What a great cast for this film noir crime drama. Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson in their fifth and final pairing. Bogart’s wife Lauren Bacall in their fourth and final joint appearance. Lionel Barrymore, probably best known for no less than 15 eponymous roles in the “Dr Kildare” films. But it was Claire Trevor who took the only Academy Award won by the movie (Best Supporting Actress).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based very loosely on a play, director John Huston and writer Richard Brooks created a script which has elements of theatre: lots of sharp dialogue and a rather static scenario (most of the film was shot on the Warner Brothers site). Robinson is a gangster called Rocco (harking back to his role in “Little Caesar” as Rico), based in Cuba but over in Key Largo to do a deal with another gang. Trevor is his much-abused moll. Barrymore is the wheelchair-bound owner of the small hotel on the key, while Bacall plays his daughter. Bogart is Frank, a veteran of World War Two who was the officer of the deceased son of Barrymore’s character and the husband of Bacall’s character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While this group – doubled in size by Rocco’s henchmen – await the arrival of the Florida gang, a fierce hurricane is brewing. The pacing of the film is excellent: as the tension between the characters rises, so the strength of the hurricane increases, with explosive outcomes on both scores. The two leading characters are especially well-drawn: Rocco is callous and cruel but afraid of the storm and Frank is no outright hero but cautious and calculating. The ending is deliciously satisfying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What a great cast for this film noir crime drama. Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson in their fifth and final pairing. Bogart’s wife Lauren Bacall in their fourth and final joint appearance. Lionel Barrymore, probably best known for no less than 15 eponymous roles in the “Dr Kildare” films. But it was Claire Trevor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30275,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30274\/revisions\/30275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}