To Have and Have Not (1944)

Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not spawned one of the greatest Hollywood romances of all times as well as one of the greatest lines ever uttered on screen. Adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same title, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as Harry "Steve" Morgan, a charter fishing boat captain. Based in Martinique, and so under the authority of the Vichy government in occupied France, Steve and his sidekick Eddie (Walter Brennan) try to eek out a living while dealing with crooked customers, avoiding the local authorities and dodging gun battles between resistance fighters and government agents. When his most recent customer dies before paying Steve, he's forced to take work transporting resistant fighters to the island. Into this mix of bullets and intrigue steps Marie "Slim" Browning (Lauren Bacall), a down-on-her-luck cabaret singer who's just trying to earn enough money to get back home to America. This was the first on-screen pairing of Bogart and Bacall and the electricity between them is palpable. Steve is loner and a tough guy, but Slim may be tougher than him. She casts her line and reels him in by simply telling him he can have her. "You don't have to say anything," she says, "and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." And hence history was made. But things don't go all that easily for Steve and Slim. The French Resistance fighter that Steve is transporting panics when he should keep his cool and gets himself all shot up. Then Steve has to operate on the guy and remove the lead from him. Meanwhile, the authorities are circling in for the kill. They try to get information out of Eddie by plying him with booze, but Eddie's a lifelong drunk and he can take a lot of booze. Finally, in true Bogart fashion, the evil Vichy agents are defeated and Steve, Slim and Eddie escape on Steve's boat, bound for Florida and happily ever after.


Apparently, Hemingway had bet Hawks that Hawks could never make a film of To Have and Have Not. Hawks rose to the challenge and did so, but only by cutting out most of the novel and substantially rewriting the rest. He focused on a single incident at the book's beginning, expanding and embellishing it to get a full-length movie. The setting was moved from Cuba to Martinique, and the time was moved to after the war had started. In the book, Steve hauls illegal immigrants to Florida, while in the movie he's hauling resistance fighters. He's also a much nicer guy in the movie. This film also has the distinction of being the only movie to have been co-written by two Nobel-prize winning authors: Ernest Hemingway wrote the novel on which it was based, and William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. In spite of this high literary pedigree, it turns out - according to the IMDB - that most of the dialogue was actually improvised by the actors on camera. That's okay, though. It all works out great. As does the presence of the great Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket, the pianist at the local bar. In fact, this film was my introduction to Carmichael at the ripe young age of twelve, and I have been a fan of his music ever since. And all of this is wrapped up in a cracking good yarn with bad guys you can hate and good guys you can sympathize with. You can't do better than that.

To Have and Have Not is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white. It has a runtime of 100 minutes.