CineM Review: To Have and Have Not (1944)

Bogie and Bacall had it all

Country singer Bertie Higgins’ song titled ‘Key Largo’ has that well-known ditty “We had it all / Just like Bogie and Bacall”. To develop just an itsy inkling of what Bogie and Bacall ‘had’, a viewing of ‘To Have and Have Not’ comes highly recommended. A film directed by Howard Hawks, launching the sultry Lauren Bacall, with a story originally written by Hemingway and a screenplay developed by Faulkner and Furthman and not least, starring that emerging icon Bogart with the gritty ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and a masterful ‘Casablanca’ just behind him – you have reasons galore for catching this movie!

Hemingway’s story was based on liquor-running between Florida  and Cuba, and contained marked classist overtones, hence the story title. Hawks adapted the setting to the island of Martinique under the puppet Vichy regime, the protagonist no longer ran booze up and down the Gulf, the hero Harry Morgan (Bogie) and his alcoholic sidekick Eddie (Walter Brennan) simply offered their boat and services for the more plain thrill of game fishing. One of the early scenes has Hemingway’s mark all over it, when the duo and a client grapple with a feisty marlin - the author's fav sporting fish. Bacall is cast as ‘Slim’ – a magnetic beauty with fire in her eyes, smoke on her lips and smouldering embers in her walk, just the sort of female wheeler-dealer who asks for a light first and then oh-so-slowly, singes your heart with it.

The politics is superficial, back-stories are dispensed with, motivations are simple and introductions are curt – the free-flowing film serving as a canvas to showcase the electric chemistry between Bogie and Bacall. One of the hallmarks of a Hawks’ film is the exchange of rapid-fire dialogues; here the repartees between the two flow thick and furious, the words lie deliciously scattered around to the point of being non sequiturs.

Sample this dialogue between ‘Slim’ and Morgan when the first on-screen kiss is tentatively shared between the two who would eventually become the future off-screen Mr. and Mrs. Bogart.

 

[Slim kisses Morgan]

Morgan: What did you do that for?

Slim: I've been wondering if I'd like it.

Morgan: What's the decision?

Slim: I don't know yet.

[They kiss again]

Slim: It's even better when you help.

The word-play, the scene, the agony and the ecstasy come together in that perfect wispy breath of cinematic brilliance so much so that Hawks would play out the exact scene 15 years later in ‘Rio Bravo’ between the blustery John Wayne and the languorous Angie Dickinson.

Of course, Bogie and Bacall do it infinitely better.

This scorching chemistry is the most substantial reason why anyone should fit in ‘To Have and Have Not’ in their viewing record. That, and the delight of a superlative Walter Brennan comic turn as the hero’s sidekick whose loping gait makes it look as if he is perpetually attempting to step over a puddle in his way.

CineM's Verdict