The Soldier, The Crook, And The Hurricane

Check out Norma's blog today for a certain item of, shall we say, etiquette, but don't do so on a full stomach. Now then, I'm doing a movie review today, and by a stroke of timing, Maria posted some background on the star of today's classic over at her blog. Head on over and take a look at it. And if you haven't read it before, check out an earlier review I wrote for The Maltese Falcon.

"When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses." ~ Frank McCloud

"After living in the USA for more than thirty five years, they called me an undesirable alien. Me, Johnny Rocco. Like I was a dirty Red or something." ~ Johnny Rocco

"You don't like it, do you, Rocco? The storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it." Frank McCloud

Director and master storyteller John Huston reunited with Humphrey Bogart in 1948 for Key Largo, an intense character study trapping good and bad people together in a storm. It was also the last on screen performance together with Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall, after the classics To Have And Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Dark Passage. The film featured performances from outstanding actors, one of whom won an Oscar, and told a tense, tightly wound story that stands today as a true classic.

Frank McCloud (Bogart) arrives in Key Largo to pay his respects to the father of George, a soldier he commanded during the war, a friend who died in Europe. He finds himself at the old man's hotel in Key Largo, meeting the widow, Nora Temple (Bacall), and a handful of guests, all of whom seem shifty.  There's another guest in the hotel, someone keeping to himself, but who came with the others. Then he meets the man he's come to see. James Temple (Lionel Barrymore) still runs the establishment with Nora's help, even though he's confined to a wheelchair. Frank tells Nora and James about the death of George, and before long, the weather starts to turn. 

Frank, Nora, and James quickly find themselves held hostage by the others, criminals under the employ of the last guest, a gangster named Johnny Rocco, exiled to Cuba (this being before the days of Castro, mind you) after the feds went after him. Rocco (played by Edward G. Robinson), envisions his return, has big plans, and his presence at the hotel ties into those plans. As the night wears on, the hurricane builds in intensity, and tension persists between the two sides, the audience is taken along through that tension as it builds and builds.

Huston of course is one of the masters of Hollywood directing, spending an illustrious career making classic films. He adapted Key Largo alongside screenwriter Richard Brooks from a Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson. You can see the stage roots of the story; much of the story is set in and around the hotel, and it's intensely character driven. Huston's skill is in driving up the tension in a story that features very little action, and he succeeds. The antagonism and clashing personalities just keeps building throughout the film, leaving the audience on the edge. Some of the exteriors were shot on location in Florida, and Huston used stock footage from another film for the hurricane itself, while interiors were shot on set in LA. Huston even uses lighting- or the lack thereof- to convey the threat of a hurricane, and even incorporates it into the dialogue. At one point the mention of a previous hurricane's toll sends a chill up the spine.

The cast is wonderfully assembled, and ideally cast. It starts with Rocco's underlings, all of them character actors of the time: each of them are abrasive in different ways, playing lowlife thugs. The audience already doesn't like them before we know what they're up to. There's a wild card among them, Rocco's girlfriend Gaye (Claire Trevor). She's a boozing former nightclub singer, a bit volatile, used to being treated badly, but she does have a conscience. Trevor won the Best Supporting Actress for the role, and it's a well deserved award. It's a difficult role to play, a weak and self destructive person in many ways, but also sympathetic. Robinson spent his career playing mainly gangsters and nefarious types, and this is one of his best roles, if not his best. The character is explosive, cruel, and bullying, with an unhealthy sense of delusions of grandeur. He's a sociopath and a monster who doesn't care who gets hurt, just as long as he gets what he wants. And like all bullies, there is something of the coward in him. Lionel Barrymore, who spent much of his life on stage and screen playing character roles, gets to have a sympathetic role this time out as James Temple, confined to a wheelchair. He mourns his son, has principles and integrity, and isn't afraid to stand up to bullies.

The two leads share marvelous chemistry, not a surprise given their off screen lives. Bacall plays Nora as a strong, outspoken woman, mourning the loss of her husband, but also loyal to and protective of her father-in-law. It speaks volumes that in the years since her husband's death, she has stayed on with James. She is stoic in the face of danger, and brings such expressiveness in her performance. Bogart gives his character a world weariness and disillusioned quality through much of the film. There's an accusation made in the midst of the narrative about his time in the war, and we are left to wonder if that accusation is true... or if he's merely biding his time, wisely waiting for the right moment. It's another terrific performance in a career of good performances.

Key Largo still stands today as one of John Huston's finest films. He gives us sheer tension with minimal action just through a dangerous situation and taut, measured dialogue. And he manages a cast who inhabit their roles, on two sides of a gulf between right and wrong. The cast rises to the occasion magnificently, playing characters with hidden depth and complicated personalities, giving us memorable performances. 

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Some business to see to today first, before I get to the movie review I have in mind. Have a peek over at Norma's blog for a Snippet Sunday post she did with a selection from a future work. As well, one of my fellow writers, Lorelei Bell, has just released a book on Amazon called The Cat Whisperer. Here's a little bit about it:

This is a non-fiction account about how one feral female cat came into our lives, and changed it. My husband (the cat whisperer), took pity on her one summer day, and fed her some table scraps, against my warnings it might be a female. Of course, feeling that was an invitation, she stayed, expecting to be fed...  and then dropped her litter of kittens in the hollow of a tree in our yard. This is how the kitty dram began. This is her, and her kittens' story and how we dealt with the joy of watching their antics, the pain of losing them to predators, and their love/caring for one another

Now then, to the classic at hand....

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” ~ Sam Spade

“I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously, unless you keep in practice.” ~ Kaspar Gutman

“Look at me, Sam. You worry me. You always think you know what you’re doing, but you’re too slick for your own good. Some day you’re going to find it out.” ~ Effie Perine

The Maltese Falcon, a 1941 classic by first time director John Huston, who quickly established himself with this film as one of the best in the business, is a personal favourite. The private eye film gives us Humphrey Bogart in one of his best roles- if it’s not his best, it’s pretty close- and is the finest example of the film noir genre. Adapted from a novel by Dashiell Hammett, who also wrote Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, the film stands today among the greats of cinematic history.

A woman (Mary Astor) arrives at the offices of Spade and Archer to hire the detectives to find her missing sister. Sam Spade (Bogart) and Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) take the case, and Archer quickly ends up gunned down late at night (in the only scene in the film that doesn’t feature Bogart). Spade finds himself caught up in a web of lies, crime, and intrigue as he tries to determine the truth about his partner’s death. On the one hand, his client’s story is not the truth, and she keeps evading the truth as she goes along, revealing herself as Brigid O’Shaughnessy. On the other are a trio of criminals (Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Elisha Cook Jr.) with an interest in a certain figurine, a priceless falcon figure that’s been passed through various hands for centuries. One death leads to another, and Spade finds himself under suspicion by the police… some of whom he gets along with, and others… not so much. Only by finding the truth can he clear himself.

Huston had a background in screen writing before he took this on as a director, and it’s astonishing to see so much of his future in this film. Take a look at his screen credits: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Red Badge of Courage, Across the Pacific, Key Largo, The Man Who Would Be King. This is a master storyteller, and all of that is on the screen through his first film. He tells the story through Spade’s point of view, adapting the novel very much as Hammett wrote it, but using the filmmaker’s touch to give the story his signature. He crafts scenes around his actors, using their strengths to move the story along. He pays close attention to detail, to lighting (or the lack thereof), to the positioning of an actor in a given place at a given time. Something like having a character tell some backstory, in the hands of a lesser director, could bore the audience, but Huston writes the screenplay and directs the actors in such a way that a bit of backstory is utterly compelling. Given the censorship codes of the times, he implies where the novel would be more specific- things like Cairo’s sexual orientation, the fling between Spade and his partner’s wife, the relationship between Sam and Brigid. And the dialogue, much of it straight from Hammett, is sharp, smart, and memorable. It really defines the characters and the performances.

His cast is astonishing. This was the first time that Sydney Greenstreet appeared on the screen as an actor, but his presence is formidable. Kaspar Gutman is a seemingly hospitable man, quite formal in the way he conducts himself, but behind that hospitality is a deviousness, and a ruthless nature. He’s a man quite happy to sell out his allies if the need rises, obsessed with the wealth of the falcon, the statue he so desires. He might not be the sort who bloodies his hand doing his own dirty work, but Gutman is a menacing figure, and compelling to watch. Peter Lorre, the esteemed character actor who’d left Europe years before, turns up as Joel Cairo, the eccentric crook who is tied up in the entire affair. He’s a bit unpredictable as an accomplice to Gutman, playing to his own ends, trying to pass himself off as tougher than he is. The third member of the trio, Wilmer, played by Elisha Cook Jr., is doing some of the same, thinking he’s more dangerous than he is. Well, he’s more dangerous than Cairo, certainly, but no match for Spade. Ultimately he comes across as a kid with a hair trigger temper, easily provoked.

Mary Astor is the femme fatale of the film, a chameleon playing her game, trying to keep Spade on her side. There’s steam and chemistry between Brigid and Spade, and she manipulates as much as she can- though Spade can see that for what it is. She brings these qualities to the role, along with a neediness that fits into her character’s motivations. It’s a complicated role, but she makes it work. There are a couple of other women in the film in smaller roles, but should be noted. Gladys George is Iva, Archer’s widow, not particularly torn up by her husband’s murder, and she’s had a thing for Spade. She’s throwing herself on Spade in the aftermath, and we’re left to wonder what she’s been up to. The other woman in question is Lee Patrick, playing Spade’s loyal secretary Effie. She’s probably the one character in the movie Sam trusts completely. She’s smart, sassy, willing to speak her mind to Sam, and probably head over heels in love with him. She humanizes Sam, and he needs that.

Bogart had been playing various crooks and tough guys through the thirties, but started getting serious notice in the years leading up to The Maltese Falcon. In this film, he really establishes himself as a leading man. He plays Sam as the hardened man, cruel perhaps at times (he doesn’t particularly care that his partner has died, and he’s eager to keep the widow out of his way). He’s a listener- he gathers information by letting everyone talk around him and absorbing what they say, the signs of their body language. He’s a great observer. He has a dry and deeply cynical sense of humour, a sense of how to provoke the reaction he wants out of others in a room. And there’s a fierce dangerous quality to the man that makes him so compelling. He’s quick to act, fast to disarm a threat, has no problem inflicting violence. And he has no problem setting aside matters of the heart. We’re not sure what to make of this man, but at the core, he has principles. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of his partner, he has to solve the case, because you’re supposed to do that when your partner dies. It’s a powerful performance, and the core of a true classic film.