Movie: Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)
In the war Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) was the commanding officer of a soldier who died tragically at the battlefield near San Pietro. Frank has now come to 'Largo Hotel' to meet the solider's father Mr. Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and widow Nora (Lauren Bacall). The war stories he tells are presented solemnly, with Huston's direction, helped by the mournful score, putting all emphasis on conveying the gravitiy of Frank's words, and the moral sacrifices of his fellow soldiers. Having done its duty, the film quickly turns cynical, questioning and complicating the sentiments and ideas expressed in those early scenes, and the positve self-image of post-war America. Films that go against the grain are always interesting, but Key Largo is a bit too literal-minded and it takes some huge leaps to make its case. Also, the ending is way too tidy and too happy for its noirish tendencies.
When a hurricane approaches the hotel, Frank and the Temples are taken hostage by the notorious Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his equally vicious henchmen. The gangsters are shown without any shade of grey. They are purely defined by their villainy and presented in the most unsympathetic possible way. Led by Robinson, almost all of them have distinctly wicked appearances, their faces suggesting histories you want to know as little about as possible. They seem incapable of showing any humanity, and devoid of any feelings but self-serving callousness and greed. We barely find out about their motivations or goals and mostly see them debasing and humiliating themselves and the people around them. There is undoubtedly a lot of truth in this portrayal, but Key Largo uses it to explicitly argue that the victory in World War 2 didn't have much positive consequences as the Nazi's were simply replaced by nihilistically violent gangsters, an argument that is wrong on many levels. More interesting is the film's questioning of what it means to be a hero and how heroic narratives in war are shaped, as are the reminders that America has its own questionable history of treating foreigners and other groups as undesirable. Throughout all this, Huston has a lot of fun exploring all the different ways in which he can block two opposing sets of characters stuck in the same place.
It's wonderful to see Bogart wrestle here with his inability to truly understand, replicate and appreciate his war heroics. Unfortunately none of the other characters are given even a smidge of that complexity. And the ambivalencies around Bogart get away during the film's climax when he acts too easily as a conventional Hollywood hero. Previously I wrote that Magnolia honors its somewhat overcooked dialogue; in the same vein, when a film has lines like "When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses" and "It's better to be a live coward than a dead hero", it should leave you with at least a hint of dread or a funny feeling that something you can't quite put your hands on is amiss. Key Largo doesn't and never fully commits to the alienated, angsty mood lines like that are meant to evoke. As a result its cynicism feels like an inauthentic put-on for its own sake. The one exception is when the hurricane reaches its high point, the whole hotel starts trembling and even Johnny Rocco starts showing genuine fear on its face. It's the scene that best evokes the idea that when you deal with forces beyond your control, it doesn't matter much if you are a hero or a coward. Dumb luck will decide your fate.
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