Key Largo

After years of hibernation in the South Seas, cinematic hurricanes have returned to Florida. After another long stretch, a big time Capone-style badman has reappeared, and after several uncomfortable roles as farmer, professor, and sundry other sincere people, Edward G. Robinson has joyfully hoped into the gangster's shell to be Johnny Rocco, yah, Johnny Rocco, King of the Underworld. Throw in Humphrey Bogart and a fast moving plot, season with Lionel Barrymore, spice with Lauren Bacall and you have Key Largo, the best gangster show since High Sierra.

Key Largo is the largest island in the hundred mile chain which ends at Key West, and to it comes a disillusioned veteran (Bogart) to visit his dead buddy's wife and father (Bacall and Barrymore). But the latter's hotel is already populated with a complete selection of mobsters including a boozy gunmoll and the triggerman with a comic book. Embittered Bogart is at first unwilling to do anything about Johnny Rocco and his cohorts, but Bacall renews his faith, and the gunmoll slips him a heater, so the whole affair is resolved in an cerie gun battle on a fog shrouded cabin cruiser.

From the moment the camera turns on him as he sits smoking a cigar in the bathtub to his final writhings on the floor of the boat, Edward G. Robinson could be Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz. At all times there is the loaded revolver, the two inch cigar, and "yah." Combining these devices with an excellent sneer, and some well handled lines, Robinson turns in his best acting job to date.

Robinson's performance is the movie's best--but not by much. There is fine work by all of the players--Bogart, Barrymore, even Bacall. Followers of Mrs. Bogart will be pleased to note that she has put on some well placed weight, and has given up trying to be sultry in un-sultry situations.

The various machinations of this Maxwell Anderson stage play are natural fodder for the generation of the quality called suspense, and Director John Huston has made the most of it. Yet Huston suspense has a unique moral overtone. At the same time people are chewing their nails wondering what will happen next, they are also wondering whether an essentially idealistic man can stay hopelessly pessimistic and inactive when he is brought face to face with the personification of evil. The peculiarity of it all is that Huston's moralizing does not impair a mote, mite, or job the entertainment value of Key Large.