Lauren Bacall wasn’t a great actress. This much I’ve
learned from watching the four films she made with Humphrey Bogart. But she was
a great movie star. She had tremendous screen presence and could practically
make the tough Bogart roll over and beg. In Key
Largo, their final film together, although I didn’t tally the minutes, I
would venture to say they share more screen time than in any other of their
previous three outings.
Key Largo was
based on a now obscure stage play by Maxwell Anderson about a WWII veteran who
runs afoul of a once-notorious mafia kingpin while passing through the Florida
Keys and spending time with the family of a slain war buddy. The action is very
dialogue heavy, a lot of it indoors in various settings around a hotel mostly
closed for the off season. It’s not the most expressive film for a John
Huston-directed picture, but he makes the most out of the cramped settings.
