Key Largo

Bogart and Bacall's fourth and last pairing was in John Huston's 1948 picture, Key Largo. In some ways it is their best team up. The Big Sleep might be a better overall film, but Key Largo has their sweetest chemistry, even though they don't share so much as a kiss.

Bogart plays Frank McCloud, who's on his way to Key West. He's been moorless since the war, and he stops off at the Hotel Largo to visit the father and widow of his army buddy. The father is the kind but cranky Lionel Barrymore, confined to a wheelchair. The widow is Bacall, and both are eager to hear about their loved one while he was in the army, and Bogart obliges.

The hotel is closed, as it's in the summer, but a group of odd men are staying there. They say they are fishing, but it soon becomes apparent that they don't know one end of a fishing pole from the other. It turns out they are gangsters, and the head man, who is first seen emerging from a bathtub like a sea creature, is Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco. He's sort of like Lucky Luciano, who was deported. But Rocco has snuck back from Cuba to make a deal with Miami mobsters.

Of course a hurricane is coming, and they all hunker down, trying to survive it. This was based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, and though it is vastly changed, the center section of the film is very stagey and full of wonderful dialogue. Bogart and Robinson have the best exchanges, as the former pays respect for the latter's accomplishments, but one can tell he says this with a tinge of sarcasm. Along with Rocco is his mistress, a washed up alcoholic singer (Claire Trevor, who won an Oscar for the role).

Once the hurricane passes, Bogart is forced to take the men back to Cuba, but Trevor passes him a gun and he takes care of business in a white-knuckled finish.

The film reminded me a lot of the film that really launched Bogart's career, The Petrified Forest, which was also about a group stranded in a hotel held hostage by gunmen. This time Bogart is the cynical good guy, similar to Rick Blaine in Casablanca, who thinks he just wants to protect his own interests but can't help but do the right thing. Bacall, who is after all his buddy's widow, shows him respect and admiration, and maybe down the line we can see the two get together, but for the duration of the film their relationship is platonic and genuinely endearing.

Robinson is a joy, even if he is kind of playing to his stereotype, first done in Little Caesar. When the hurricane is bearing down and Robinson is visibly frightened, Bogart teases him: "Why don't you show the storm your gun. If it won't stop, shoot it." Barrymore is also terrific, especially when he realizes by saving his own skin he has doomed two innocent Indians. In fact, this film is ahead of its time in treatment of natives, as it has a scene with a very old Osceola woman making a cameo, asking Bogart for a cigarette.