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A Tribute to Key Largo: A Definitive Post-War Film

posted 10 years ago by dcrowsnest
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Here is a sincere and analytical tribute to Bogie and Bacall, and this picture as a whole, which it argues is more post-war ideological than noir.

http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/key-largo/238347/key-largo-lauren-bacal l-the-definitive-post-war-film

Yet, as great as their two collaborations with Howard Hawks are, To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), I found myself again drawn to their fourth, final, and most underrated shared project, John Huston’s Key Largo (1948). Indeed, while the movie is fondly remembered as a Bogie and Bacall sizzler in the world of booze, broads, and bullets, it is the one “noir” film that they did which is not truly noir.

It is definitely a crime picture filled with gangsters, including Edward G. Robinson’s best take on a wiseguy in the part of Johnny Rocco, but with its coherent plotting and lack of sexual innuendo between Bogie and a surprisingly softer Bacall, it sometimes flies under the radar with fans looking for the quintessential post-war noirs. This is partly because Key Largo finds a way, in spite of its hallmark genre era patented cynicism, to be the ultimate cinematic affirmation of the worldview that sprang up for the Greatest Generation following the Second World War. In many ways, Key Largo is the definitive post-war film.

[–] kenny-164 10 years ago

As much as I love Key Largo, I think if the category is not merely a film that was made after WWII but that is definitive of the period, I would chose The Best Years of Our Lives as more representational of the post-war experience and the way at least American society moved beyond WWII. While I understand that certain aspects of it relate back to the War, especially Bogart's character's apparent cynicism about being a vet and the heroic, the basic story could have been made before the War.

So I'm not clear why it should be viewed as definitive. Perhaps I misunderstand the criteria.

[–] udippel 9 years ago

Don't be too humble. The critic above is simply unremarkable. It is clearly not 'definitive post-war'.