"It's better to be a live coward
than a dead hero."
The essence of the quoted sentence is in the middle of another co-operation of director John Huston and Hollywood's coolest character ever Humphrey Bogart (- within the same year with ...Sierra Madre). One thing is sure: the moral tale of Key Largo isn't their best.
"At the southernmost point of the United States are the Florida Keys, a string of small islands held together by a concrete causeway. Largest of these remote coral islands is Key Largo." The ex war veteran Frank McCloud (Bogart) arrives there to visit a war causilty friend's family. The sorrow of the meeting with the hotel owner Mr. Temple (Lionel Barrymore), the father of the fallen hero and the ex-wife, Nora (Bacall) changes soon when Frank confronts with a suspicious company of the hotel. When he realises who is hiding upstairs, it's too late to act: A long night begins where the rules of the game are in one hand, the ill-famed, nowadays more frustrated ex-mob Johnny Rocco (no one can better smoke a cigar than Edward G. Robinson). Moreover the last years' biggest hurricane is on its way heading Key Largo...
The film is more a theater piece, a chamber play, some kind of psychological drama, where mentally wounded characters, ethical questions, moral values materialize into a closed group dynamics of the situation. Frank's pricks of conscience ("A living war hero? I know already how he did!"), Rocco's growing inferiority complex ("After living in the USA for more than thirty-five years they called me an undesirable alien. Me. Johnny Rocco. Like I was a dirty Red or something."), Mr. Temple's and Nora's sorrow, and their only trusting /useless faith (the '/' is the question of the film) in Frank are the catalysts of the unfolding drama of this long stormy night. You can't miss the definitely weighty questions of the post WW2 situation behind, materialized by these characters.
The long and short of it: the moral is stronger than the story, Rocco is more cynical (and yes, better) than Frank, Bacall not as beautiful than in Hawks' To Have and Have Not (btw, the final scene of Key Largo is borrowed from Hemingway's To Have... which wasn't used in its rather free adaptation of Hawks). And hey, have you seen a Bogart-film where Bogey tolerates somebody's hit on his face without giving back? There now!
It's not about that you shouldn't watch it but believe me, there are embarrasingly amount of better movies from the fourties...
6/10
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