Key Largo

With superb casting and performances, a sharp and resonant screenplay, John Huston's taut direction and Karl Freund's deep-focus photography, KEY LARGO transcends the windy allegories of its theatrical origins to become a suspenseful and entertaining minor classic of 1940s Hollywood.

Based on the play by Maxwell Anderson, Bogart stars as Frank McCloud, a disillusioned WW II veteran who travels to a run-down hotel in Key Largo, Florida, to pay his respects to the family of a buddy who was killed in the war. The hotel is operated by the father of the deceased, James Temple (Barrymore), and the widowed Nora Temple (Bacall). McCloud arrives to find the hotel full of...