Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Key Largo Blu-ray Movie Review

Stormy Weather

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 24, 2016

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.

A major character goes unnamed in Key Largo, and it isn't even a person. It's a hurricane that traps an unlikely group in a hotel during the resort's off-season. The film is a pressure-cooker drama, in which an already tense situation is amplified by the kind of pitiless weather that routinely challenges the residents of the long string of islands linked to the Florida mainland by a 113-mile elevated road known as the Overseas Highway. Traveling by bus along that Highway is Frank McCloud (Bogart), a former Army major who fought in the Italian campaign in World War II. Although it is never explicitly stated, there are suggestions that McCloud has found adjustment to civilian life challenging. His current destination is anywhere in the Keys where he can find a job on a fishing boat.

But first McCloud has a stop to make at the Hotel Largo, which is run by James Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and his daughter-in-law, Nora (Bacall), the widow of James's son, George, who fought with McCloud in the war. Obeying an urge that was probably all too familiar to audiences in 1948, McCloud wants to pay his respects to his former comrade's survivors and offer whatever comfort can be provided by describing the last days of their lost husband and son.

Immediately upon entering the hotel, McCloud encounters a quartet of tough guys, who insist that the establishment is closed for the season and do everything they can to discourage the former soldier from remaining. They have colorful monickers: Curly (Thomas Gomez), Toots (Harry Lewis), Angel (Dan Seymour) and the prosaically named Ralph. A fifth guest, Gaye Dawn (Trevor), is a former nightclub singer who is the worse for drink. And an additional guest remains secluded in his room for the film's first act, but when he appears, McCloud immediately recognizes him as Johnny Rocco (Robinson), a mobster deported from the U.S. and now operating out of Cuba. (The character is loosely based on Charles "Lucky" Luciano, founder of the modern American mafia.)

Once Rocco descends from his hotel suite, he takes over the film, swaggering, blustering and bullying. Robinson had already created one of cinema's most iconic gangsters in the 1931 Little Caesar, but his character here is more complex with a greater thirst for cruelty. His Rocco clearly misses the action and prestige of being a powerful boss, and he resents having to sneak around in the shadows. He takes out his frustration on everyone around him, assaulting James and Nora Temple, challenging McCloud's bravery and, in one of the film's most famous scenes, forcing his alcoholic girlfriend to perform a song to "earn" a drink. Gaye's struggle to maintain her composure is painful; Rocco's reaction is even more so.

As Key Largo transforms into a hostage situation, the plot is complicated by the arrival of a group of local Native Americans seeking shelter from the storm. With them are two brothers, John and Tom Osceola (Rodd Redwing and Jay Silverheels), who are fugitives from the police after escaping custody for minor crimes. The search for the Osceolas brings the local sheriff (Monte Blue) and his deputy (John Sawyer) to the Hotel Largo, with predictably violent results. All the while, McCloud remains on the sidelines. Is he afraid or just biding his time? In Bogart's performance, the question remains open until the end.

Key Largo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Key Largo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

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.

Key Largo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.