Key Largo (1948)

Directed by John Huston

I’m writing these words as the wind howls outside, and I pray that the house I am in will still be standing tomorrow night.  Hurricane Fiona is storming through.
     There’s a sort of film that I’d set in the general category of “Christian Comedy,” whether or not there is something expressly Christian about it.  Often it involves someone – usually a man, often brought round by the moral influence of a good and brave woman – who has strayed from the path, or who has given up on believing that there is anything worth living for.  He is Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront, an ex-boxer drifting along with the seedy criminals he has lived among all his life, including his brother Charlie.  He is Shane the gunslinger (Alan Ladd) in the movie by that name, who understands that he can never really live among honest and peace-loving people, but who risks his life for a woman and her family, a woman he loves and who will never be his own.  And he is Frank McCourt (Humphrey B…