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Key Largo (1948)
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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writers:
Release Date:
31 July 1948 (USA)
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Tagline:
A storm of fear and fury in the sizzling Florida Keys ! more
Plot:
A man visits his old friend's hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other. full summary | add synopsis
Awards:
Won Oscar.
Another 1 nomination
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NewsDesk:
(6 articles)
Lauren Bacall, Annette Bening, Jeff Bridges: Governors Awards 2009
(From Alternative Film Guide. 15 November 2009, 4:13 PM, PST)
Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown
(From t5m.com. 30 September 2009, 8:40 AM, PDT)
(From Alternative Film Guide. 15 November 2009, 4:13 PM, PST)
Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown
(From t5m.com. 30 September 2009, 8:40 AM, PDT)
User Comments:
The film may lack substance and coherence but it is first-rate drama and entertainment…
more (111 total)
Cast
(Complete credited cast) | Humphrey Bogart | ... | Frank McCloud |
 | Edward G. Robinson | ... | Johnny Rocco |
 | Lauren Bacall | ... | Nora Temple |
 | Lionel Barrymore | ... | James Temple |
 | Claire Trevor | ... | Gaye Dawn |
 | Thomas Gomez | ... | Richard 'Curly' Hoff |
 | Harry Lewis | ... | Edward 'Toots' Bass |
| John Rodney | ... | Deputy Clyde Sawyer |
| Marc Lawrence | ... | Ziggy |
| Dan Seymour | ... | Angel Garcia |
| Monte Blue | ... | Sheriff Ben Wade |
| William Haade | ... | Ralph Feeney |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
100 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound System)
Certification:
Iceland:12 |
Sweden:15 |
West Germany:16 (nf) |
South Korea:15 (2003) |
Australia:G (cable rating) |
Australia:PG (original rating) |
Canada:PG (video rating) |
Finland:K-16 |
USA:Approved (PCA #12932)
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Claire Trevor sings "Moanin' Low" acapella. This song was popularized in the early 1930s by Libby Holman.
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Goofs:
Continuity: The length of Johnny Rocco's tie is constantly changing from one scene to the next, and on and on.
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Quotes:
James Temple:
Are you thieves or what? You want money, is this a robbery?
Toots: Yeah, Pop, we're gonna steal all your towels.
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Toots: Yeah, Pop, we're gonna steal all your towels.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in Bogart: The Untold Story (1996) (TV)
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Soundtrack:
Moanin' Low
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FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (111 total)
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It is difficult to resist the temptation to compare William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours" with John Huston's "Key Largo."
Here again the drama arose when a gangster and his thugs sought a temporary hideout by moving in on an innocent family, and were unable to get away until a raging hurricane had blown itself out…
The family were Lionel Barrymore, complete with wheelchair, and Lauren Bacall, apparently without make-up—stunningly attractive… Their home was a small hotel in Florida, and "just passing through" was a tough and somewhat mixed-up good guy Humphrey Bogart… The gangster was Edward G. Robinson…
For Bogart "Key Largo" was another "The Petrified Forest," but this time he was the disenchanted idealist and Edward G. Robinson the vicious, antiquated symbol of raw brute force…
Paul Muni had appeared in the original Maxwell Anderson play in 1939, and director John Huston and Richard Brooks updated the piece to make it more contemporary… As a film, it was treated in a slightly heavy-handed, overly talky manner, displacing action in favor of strong character studies of a group of disparate individuals trapped by a kingpin gangster…
Claire Trevor won an Academy Award as Gaye Dawn, Rocco's boozy mistress who was willing to lower herself to any depths for the mere expedient of getting a drink… She is finally pushed too far by Rocco, has accepted too many insults and been rejected once too often, so she decides to help the besieged prisoners…
Lauren Bacall was Nora Temple, an antiseptic dreamer who persisted in believing that evil should always be opposed by a valiant Sir Galahad and temporarily has her illusions shattered when Bogart apparently doesn't agree to fit into her mold…
As Bacall's grandfather, Lionel Barrymore was another heroic figure who, could afford to be a verbal hero, knowing that a retreat to the safety of his confining wheelchair could protect him…
Edward G. Robinson as Rocco was a mass of contradictions… Brutal with a gun safely in his hand, dreaming of the glories he once knew in the good old days when he was a big shot, all he has left are the memories… He was a man whose criminal wisdom permits no ethics and few feelings… He offers Bogart an empty gun to shoot it out with him... He is also a man afraid, who sweats when the hurricane approaches and poses a threat to his safety... He detests Bogart because of his wartime heroism, mocking and taunting him because his courage is something differing in Rocco's own unheroic life…
As war hero Frank McCloud, Bogart was the most complex character of all… Disillusioned, tired of his war-induced killings, unwilling to risk himself in any new test of courage ("One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for"), he is now a complacent shadow of his former noble self… He, like Barrymore, seeks an idyllic world where "there's no place for Johnny Rocco." However, his pattern has been too well established… He, like Claire Trevor, can be pushed only so far and then reason and restraint seem no longer acceptable as an alternative to action…
With such a cast "Key Largo" could not fall to hold the attention… Yet, for all its workmanlike craft, it did not reach the level of Wyler's "The Desperate Hours." Bogart, as a disillusioned war veteran who could not rouse himself to action until the last few minutes, left one frustrated: looking for the vicious power that he was to show as the gangster in the later film…
Edward G. Robinson, commanding, convincing, was still not so coldly frightening a villain as Humphrey Bogart… And, one can imagine how the idea of the storming hurricane appealed at the time… The violence and the drama outside, as the wind tore at the palm trees and the waves threatened to swallow the little wooden hotel, would surely underscore and heighten the tensions within... Not so! And not only because the studio storm was not always up to nature's level...
What William Wyler realized was that the suspense of innocence trapped as hostages by wickedness was vastly heightened by the contrast with a quiet, undramatic, everyday setting… No hurricane was needed to put the desperation in "The Desperate Hours."