respectful, genial working relationship)– lives to tell.<\/p>\n Much to John Huston\u2019s credit, we\u2019re not sure until the film\u2019s end which of the two– Rocco or Frank– the survivor will be. (Even then, the winner doesn\u2019t walk away unwounded; the film ends in fog over the ocean following a storm, and we\u2019re left with a niggling sense that a happy ending, while likely– again, we\u2019re well into Code times, and evil isn\u2019t meant to triumph– isn\u2019t a given.) Huston, who produced a number of controversial documentaries for the United States government during the war, presents us with a sober, realistic examination of bravery and cowardice. Even more unflinchingly, he shows us how bravery can be mistaken for cowardice:<\/p>\n Sawyer, a local sheriff\u2019s deputy, checking the hotel\u2019s grounds for two young Seminole brothers who\u2019ve broken out of the local jail, finds himself captive with Frank, Nora, and Temple when Rocco and his men reveal themselves as the gangsters they are. Rocco taunts Frank; he torments Temple until the older man rises from his wheelchair to strike him, and falls (keep in mind that Barrymore at this point was in fact wheelchair-bound: the kindly Robinson found the scene viscerally difficult to shoot). With a moray-eel leer, Robinson asks Frank what he wants out of life, after Frank and Nora help Temple back into his chair.<\/p>\n \u201cI had hopes once, but I gave \u2018em up.\u201d Frank\u2019s body language is neutral, edging on defeat. His shoulders sag slightly. \u201cA world in which there\u2019s no place for Johnny Rocco.\u201d<\/p>\n Rocco grins. \u201cGot a chance to make your hopes come true. But you gotta die for \u2018em.\u201d<\/p>\n And he tosses Frank a gun. He takes out his own. Frank can kill him, but Rocco will have a shot, too. As will his men. And Nora and Temple are in the room, as are Gaye and Sawyer. Frank sets the gun down.<\/p>\n \u201cOne Rocco more or less isn\u2019t worth dying for,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He\u2019s protecting Nora and the others, but she has yet to realise it. Robinson turns to her in mock sympathy. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, sister? You look like you lost someone near and dear.\u201d He looks back at Frank in genial contempt, very much the king here, casual and in charge. \u201cA live war hero. Now I know how you did it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes you have to look a coward to be a hero. Frank, an experienced combat veteran, knows this: the patience, the planning, the discipline. Temple and Sawyer, unfortunately, are heroes in a more popular, storied sense. \u201cGimme that gun,\u201d Temple says, once Frank, the apparent coward, sets it aside. Rocco chuckles. \u201cNo, I\u2019m afraid you\u2019d use it. One old man more or less isn\u2019t worth dying for.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Sawyer grabs the gun, points it at Rocco, pulls the trigger–<\/p>\n Click<\/span>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s empty.<\/p>\n Rocco shoots him. And Sawyer, the brave one, the \u201cpure\u201d hero, dies. Ironically, we get the sense that George was such a hero; earlier, when Frank told Temple and Nora how fine a soldier George was, he said it was a wonder George lasted as long as he did, given his willingness to volunteer himself.<\/p>\n Now, a shocked Temple tries to persuade Frank that Frank wasn\u2019t a coward in refusing to play Rocco\u2019s game. \u201cYou weren\u2019t afraid, son. We all know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, yes,\u201d Frank insists in response, \u201cI was<\/span> afraid.\u201d The next lines, lifted nearly verbatim from Casablanca<\/span>, echo the mantra of Bogart\u2019s Rick Blaine, cinema\u2019s prototypical anti-hero: \u201cI only care about me and mine. I fight nobody\u2019s battles but my own.\u201d<\/p>\n What he can\u2019t say is that Nora and Temple are<\/span> his now, and that his battle is to save them. Which he can\u2019t do if he sides himself openly and recklessly with glory and gets himself killed.<\/p>\n In Frank McCloud we have one of the most realistic heroes ever to appear onscreen. He\u2019s intelligent, but probably not extraordinarily so; his strength lies in his powers of observation and in his ability to take his time, to think a situation through. He\u2019s patient; he keeps his head. For a time, he wryly plays the role of court jester to Robinson\u2019s crime-emperor Rocco, keeping Rocco\u2019s ego buttered while Rocco himself is kept slightly off-balance: Frank, in telling an angry Temple, \u201cYou don\u2019t know who you\u2019re talking to,\u201d with regard to the criminal celebrity in their midst, prevents Temple from becoming a target.<\/p>\n In Frank, we see a man who\u2019s a hero not because someone murdered his parents or his family or because he\u2019s otherwise got a massive chip sitting on his shoulder, but because he\u2019s a decent guy and he simply can\u2019t help it.\u00a0 Revenge fantasies and radioactive spiders need not apply. Frank\u2019s task is to take a stand against evil, and he must do so as an ordinary man. Here we find John McClane as he was at the very beginning of the very first Die Hard<\/span> movie, before he could ricochet cop cars into helicopters or play tag with Harrier jets. When Frank contemplates a beating at the hands of one of Rocco\u2019s men, when Rocco jabs the muzzle of an automatic into his gut, we feel Frank\u2019s fear. He\u2019s not indestructible.<\/p>\n Which makes his heroism, when he finally reveals it, all the more effective. Alcoholic Gaye, deeply rattled by the shooting of Sawyer and by the howling of the hurricane outside the hotel, begs Rocco for a drink. She can have one, Rocco tells her, if Gaye, a one-time nightclub performer, will sing for them. She does, reluctantly, desperately, and, ultimately, very badly (Huston shot the scene without giving Trevor time to prep, so her increasingly off-key performance is that much more sad and convincing.). Rocco refuses to give her the promised drink, and Gaye bursts into tears. Without a word, Frank walks past Rocco\u2019s goons to the bar, pours Gaye a glass of whiskey, and takes it to her. \u201cThanks, fella,\u201d she says gratefully.<\/p>\n Rocco steps up to Frank and slaps him hard– one, two, three– across the face.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d Frank replies to Gaye. And Rocco\u2019s power shifts, crumbles at the edges, while Frank goes and seats himself, calmly, near Nora, who now recognises Frank\u2019s courage for what it is.<\/p>\n \u201cHe might have killed you,\u201d she says, \u201cbut that made no difference. You had to help her. Your head said one way, but your whole life said another. A cause isn\u2019t lost as long as someone is willing to go on fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m not that someone,\u201d Frank insists softly, as one of the goons paces by.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you are,\u201d Nora says. \u201cYou may not want to, but you can\u2019t help yourself. Your whole life\u2019s against you.\u201d As proof, she offers the fact that in his final letter home, George provided a different version of a story Frank told her and Temple: while Frank told them that George once manned a forward observation post all on his own for three days when the others with him were killed, the positions were, in fact, switched. Frank was the one directing artillery fire by himself, while he talked to George on the field phone to keep himself awake. A gentle lie for George\u2019s family, but now Frank has been caught out.<\/p>\n And now Nora recognises the face as well as the price of bravery. To do battle with evil, to do battle with it really, to defeat it, you have to be as insidious as that evil. You have to be patient, no matter the pain, the humiliation, or the horror. Frightened by Rocco\u2019s threats and the terrible weather, the captain of the boat that was to take the gangsters to Cuba has taken his yacht and gone. Rocco pegs Frank as replacement ferryman (after all, as his men overheard Frank say earlier, Frank\u2019s first love was a boat, right?).\u00a0 He agrees, while Gaye and Nora, in a moment of privacy, do their best to dissuade him, to run when he has the chance. But, as Nora has reminded him, Frank\u2019s whole life is against him. He sets off with Rocco and his men for Cuba. And when Frank has put a chunk of safe distance between himself and those he\u2019s left behind in the Largo Hotel, when he\u2019s taken Rocco and his men out of their dry-land comfort zone, he deals with them. Mercilessly, methodically, and without hesitation.<\/p>\n In the process, Frank himself is shot, which adds an extra, painful twist to Key Largo<\/span>\u2019s final take on heroism: if one has to become evil to deal with evil, can one come back to the light? We\u2019re led to believe so, as Frank turns the boat north-north-west, back toward Boot Key Harbor. We know so, as Nora, receiving the call that the Coast Guard has forwarded to the Largo Hotel on Frank\u2019s behalf,\u00a0 opens the storm shutters and sunlight floods the screen.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s alright, Dad,\u201d she says to Mr. Temple. \u201cHe\u2019s coming back to us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Principal Cast :\u00a0 Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":50620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[450,201,565,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-directors","category-classic-film-review","category-john-huston","category-movie-review"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255.jpg",1106,720,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-500x280.jpg",500,280,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-660x365.jpg",660,365,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-768x500.jpg",640,417,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-840x720.jpg",640,549,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255.jpg",1106,720,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255.jpg",1106,720,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255.jpg",1024,667,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255.jpg",522,340,false],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-24x24.jpg",24,24,true],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-48x48.jpg",48,48,true],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-96x96.jpg",96,96,true],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"sow-carousel-default":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/keylargo1948.598_060620171255-272x182.jpg",272,182,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Doug Shearer","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/author\/doug-shearer\/"},"category_info":"Directors<\/a> Film Classic<\/a> John Huston<\/a> Movie Review<\/a>","tag_info":"Movie Review","comment_count":"3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74452,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions\/74452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/1936207627_e34852b366.jpg\" "\\"Cast\\"")
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