"KEY LARGO" (1948), SUMMER MOVIE RECOMMENDATION

I enjoy recommending Key Largo (1948) because it’s a movie that I love. I just can’t shut the hell up about it. This was the final of four films to star Hollywood super-couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Though there’s stronger examples of their chemistry (see The Big Sleep), Key Largo remains their most intoxicating. I saw it for the first time on TCM many years ago, and it remains one of my favorite films.

Bogart plays Frank McCloud, a World War II vet who arrives at a seaside hotel in Key Largo, Florida. He’s come to pay his respects to the family of his army buddy, George Temple, who was killed in combat. Frank meets his late friend’s widow (Bacall) and father (Lionel Barrymore), who owns the hotel. (Modern audiences know Barrymore best as the evil Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life.) They invite Frank to spend the night. But other guests have checked in too. A coterie of shifty, unsavory hoodlums, led by a mysterious man sequestered in an upstairs room (Edward G. Robinson). 

Director John Huston effectively creates an unrelenting atmosphere of grim,  claustrophobic foreboding. A paranoid mood pervades, wafting through the hotel’s corridors, bathed in dying sunlight and beautifully photographed by cinematographer Karl Freund. As conflicts between the hotel guests intensify, so too does the thick, oppressive heat; an approaching hurricane bears down on the hotel. 

Bogart and Bacall are the ostensible stars, a pair of mourners that fall in love through their bereavement. But the spotlight belongs to two supporting actors. Robinson is both frightful and repugnant; a sweaty bulldog that loves to poke at its meal. His entrance is the most effective character introduction in any movie anywhere. Within a single frame, we learn everything we need to know about Robinson’s character without him uttering a single grunt. 

You can argue that the film really belongs to Claire Trevor. By 1948 Trevor was already typecast as hardboiled dames; the wayward blonde gone wrong. It was a role she played aplomb in many films including Stagecoach (1938), Murder, My Sweet (1944), and Dead End (1937). But her performance in Key Largo as boozy Gaye Dawn, a washed-up nightclub singer, is her most heart-wrenching. In the film’s best scene, Gaye is enticed to sing her signature tune in exchange for a glass of hooch. But as the first creaky notes slip between her gin-soaked lips, it’s clear to everyone — including herself — that she drank her talent away. Trevor won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1948. Deservedly so. 

From the moment I first saw Key Largo, I became utterly entranced by it. Once you’ve seen Key Largo, you won’t be able to shut up about it either. 

As of this posting, Key Largo is currently streaming on HBOMax. 

-T.Z.