Noir City Double Feature: Key Largo and Raw Deal

Live introductions by Eddie Muller of TCM and the Film Noir Foundation.

Key Largo. 1948, Warner Bros. 100 minutes. Director John Huston.

Our weekend tribute to Film Noir in 1948 begins with this final pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a spine-tingling tale of a WWII veteran (Bogart) running up against a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who’s holding the staff and guests of a coastal hotel hostage as a hurricane bears down on them. Bacall plays the daughter of proprietor Lionel Barrymore, and noir’s grandest dame, Claire Trevor, is Gaye Dawn, a broken-down chanteuse who’s Eddie G.’s booze-sodden moll. 35mm film print.

Raw Deal. 1948, Eagle-Lion Films. 79 minutes. Director Anthony Mann.

Claire Trevor returns as a gangster’s moll duking out with social worker Marsha Hunt for the soul of Dennis O’Keefe in this rambunctious display of quintessential noir pulp. O’Keefe busts out of the slammer determined to get even with shyster gang-boss Raymond Burr, who wants O’Keefe dead before he reaches his San Francisco hideout. Anthony Mann made his bones with the gritty, documentary-style T-Men the year before (screened at last year’s Noir City Detroit), but here he flips the script and treats fans to a surreal fantasia of violence and vengeance. 35mm film print.