SWEET SCENES OF SURRENDER : John Huston's 'Key Largo' (1948) [7/10]

Sunday, 30 October 2005

Key Largo occupies an odd slot in popular culture, having inspired (though that may be too strong a word) a top-ten US hit single - of the same title - for soft-rocker Bertie Higgins in 1982 which continues to be played on 'Gold' stations around the world, just as the film itself keeps cropping up on afternoon TV. This was the high-water mark of Higgins' career - he was noted as a "one-hit wonder" in Brent Mann's 2003 book on the subject.

According to another critic, the song - which peaked at number 60 in the UK - "uses the romantic imagery of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall", the real-life superstar couple who starred in four films together: To Have and Have Not (1944); The Big Sleep (1946); Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948). From the lyrics: "Honey, can't you remember / We played all the parts / That sweet scene of surrender / When you gave me your heart ... // We had it all / Just like Bogie and Bacall / Starring in our old late, late show / Sailing away to Key Largo."

Set on the largest of the Florida Keys, Key Largo was adapted by Richard Brooks and John Huston, from a 1939 play by Maxwell Anderson (better known for his 1935 verse-drama Winterset). The play - a notable Broadway flop - is set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War: an American Loyalist deserts his comrades, returns home guilt-stricken, and gets the chance to redeem himself when he encounters criminals holed up in a Keys hotel.

The film updates the action to the aftermath of World War II. America now stands uneasily at a crossroads - its destiny perhaps lying in the hands of bruised, battle-hardened, fundamentally decent men like war-hero Frank McCloud (Bogart); perhaps in the hands of craven, self-seeking, opportunistic gangsters like Johnny Rocco (Edward G Robinson, who fortuitously looks a little like Richard M Nixon from certain angles).

The crackling conflict between the two men is the crux of Key Largo: the other characters remain on the sidelines, even Bacall as Bogart's love-interest Nora. A strutting little bantam in a sleek silk dressing-gown, Rocco is perhaps the most intriguing figure on display: long since fallen from his position of gangland pre-eminence (he speaks nostalgically of Prohibition, and ardently longs for its return), he schemes to regain his former prominence in tones which incongruously prefigures Gloria Swanson's similarly-deluded Norma Desmond from 1950's Sunset Blvd. - another character habitally clad in night-clothes during daylight hours.

Huston very cannily delays Rocco's entrance, deploying the Shakespearean tactic of having minor characters speak constantly about him before he actually appears. And when we are finally "shown" Rocco, we can't see his face properly as he's sitting in a bath behind the revolving blades of an electric fan. Robinson didn't play this kind of role after Key Largo, and seems to enjoy giving his trademark snarling-ganglord persona one final runout - he's a textbook bully, sneeringly dominant those weaker than himself (including Claire Trevor, winning an Oscar as faded-bloom lush 'Gaye Dawn') but who eventually meets his match. On one level, McCloud is this match - but the weather also plays a significant part in cutting Rocco down to size, as the plot includes a ferocious hurricane which sweeps across the island.

The fetid hotel battens down the hatches - leaving a hapless band of Native Americans stranded outside in one of the film's more heavy-handed moments of allegory. McCloud and company are concerned for the Native Americans' well-being; Rocco and his crooks couldn't care less if they all drowned. Unfortunately, the film-makers come across as rather more Rocco-like than McCloud-ish by leaving the actors playing the 'Injuns' uncredited, despite the fact that many of them have lines to speak - including one Jay Silverheels who was later to find TV fame, and receive the courtesy of on-screen credit, as The Lone Ranger's faithful sidekick Tonto.

Silverheels plays Tom Osceola, one of two escaped-convict brothers whose return to their native island - at the same time that McCloud is paying a visit to the family of a fallen comrade-in-arms - sets the plot in motion. And despite moments of staginess where the theatrical origin pokes through the celluloid, it's mostly tense stuff once Bogart and Robinson go front and centre and mano-a-mano. Huston keeps things moving nicely up to the tense boat-bound climax, and the only really nagging negatives are an overemphatic Max Steiner score (one recalls the famous Bette Davis line about not wanting to come down a certain staircase 'accompanied' by Mr Steiner's music) and a slightly corny, over-optimistic coda with its aggresively upbeat sunshine-after-the-storm vibe. As Higgins puts it, "baby, this can't be the end."

Neil Young
30th October, 2005

KEY LARGO : [7/10] : USA 1948 : John HUSTON : 101 mins
seen at Side Cinema, Newcastle (UK), 16th October 2005 - public show (DVD projection)

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