Winds of Fate

I can understand why John Huston decided to make a movie in which Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s powerful personalities are confined to smallish, overcrowded rooms. There is dramatic combustibility in such a tactic. Unable to bully or maneuver their way out of scenes, each man in 1948’s Key Largo is forced to deal with the other. The fact that neither gains the upper hand over the other – that is, prior to the film’s climax – is entirely the point on display here. Trapped in a hotel together, forced to wait out a terrific hurricane that rages just outside the building’s fragile windows, Huston intentionally restricts this pair of hyper-masculine, action-oriented men in order to teach them both a lesson in humility and to remind them that a person’s ability to control their own fate is limited.

Thanks to his guns and his gang, it initially seems like Robinson is completely in control of the film’s plot, but once the hurricane arrives, all bets are off – and Robinson, who is suddenly equally as powerless as the others, knows it. The rotten weather cages the armed and the unarmed alike. Bogart seems to understand this when he growls, “You don't like it, do you (Robinson), the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it.”

Of course, Robinson cannot shoot the weather any more than he can plug the people trapped in the hotel with him (he needs all of them for something). The fact the cruel and well-armed gangster is fairly powerless – or has his power limited by things entirely beyond his control – is pivot on which the entire film swings. As for the storm, it is the ultimate illustration of humanity’s powerlessness. It arrives randomly and wreaks equally random destruction – and not just on the hotel buildings.

Robinson as the smug gangster.

Tertiary characters in Key Largo do not fare well and their fates are meted out with almost the same sense of randomness that powers the storm’s creation. Consider, the fate of the two Seminole Indians, enticed to turn themselves in after escaping from prison. They come to the hotel because Lionel Barrymore’s character tells them he will make certain the local authorities deal fairly with them. Both Indians are framed by Robinson for a murder they did not commit and are subsequently gunned down by the local sheriff. The other characters blame the deaths on Robinson’s trickery, which obviously plays an important role. However, Robinson would not even be at the hotel were it not for Key Largo’s geographic location – off the coast of Florida –and the storm that prevents his departure. Thus, an unforeseen confluence of seemingly random events plays a critical role in the fate of the two men.

Of all the characters, Bogart’s cynical war-veteran seems to understand more than most that even matters of life and death are largely chance. Though it is never fully explained, the film strongly suggests that Bogart survived the hard-fighting at Monte Casino and Lauren Bacall’s husband did not through the exercise of sheer luck. This is partly why Bogart rejects the war hero mantle, is willing to ascribe it to the dead husband and arrives at the hotel tired and world weary. For him, Key Largo is literally the end of the road, a way to escape his listless post-war existence on the mainland and to try to start fresh.

His trajectory runs him smack into Robinson, another character interested in a fresh start. Only Robinson is trying to get back to the mainland after being kicked out of America because of his involvement in organized crime during the depression. On opposite sides of the law and on opposite paths, the two men can only glare at one another as they simmer and slowly come to an unhappy boil in the close confines of the hotel. The firecracker interactions between these two titans of studio cinema are a large part of what makes an otherwise straightforward film dramatic and irresistibly interesting.

A pair of tough guys...

This is also the fourth and final film Bogart and Bacall made together. In critical terms, it is the second-best after The Big Sleep. However, in terms of chemistry between the famous husband and wife team, Key Largo is the weakest of the four. Bacall is oddly silent for most of this film. What little acting she is called on to do, she does with her eyes – most of which is quite good, but her plain-Jane routine is a terrible waste of the sultry sexuality we saw in To Have and Have Not, and we cannot help but feel like any actress could have played this rather uninteresting role.

The husband and wife, not sparkling together.

Robinson’s one-time glamorous girlfriend (played by Claire Trevor) is far more exciting.

Trevor’s character was a big deal during the days of prohibition – talented, beautiful, famous and highly sought after. But a life on the run with Robinson has reduced her to a nervous alcoholic, with passable good looks and a shaky voice that is forever scared of its own sound, lest it upset her endlessly irritable partner. When Robinson forces her to sing for some whiskey, she absentmindedly lapses into “Moanin’ Low,” a sad tune whose lyrics describe a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. She begins the song full of gusto, but as the meaning of the words penetrate her addled mind, her performance falls apart under the weight of the realization she is singing about herself. It is terrible moment, portrayed with incredible power by Trevor, who won as Oscar for this performance.

Trevor belts it out.

Trevor is also noteworthy here because she is the only other character than Bogart who is changed by the film’s plot. Backed into a corner and repeatedly reminded of his inability to alter his situation, Bogart frets and fumes and eventually decides that a man has to take advantage of whatever crumbs of opportunity come his way and fight to clear his own path as best he can. In doing so, he seemingly rejects the attractive logic of pragmatism and offers up that humanity’s destiny should be shaped by more than the sum of any equation: “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses,” he concludes. Trevor agrees, and for the first time in what must be a long time, she begins to push back against Robinson and work within her own opportunities to shape the outcomes of her fate.

All does not end well for everyone in this tale that no one seems in control of, but by pushing back, a few of these characters learn how to resist the winds of fate as much as possible. Huston's overall message seems to be that life is random, tough and unfair, a set of circumstances that makes the "pushing" all the more important. Bogart says he fought the war to rid the world of men like Robinson's character. At the end of the movie, Bogey is still fighting, and his decision to do so is invigorating. In between, the powerlessness experienced by everyone in the hotel is palpable and humbling, and the randomness of events is terrifying. We cannot control everything, the hurricane seems to be saying with every rattle of the windows, but a person should be ready to act in the moments when they can control some small thing...

The Most Dangerous Thing

Like fire, truth is often a deadly and indiscriminate thing. 

Difficult to control, once it is let loose it can burn the guilty and innocent alike, and in many cases, there is no stopping its warm proliferation until the thing itself gives up and dies on its own accord. These Pyrrhic attributes of truth, along with what people choose to do with it and how that decision impacts their lives, has never been depicted on film with as much accuracy, skill and gusto as in Elia Kazan's 1954 masterpiece On the Waterfront.

Set among organized crime and corruption in a New York dockworkers union, the film masterfully juggles the destructive and rejuvenatory power of truth by following the complicated odyssey of Terry Malloy, a washed-up boxer on the docks who is forced to deal with maze of complicated loyalties, conflicting emotions and moral choices that are all well beyond his intellectual and psychological means. 

It is an interesting twist, in the sense that the contemporary audience member is more accustomed to watching Mafia pictures from the perspective of the Mob. In those films, the drama lies in witnessing the depravity of the criminal mind and in exploring the crime world's compromised system of morals. In contrast, this picture forces the viewer to confront the moral dilemmas faced by the Mob's victims, all of whom are workingclass and interested in little more than making a living, staying alive and hanging on to their dignity through a social code of silence ("deaf and dumb"). Malloy and his coworkers, in other words, are all nobodies, they are "bums" trying to survive on the scraps their criminal masters leave for them. It is a depressingly powerful calculation on Kazan's part -- one that works even better today, post-Godfather and post-Sopranos, than it did in the 1950s world of post-Cagney films.

Marlon Brando is rightfully praised for his performance as Malloy. Brando could have played this part as a primitive palooka, veering between tenacity and confusion throughout the picture, and probably still achieved Kazan’s goal. Instead, he boldly portrays Malloy as a former bully who wakes up after several years to discover he is just another peon among the bullied (despite his older brother's connections to the Mafia running the union). This change in circumstance has left Malloy glum and unsure of himself, all of which Brando masterfully evokes with his deliberately slow and confused speech, his gloomy – at times, almost clownish – face and his timid movements.

Malloy's troubles begin when he is used by Mob boss Johnny Friendly to lure another union employee who has been speaking to the police to his death. Malloy tries to forget the incident, but his conscience will not let him (he is also resents being used, which reminds him of his fallen status). His inability to put the murder behind him becomes even more problematic when he meets Edie, the sister of the dead man (played to perfection by Eva Saint Marie, in her debut role).

Forced by an inquisitive Edie, who finds the contradictions bubbling beneath his surface persona to be both attractive and dangerous, Malloy confesses his philosophy of life is nothing more complicated than “Do it to him before he does it to you.” Edie correctly identifies this as the law of the jungle and she tells Malloy he is “living like an animal.” Unable to deny it, Malloy tries to derail Eddie’s troubling enquiry with beer and dancing, but his Epicurean attempts are foiled by a Mafioso toughie telling him he has to meet with Johnny Friendly and policemen stuffing a subpoena into his hand. 

Like it or not, Malloy has to face his choices. He cannot pretend they will go away. He cannot play the Longshoreman way and be “deaf and dumb” the way he has in the past. Events have conspired to hand Malloy the dangerous flame of truth, and he can either speak the truth – letting it loose, damn the consequences – or bury it deep inside, where it will smolder and eventually immolate him.

Malloy's choice is further complicated by Father Barry (played powerfully by Karl Malden).

Following the death of Edie's brother, Barry has had enough of the local thuggery, and he makes it his mission to aid the helpless and expose the corruption present in the union. Barry makes a bombastic appeal to truth and righteousness after another man who comes forward is killed, arguing that those who do not speak up are as guilty of the Savior’s death as those in crowd who boisterously shouted at the Roman Govenor to free Barabbas instead of a certain Jewish preacher from Nazareth. This sort of lofty appeal is lost on most of the Longshoremen and seems contrived more for the audience than anything else. (There are persistent rumors that Kazan made this film as an apology for naming names in the infamous HUAC committee hearings on communists in Hollywood, but Kazan always denied this).

What finally stirs the union from their self-imposed slumber is the sight of Malloy fighting it out on the docks with Johnny Friendly. When Malloy beats Friendly, the unassailable thug loses his infallibility. The union's respect for him is further eroded when the Mafia boss simply calls on his minions to beat up Malloy because he cannot. This offends the men’s sense of dignity, and they subsequently transfer their respect from Friendly to Malloy, the latter of whom has proven with his body that he is a man of principle and not a rat. In these terms, it is hard to read Malloy climbing back to his feet and staggering toward his jobsite as anything other than a kind of crude resurrection.

However, Malloy's motives for standing against the status quo and speaking the truth -- in court and in his everyday life -- are not entirely moral. Not for nothing do the police investigating the union try to push Malloy's buttons by mentioning his former boxing career. They can see he is unhappy with his fallen status and hope to provoke him by reminding him what he might have been had he not gotten mixed up in the rackets. Malloy's plea that he could have been a "contender" is often cited -- and parodied -- as one of the great lines of dialogue in classic film, but the most moving moment in this expertly crafted scene, packed full of raw emotion, comes when Malloy realizes that his brother Charlie -- and specifically Charlie's close ties to the Mob -- are what has derailed his life and made him a "bum."

Charlie's betrayal and ruthless manipulation of his brother is further brought home by the fact Charlie actually considers killing Malloy in order to keep Friendly happy. "It was you Charlie," Malloy sighs, realizing how his much blame his brother shoulders, how alone he is in the world and how powerful the corruption he faces truly is (for Friendly has nearly succeeded in turning brother against brother). Later, Malloy will want revenge for what Friendly does to Charlie, but at that moment, his grief and his resignation to how ugly the world can be is palpable, and as an audience, we truly feel for him.


This is why when Malloy says “I ain’t a bum” in the early-going of the film, the line comes across as the petulant and defensive cry of a child who wants something to be true, even though he knows it is not. At first, an equally defensive and inexperienced Malloy does not know what to do with the truth, but once he warms to the notion of using it for good (both personal and impersonal good), he becomes more human and loses his haunted and unsure look. Yes, he takes a beating, and much of what he cherishes is destroyed (his brother, his pigeons), but when he gets back on his feet, he is -- for the first time since he started taking dives in the ring -- something other than a bum, and it is the truth that delivers him to this new existence.