1948 Directed by John Huston
A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.
L'isola di corallo, Paixões em Fúria, Кий Ларго, Sti voi tis kataigidos, Ölüm gemisi, Stormvarning utfärdad, Huracán de pasiones, Satsujin hoteru, Uvejrsøen Key Largo, Koralowa wyspa, Hafen des Lasters, Myrskyvaroitus, 키 라르고
Hot dog, what an awesome movie! This is maybe my sixth time watching. The first time I watched Key Largo I thought it was OK, but not great. Not sure what headspace I was in then, because the acting in this is top notch. The underrated Claire Trevor is a standout (she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work here), but everyone, Bogart, Robinson, Barrymore, and Thomas Gomez are all in top form. Probably the best that Bacall has ever been. Huston has some nicely framed shots and sets things up well. Highly recommended and if you don't love it, watch it again.
80
Post-war in that every character is dealing with the repression of reconciling with their own trauma. That this sweaty, theatrical Noir utilizes a hurricane storm swirling outside the one-location is a representation of how no one got away from WWII unscathed. Key Largo, with its lightning and thunder and howling wind, is always on the verge of Horror. Falters by the end, but in the meantime, it's as sharp and ruthless as the very best of John Huston.
the world will always be shit so long as good men do nothing about fat gangsters.
achieves a remarkable sense of place for a film shot on a backlot. Bogart is sweeter than you expect, as he often was in the Huston films, but this is Edward G. Robinson's show and he sells it so well.
Edward G. Robinson stole the show faster than Lauren Bacall could look at Bogie and fall in love with him and THAT'S saying something.
Ah, yes, my two favorite things:
● Films set mostly in one single location.
● Lauren Bacall's face.
This movie just didn't work for me.
I have seen movies with the lead stars and the director before, I was excited to see some of my favourites in a film noir.
I don't know what it was about this movie... I watched the first 20 minutes, got bored and turned it off. I returned a few days later and watched the first 30 minutes, got bored and turned it off.
Five days later, I was in the mood to watch a Film Noir. I put it on and forced myself to watch the whole movie. There were scenes that I liked and the characters were fun... I genuinely don't have an explanation why I thought this film was so boring.
I tried John Huston, I really did.
Watching Key Largo, I figured out why cinematic adaptations of plays like this one and Petrified Forest rub me the wrong way. It's because they manipulate characters into laughably contrived situations, and then find profundity in them, presenting the discovery to be surprising and meaningful. That's not to say there aren't things to like and admire here (less so in Petrified Forest, at least for me), but that fundamentally self-congratulatory element of their creation is always in my head.
The best things about Key Largo are easily Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, longtime cinematic adversaries who play off of one another here with practiced ease, knowing when to be big and loud, and when to back off and let…
A drawing-room noir set in Florida, John Huston's "Key Largo" is a film that finds a disparate group of people powering a drama that is more about those people than a propulsive narrative. Even without palpable forward motion, Huston cooks up a meaty and engaging, hurricane swept morality tale.
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor play the men and women imprisoned both by the mob and the weather in a Key Largo hotel. Bogart's ex-soldier and Robinson's mob boss find themselves at odds as a storm rages outside. A staring contest of wills, bullets, and threats, Huston's drama locks its characters in a slow-rolling battle for survival.
Dealing with Shakespearean inaction, Bogart's Major Frank…
me every time i watch lauren bacall and humphrey bogart fall in love while pretending to be different people: gee i really hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me
Closed-in palm trees. Sweltering climates. Rising brow-lines seen face-to-face with torrid unease, set to the soulful buzz of mosquitoes doing their thing. A sweaty, hot-headed Noir, clammy claustrophobia as travelled from caved-in alleyways to holed-up islands and given a patchy sun-tan. Post-war pessimism compartmentalised into these four, tiny patched-up walls and all dressed up in soaked-through business shirts.
There’s a storm coming, so best settle your bets before it’s too late. But you’ll need an awful lot more than sunscreen to offset these looks; Looks that could kill. Be careful to keep your head above water or you’ll be lucky they don’t bite it clean off. That is, if it’s even worth giving a damn. Bogie absorbs it all into…
Film #34 of Project 40
”When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”
Surprisingly it’s neither Humphrey Bogart nor Lauren Bacall who steal the show in John Huston’s thriller, it’s Edward G. Robinson who once again takes the role of the villain and dominates the film with his cruelty, indifference and stony heart. For me that was Key Largo’s biggest surprise, when you realize that this is going to be another movie featuring the legendary couple of Bogart and Bacall you normally expect to see them at the center of film’s attention creating another strong romance, but here John Huston completely abandons that cliche and quite bravely puts both characters in the…
The atmosphere of it. The storm, the faces, the music. This perfectly captures the coziness you feel during a big storm because you feel insulated from its danger. You’re insulated from the danger on screen that our players are facing as well as the carnage present outside the Florida hotel. Fantastic film with a dreamlike aesthetic.
Key Largo’s strength relies on the heroic Humphrey Bogart vs the tyrannical Edward G. Robinson with supporting players Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor (which she won the Oscar for this particular film!).
Johnny Rocko is a bit of a hump but he seems to be at a place in his organization where he can simply shout “GIMMIE!!!” at henchman and have them put a pistol in his hand.
Tense action drama with Humphrey Bogart solid as ever.
Not enough Lauren Bacall! And I much prefer her playing less of a good girl role - like To Have and Have Not or The Big Sleep.
Edward G. Robinson gives a great, nuanced performance as a mob boss who doesn't really buy into his bluster.
For a split second in the dock scene at the beginning I though, I REALLY THOUGHT, Lauren Bacall would finally be allowed to have a personality but NO!!!! They just HAD to turn every spotlight on Bogart again!! This is why it took me so long to watch old movies!!!! They used Lauren Bacall as an accessorie in 4/4 of these!!!!!
I learn so much about America from films from this time - well, maybe not "learn", a lot of it is pretty propagandist, but I certainly think so much about America.
In KEY LARGO you can see America's deification of individualism shifting & changing after the war, not through prosperity, but through their cynicism & self-preservation.
As it happens, I think this film was just so. It's dark (including visually; too much so), & we see a fantastic villain in Edward G. Robinson's Johnny Rocco ('Whom he couldn’t corrupt terrified, whom he couldn’t terrify he murdered'; 'You think it’s the gun - thousands of guys’ve got guns, but there’s only one Johnny Rocco'), but it is very, very stagey.
We also see pretty…
Una película excelentemente escrita, con un elenco soñado y una hermosa fotografía. No escribo más porque es tiempo de mimir.
Me: getting in a time capsule, travelling to 1948, meeting Lauren Bacall, saying: 'Excuse me, Miss Bacall, I know Humphrey Bogard is hell of a man, but I am TWO hell of a man... Would you please marry me?
Lauren Bacall: 'Yes!'
Me: happy!
Huston manages to keep the tension tight on this one all the way through the climax. It’s propelled forward by the quintet of central players, but particularly Trevor, Robinson and Barrymore.
Edward G. Robinson is pretty great at playing these kinds of roles. Bogart plays it quieter this time, acting more with his eyes. I guess he learned a thing or two about that in Dark Passage. He got to be a boat captain again. Bacall was pretty under used in this one, at least compared to her other films with Bogart. I was happy they didn’t make out this time, what with Bogart being 25 years older than Bacall. The story was great, with some diabolical twists and turns.
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