KEY LARGO [1948] review

Many of my movie choices are based on fragments of memory stored away waiting for the right time to come out.  In my memory at least, I saw pieces of KEY LARGO long ago and over the years I would think to give it a proper viewing.  Something earlier this week finally convinced me to watch it on this Thursday night, which coincidentally was the first big rainstorm we have had in Florida in many weeks.  Thursday nights are becoming my time to catch up on old movies, obscure movies and serious movies, leaving the traditional Saturday night movie slot for more modern Hollywood-type features.

The one memory fragment I had of KEY LARGO for years, was never in the movie.  The story was also something I had no memory of.  I was a little disappointed gangsters were involved in what was basically a long, closed set hostage story with mother nature being the ultimate holder of all the characters together in a grand hotel while a hurricane strikes.

It’s also strange to see a movie so obviously done completely on a movie studio lot.  I guess the budgets for movies back then did not allow them to so easily go on location, or perhaps shooting in Key Largo itself was not very practical.

Still, KEY LARGO is a movie more to be listened to than seen.  The story and directing are tight enough to keep you interested in what is going to happen next, and the threat of danger is very real.

Lauren Bacall shows class on screen that seems almost foreign in 2010.  Here eyes show such real emotion.  Maybe the movie being in black & white makes her seem more sincere than current actresses, or maybe she really is.

Edward G. Robinson plays the gangster leader, Johnny Rocco, and he so stereotypically looks like a gangster of that era I cannot imagine him playing any other kind of part.  Men sure wore their pants up high in the late 40s, so high in fact that you could tuck your tie into your belt!  I wonder if this is the only movie ever set in Florida that does not have a single character in shorts at any point.

To a Floridian, how calmly and nonchalant everyone is about the hurricane is laughable.  IMDB points out the incorrect statement by one character that early in the summer is the busier time for hurricanes, when in fact it is early fall that is the most dangerous time.  I would like to know too if in 1948 their was only one hour warning of the onset of a hurricane!

The movie is a taunt thriller with a slight Hitchcockian feel to the tension.  I like the the sympathy shown to the American-Indians in the movie as well.  This may have started a mini-marathon of watching more Bogart-Bacall movies for me.