KEY LARGO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 509, 25 March 1949, Page 25

KEY LARGO

(Warner Brothers) HERE ‘seems little doubt that John Huston is one of the most distinctive directors in Hollywood, for Key Largo has his signature scrawled over it as clearly as Orson Welles or Frank Capra put their mark, on their films. But it lacks the punch and unity of purpose of Treasure of Sierra Madre, and because Huston has tried to say too much in his eagerness to produce another masterpiece Key Largo leaves the impression that a great deal of artistry has been wasted on .an insufficiently realised theme. A soldier (Humphrey Bogart) returning from the war to the home of his dead comrade-a hotel on Key Largo, one of a chain of islets extending south of Florida-finds it and his friend’s father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Becall) in the possession of a bunch, of gangsters led by the fabulous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his dipsomaniac mistress (Claire Trevor). Rocco is a kind of latter-day Al Capone-the sinister beer baron of the prohibition era re-incarnated. He is incredibly cruel, ruthless, and vain, and im a heavily charged atmosphere of menace, he makes the disillusioned, warweary soldier appear a coward because he won’t fight him. A hurricane that strikes the island reveals the first chink in Rocco's armour, and gradually the soldier recovers his courage until he finally kills him and his gang. In his role of Rocco, Edward G. Robinson completely dominates the film, and helped by skilful photography and lighting, he becomes an almost nightmarish figure, the very embodiment of evil. In fact, his portrayal makes Rocco so much larger than life that the film loses some of its reality, and tends in the long run to become mainly a study in the macabre. Yet it is a remarkable study for all that. The ugly, fetid atmosphere of the tropical setting is continually . suggested by skilful touches of.| direction, many of the camera angles are unusually striking, while the dialogue has the same laconic, semi-articulate, tough-guy quality that distinguished Treasute of Sierra Madre.