on the level

a photo essay of the 1948 film, Key Largo
(film noir)
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"Johnny Rocco the gangster, Mr. Temple.
The one and only Rocco."






"But they threw you out of the country."



"They called me an undesirable alien.  Me, Johnny Rocco!"





Then how could you be here?
-- Well, maybe I'm not, Pop.  This ain't real.  You're having a dream.





Rocco was more than a king.  He was an emperor.  His rule extended over beer, slot machines, the numbers racket, and other forbidden enterprises.


He was the master of the fix.
Whom he couldn't corrupt, he terrified or murdered.
...When Rocco talked, everybody listened!
What Rocco said, went!
Nobody was as big as Rocco!


-- I'll be back up there one day.



On the level, boss, were you that big?
-- On the level, are you that dumb?


------------------------ In the war, weren't you?...Why'd you stick your neck out?


-- No good reason. ...I believed some words.
-- Words?  What words?
-- Well, they went like this:  "But we aren't making all this sacrifice of human effort and lives, to return to the kind of a world we had after the last world war.  We're fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils...ancient ills...."


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directed by John Huston |
starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Lauren Bacall |
featuring Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor |
adapted for the screen by Richard Brooks and John Huston, from Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play


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