Movie Screening & Discussion - "Key Largo"

Join Marcus Renna in the Scott Room for a screening and discussion of the 1948 noir film "Key Largo," directed by John Huston and loosely based off of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play of the same name. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor who won the 1948 Oscar for best supporting Actress.

Frank McCloud (Bogart), a veteran of World War II, arrives at the remote Florida island of Key Largo looking for the family of his friend George Temple who died during the war. He finds Nora (Bacall), George's widow, and Nora's father James (Barrymore) running a small hotel. Due to the slow season and an impending hurricane, the hotel only has six other guests: including the attractive but aging alcoholic Gaye Dawn (Trevor), a former nightclub singer, and a mysterious man, Johnny Rocco (Robinson), who is later revealed to be a notorious gangster. As the hurricane hits, Rocco's goons take McCloud and the Temples hostage, killing a sheriff's deputy currently looking for Rocco. Once the storm has passed, McCloud agrees to help pilot the boat Rocco and his men are using to flee to Cuba in exchange for the safety of Nora and her family. Once at sea, a final confrontation takes place.

"Key Largo" was the fourth and final collaboration between Bogart and Bacall on screen. Notably, Warner Bros. used the same stock video for the exterior scenes of the hurricane as the Ronald Reagan melodrama "Night Unto Night."