Search - Key Largo on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations Movie Release: 1948 DVD Release: 02/15/2000 Format: DVD - Black and White,Pan and Scan Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 41 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 8 Genres: Crime, Crime Thriller, Gangster Film See Also: Key Largo

Richard Brooks and John Huston's screenplay for Huston's Key Largo eschews the lofty blank verse of Maxwell Anderson's original play, concentrating instead on the simmering tensions among the many characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, an embittered war veteran who travels to Key Largo in Florida, there to meet Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), the wife of his deceased war buddy. Arriving at a tumbledown hotel managed by Nora's father-in-law James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), McCloud discovers that the establishment has been taken over by exiled gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and what's left of his mob. Also in attendance is Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), Rocco's alcoholic girlfriend. While the others bristle at the thought of being held at bay by the gangsters, the disillusioned McCloud refuses to get involved: "One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for." As he awaits a contact who is bringing him enough money to skip the country, Rocco is responsible for the deaths of a deputy sheriff and two local Indian youth. Unwilling to take a stand before these tragedies, McCloud finally comes to realize that Rocco is a beast who must be destroyed. To save the others from harm, McCloud agrees to pilot Rocco's boat to Cuba through the storm-tossed waters. Just before McCloud leaves, Gaye Dawn slips him a gun -- which leads to the deadly final confrontation between McCloud and Rocco. His resolve to go on living renewed by this cathartic experience, McCloud heads back to Nora, with whom he's fallen in love. Claire Trevor's virtuoso performance as a besotted ex-nightclub singer won her an Academy Award -- as predicted by her admiring fellow actors, who watched her go through several very difficult scenes in long, uninterrupted takes. While Key Largo sags a bit during its more verbose passages, on a visual level the film is one of the best and most evocative examples of the "film noir" school. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart - Frank McCloud
Edward G. Robinson - Johnny Rocco
Monte Blue - Sheriff Ben Wade
Lauren Bacall - Nora Temple
Lionel Barrymore - James Temple
Claire Trevor - Gaye Dawn
Thomas Gomez - Curley Hoff

John Huston's Key Largo is a jewel of a film, and Warner Home Video has given it a Tiffany setting, at least as far as the transfer it has received for this DVD. You can see each diamond in Claire Trevor's necklace as she crosses a room in a medium shot, and the weave in the collar of Edward G. Robinson's shirt, all of which represents better resolution than any prior video edition of this movie. Adapted by Huston and co-screenwriter Richard Brooks from Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo is a top-flight thriller and drama all in one, filled with performances that are perfect down to the merest flick of an eyelash. The story is actually a distant cousin to Bogart's breakthrough stage and film vehicle, The Petrified Forest -- a group of people are trapped in an isolate locale, held prisoner by a gang of criminals. The difference in Key Largo is that it has a post-World War II sensibility regarding sacrifice and responsibility in its central conflict, about what happens when decent people succumb to disillusionment and leave the world to the gangsters and thugs. The movie was one of Bogart's and Huston's best, and arguably represents the best work of Lionel Barrymore and Lauren Bacall, and also of silent film veteran Monte Blue. Indeed, the only "flaw" in this DVD lies in what could have been done with it. The film-to-video transfer is gorgeous, to be sure, and there is a short production history of the movie in the supplement, along with the movie's trailer, but one wishes that a narrative, perhaps by a top-flight scholar of John Huston's work, could have been recorded. Bacall is still around to talk, and Claire Trevor, who won an Oscar for her performance here as Robinson's disillusioned, alcoholic girlfriend, was available until her death in 2000. The opportunities were there, and unexplored, and it's not as though Bacall hasn't made herself available to projects such as this. The fact that it is broken down into 32 chapters is an indicator that someone cared about this release; one just wishes the format had been fully explored and exploited. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide