All right, I know this is far too late to benefit the original poster, but it's an interesting topic, and the responses so far have been...well...
Film noir is really not that complicated. That said, there's more to the genre than just gangsters, and it certainly doesn't have to be about a war veteran. Noir came to fruition after WWII and many say that it captured the feelings of paranoia and despair in post-war America. Key Largo incorporates those feelings, in large part by having a veteran thrown into a corrupt and dangerous world.
Here are some other, less complex, reasons why Key Largo is a film noir.
1) The most obvious reason is that Key Largo, visually, is extremely dark. There are some shots where the viewer can barely make anything out. A lot seems to take place in shadows. Huston's visual approach also uses some unorthodox camera angles, typical of the Noir style. Look at the wild tracking shot we see after the tree falls through the window. It's a very jarring visual, as we've been taken outside of the hotel, and now are being thrown back in. Remember, "Film Noir" literally translates to "black film." Key Largo is a film that takes place mostly in the dark.
2) Fate plays a huge role in almost all Noirs. There's always a feeling that fate has it in for the hero, and that the tragic ending is pre-destined. Take DETOUR for example, where the hero is undone by a bunch of accidents, and talks on and on about how he never really had a chance.
Using this perspective, we have to argue that the Edward G. Robinson character, Rocco, is the true Noir hero of Key Largo. Not Bogart. The cigar-chomping, morally decrepid Rocco is a typical Noir character, all the more typical because luck is clearly not in his favor. There are two great examples of this: first, the storm comes and causes Rocco's getaway boat to leave and, secondly, the dead body washes up on the shore at the exact moment when the cop arrives. Without the interference of fate, Rocco's life would be a hell of a lot easier. You can find several other examples, ranging from small things (Rocco's right-hand-man gets sea sick on the boat) to large things (when Rocco has his best chance to kill Bogart, he mistakingly fires the unloaded gun into Bogie's stomach).
3) There are no typcial femme fatales in Key Largo, but the standard sexual politics are there. Rocco's wife most closely fits the template of the femme fatale, more than Bacall that is, as she plays a major role in the Noir hero's downfall. Also, the femme fatale often exhibits masculine qualities. Going back to DETOUR, the ff in that movie was highly aggressive and was constantly ahead in the power struggle between herself and the main character. Rocco's wife has some manly characteristics, too - she drinks like a fish, bets on horses, and is willing to stand up to Rocco. She can't compare to the super-masculine Rocco, though, who is such a tough guy he has his face shaved in the middle of business.
This is where Key Largo strays from the standard Noir template. Usually, the hero is de-masculinized by the end of the film by the powerful woman. In Key Largo, it's Bogart's character who's de-masculinized. He's slapped like a b*tch by Rocco, called out as a coward by Bacall, and only gets a chance to regain his manhood when Rocco's wife (a woman)gives him the gun. Thus the sexual power struggle is split between two characters. Rocco treats women like inferiors (check out the way he's constantly whispering lewd remarks to Bacall) and is eventually done in by them. Bogie loses his manhood, and can only regain it by killing Rocco, the supermasculine man. This blurring of gender roles and the power associated with them is standard Noir stuff.
There's some other stuff, too, but I think these are the big ones. Dark visuals, a character called Fate, and the ongoing power struggle between men and women make a true Noir. Key Largo is a classic, and underrated in most serious film circles. I think it's the best film Bogie and Bacall made together - though their other films (like THE BIG SLEEP and DARK PASSAGE) are great Noirs as well.
reply
share
midfieldgeneral
19 years ago
Why does it matter whether the film is a noir or not? Because somehow 'film noir' is a label that has acquired a kind of heady mystique and we believe that if we can apply it to certain movies it makes them more worthy of serious consideration, 'deeper', more significant, and hence makes us appear clever and sophisticated for appreciating them. The truth is that 'film noir' is now a term indiscriminately applied to just about any kind of crime melodrama made between 1940 and 1960. It's become almost meaningless, particularly as contemporary filmmakers so often strive desperately after a 'neo-noir' feeling to invest their confections with some cheaply earned gravitas and atmosphere. The French critics who coined the term in the 1950s did so in an effort to redeem what were at the time generally dismissed as cheap lowbrow potboilers, the movie equivalent of dimestore pulp fiction, for intellectual analysis and appreciation. They succeeded admirably - too well in fact. Noir is now one of the most overused and abused terms in movie parlance with a million different definitions and applications. It's become practically meaningless, as well as useless. My own view is that it's better not to get our knickers in a twist arguing whether a film is a noir or not (particularly if we think that defining it as a noir makes it somehow 'better') according to some kind of formula. But, for the record, in my view 'Key Largo' isn't a noir. For one thing it's taken from a respectable literary source - Maxwell Anderson's play - which makes the characters articulate spokespersons for big moral, social and historical ideas. Second, it's actually about redemption, heroism and free will, rather than damnation, moral corruption and fate. And third, it just isn't seedy and slimy enough - it's too sunnily affirming of human goodness. Rocco's a throwback to the gangsters of the 1930s social problem films (he even refers to himself as a 'public enemy') and Anderson's play is interested in the post-war fate of 1930s-style New Deal social idealism (with Old Man Temple as the FDR figure). The gangster is just a device to get to these 'big' themes. No self-respecting film noir would dare to be so intellectually overreaching and obvious (and a good thing too!). For my money, 'Key Largo' is a stagey melodrama of ideas which uses crime themes but isn't really interested in or committed to them in any real sense, and is miles away from the glorious wallowing in corruption and moral ambivalence that top noirs exhibit. It's a decent and absorbing movie of a rather preachy play, but it's not what I'd call a film noir.
reply
share