Key Largo (1948)
(John Huston, US 1948, 100 min., 35mm)
Army veteran Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the Hotel Largo in Key Largo, Florida to visit the family of George Temple, a friend who served under him and was killed during World War II. There, McCloud meets both his friend’s widow, Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), and father, James (Lionel Barrymore), who owns the hotel. As a hurricane approaches, the hotel has only six guests, including Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor in an Oscar-winning performance, and a man who remains secluded in his room (Edward G. Robinson). When a group of criminals take control of the hotel, conflict is inevitable. Key Largo was Bogart and Bacall’s fourth and final on-screen collaboration, their first film together being To Have and Have Not (1944). Bacall would later write about their love in her memoir: “No one has ever written a romance better than we lived.”
Post-screening discussion with Audrey Johnson, curator of the "Hollywood Pairings" series