Great Tension in: 'Key Largo'

Day 8: Film with Great Tension

I usually avoid film and TV with too much of it but classic mysteries and noirs almost make it enjoyable, like the taut, fraught “Key Largo” (1948), one of my first Bacall-Bogart outings and a great one at that. Edward G. Robinson’s criminal gangster Rocco holds the Temples (Lauren and Lionel Barrymore as her wheelchair-bound father) and Frank McCourt (Humphrey) hostage in their own Florida hotel (weirdly but still wholly noir!) in the middle of a hurricane. And the tension is heavy and oppressive but also live-wire electric as the war-worn Frank struggles to negotiate a way out (physically, symbolically, like the Seminole families left out in the weakly pre-postcolonial rain), some way to be free. Occasionally, this John Huston film is almost play-like in the way everyone is stuck inside face-to-face with a time-bomb conflict within and the tropical storm raging without, and you find yourself holding your breath most of the time, right up until the end Xo