The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137340 Message #3142409
Posted By: Ron Davies
26-Apr-11 - 12:15 AM
Thread Name: BS: Old black & white film noir favorites
Subject: RE: BS: Old black & white film noir favorites
I really like "Key Largo". The tension between the characters is reflected and heightened by the tension waiting for the hurricane.
I've also read that John Huston meant it to be an allegory for the HUAC situation in 1948 when it was made. The gangsters were "a metaphor for the right-wing forces bent on compelling obedience to the new political orthodoxy.": Bogart, by Sperber and Lax, p 410. .
Huston also had to be persuaded to make the movie--he came close to resigning since it was based on a 1939 play by Maxwell Anderson, a reactionary who hated FDR--and Huston had had enough of that in Washington already. But Huston had some lines spoken by FDR during WW II inserted into the film.
And of course audiences did not see the HUAC parallel.