Key Largo has to be the greatest hurricane movie ever, and one of starriest pictures of all time. The cast will knock you out: Beginning with Bogart and Bacall, and including Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor and Edgar G. Robinson, for crying out loud, who dominates the picture as a gangster threatened by the power of the storm.
This one frame from Key Largo tells that story:
“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.”
Can’t you just hear the harsh grain in Bogart’s voice, as he forces the brazen gangster to face a truth bigger than he can handle? Where are the heroic truth tellers of today? Where have you gone Humphrey Bogart? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
(In fact the inevitable “Shoot at Hurricane Irma” Facebook group formed in Florida in 2017 as Irma churned its way towards Florida — but forget all that, the movie is so much better. And so much better than the filmic Sharknado fare of today, or so it seems with the benefit of eighty years of hindsight.)
Kit Stolz 