8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire TrevorFilm-Noir | 100% |
Drama | 16% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Japanese is hidden
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Polish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Key Largo was the last of four films pairing Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who met on
their first, To Have and Have Not,
and were married by
the time they completed their second,
The Big Sleep. The couple was famous
for their romantic chemistry both onscreen and off, but
Key Largo is not a romance, despite having inspired a love song by singer-songwriter Bertie
Higgins that you couldn't avoid hearing continuously if you happened to visit the Florida Keys in
the 1980s. (For all I know, it's still playing there today.) Unlike the couple in Higgins' song, the
characters portrayed by Mr. and Mrs. Bogart in Key Largo do not "have it all". They've just met,
and they aren't even the most memorable people in the film. That distinction belongs to Key Largo's villain, a vicious gangster
played by Edward G. Robinson, and his alcoholic girlfriend
dolefully inhabited by Claire Trevor, who won an Oscar for her performance.
John Huston directed and co-wrote the script for Key Largo, which stands out among the
filmmaker's collaborations with Bogart for the leading man's passive character. Huston, who
was himself a swaggering adventurer, typically cast Bogart as a man of action, whether for good
(The Maltese Falcon) or ill (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). In
Key Largo, though, Bogart's
character is forced into the position of a bystander, an observer of events he is powerless to
affect—or perhaps he chooses not to. One of the film's running questions is whether Bogart's
character is a hero, a coward or a shell-shocked war veteran who simply doesn't have it in him to
kill again. The answer is never really in doubt—this is, after all, Bogart—but Huston holds off
the resolution until the very last minute, and Bogart provides one of the most effectively
restrained performances of his career.
After much anticipation, the Warner Archive Collection has brought Key Largo to Blu-ray in yet
another sterling presentation. The only disappointment is the lack of extras, but Key Largo has
always suffered in that department.
With its expressive black-and-white cinematography by Karl Freund (A Guy Named Joe), Key
Largo joins the growing list of impressive Blu-ray restorations from the Warner Archive
Collection. Like WAC's recent releases of The Wrong
Man and I Confess, Key
Largo has been
newly scanned at 2k from a fine-grain master positive created from the original nitrate negative.
The creation of such fine-grain master positives is part of Warner's ongoing efforts at
preserving its library, but negatives of Key Largo's vintage had already sustained considerable
damage and deterioration by the time preservation elements were created. Warner's MPI facility
has restored and repaired Key Largo frame by frame, creating a 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray
image that is almost pristine. Blacks, whites and grays are beautifully balanced, revealing
excellent detail in both interiors shot on soundstages and a handful of outdoor scenes shot on
location. The stock hurricane footage suffers by comparison, but that is inherent to the source.
Densities and contrast are excellent, and the film's grain pattern has been finely rendered.
WAC has mastered Key Largo with an average bitrate of 32.92 Mbps, which is slightly below its
usual target but hardly an issue.
Key Largo's mono soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. Restoration has removed any clicks, pops or other sonic intrusions, and the track's fidelity and dynamic range are as good as the source will allow. Dialogue is clear, and the expressive score by master composer Max Steiner (Casablanca) works its magic. Claire Trevor's agonized performance of "Moanin' Low", which director Huston insisted that the actress perform live on set, without lip synching, is a highlight of the soundtrack.
The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.37:1; 2:24). Warner's two DVD releases of Key Largo in 2000 and 2006 were similarly bare.
Although Key Largo is a "Bogart and Bacall" movie, Bacall's role doesn't allow her the range of
To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep or even Dark Passage. Neither a femme fatale nor a love
interest, Bacall's Nora is mostly a dutiful daughter-in-law and a potential victim. Only in a few
fleeting moments do we catch a glimpse of the married stars' famous chemistry. It's just enough
to create a hint of something good for the future, if the pair can survive the twin threats of nature
and Johnny Rocco. Highly recommended.
Warner Archive Collection
1947
Warner Archive Collection
1946
1955
1932
1955
1958
Warner Archive Collection
1951
Warner Archive Collection
1951
1946
Warner Archive Collection
1938
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1955
1949
1950
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1955
Encore Edition | Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1953
1942
Reissue | Special Edition
1948
1947
1951
Special Edition
1946