To Have and Have Not (1944) **1/2

Release date: October 11, 1944

Running time: 100 minutes

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan

Directed by: Howard Hawks

Loosely based on the Ernest Hemingway novel by the same name, To Have and Have Not is really just an attempt to cash in on the success of Casablanca a few years earlier. Had it been made ten years earlier it might have been possible to make it more faithful to the book but by this point Bogart was trying to make his on screen persona a little less dark and villainous and thus we get a film that bears little resemblance to the novel to the point where even the title makes no sense with this plot.

The film opens with Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart), a ship captain for hire, who hires out to wealthy fisherman out of Martinique during the early days of WWII. He is partners with Eddie (Walter Brennan), an alcoholic whose ties to Harry are never really explored. On one such trip Johnson (Walter Sande) owes him a significant amount of money for the trip and intends to skip out on the bill. Harry discovers this when a woman, Marie (Lauren Bacall) pickpockets Johnson and is caught by Harry. When he confronts Johnson a shootout involving freedom fighters breaks out and Johnson is killed before he can pay the bill. This forces Harry into agreeing to smuggle into Martinique’s married couple involved in the resistance that the local government is on the lookout for. Harry states he is only interested in the money, yet he risks his own freedom to insure their safety even after he has been paid for the job.

Juxtaposed with the story is a blossoming romance between Harry and Marie, neither of whom refer to each other by their real names but instead use the names “Steve” and “Slim.” (This no doubt stems from the real life nicknames director Howard Hawks and his wife used for each other.) This romance doesn’t ring with the same level of credulity that we saw with Rick and Elsa in Casablanca, yet there is a certain steaminess to it absent from the earlier film. This can probably be chalked up to the real life romance blossoming between the two actors. Bacall is new to pictures here, having been hired by Hawks out of a desire to romance the young model, something that was stymied by the romance that developed between her and Bogart. He instead had to settle for an affair with the second lady, Dolores Moran. 

There is plenty of steamy dialogue between the two leads that barely gets by the censors enforcing the Hayes Code. “You don’t have to say anything 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.” The line is delivered with a level of sultriness that raises the temperature in the room by several degrees. While not all the lines Bacall delivers land like this one, many do despite her obvious lack of experience on screen. The chemistry between Bogart and Bacall overcomes much of her inexperience. 

 What ultimately prevents this film from joining the absolute best films of the era is that it suffers from trying too hard to emulate Casablanca. The original novel was about a smuggler who took advantage of desperate people during the Great Depression, abandoning people in Cuba and making off with their money. This film wants to paint the picture of a reluctant hero who, in spite of not wanting to get involved in the politics of the war going on around him, finds his better nature prevents him from remaining neutral. This is the same dilemma Rick faced in Casablanca when tasked with aiding Victor Laslo and Elsa’s escape from the Nazis. This film however doesn’t have the heart that made that story so compelling. There is no love triangle history between Harry and the woman he is smuggling to Martinique. There is no painful history involved here. Neither of the two fugitives, Paul and Hélène are developed at all. Paul spends most of his screen time injured and lying in bed and Hélène’s character was diminished to standing by her man and expressing a lot of self doubt about why she is even there. Her role was meant to be a secondary love interest for Harry but was cut to near nothing once the heat between Bogart and Bacall ramped up.

Aside from Bogart and Bacall there are a few other things that keep the film from being dreadfully dull. One of those is the delightfully over-the-top performance of Walter Brennan as Eddie. Eddie is woefully underdeveloped as a character relegated to being an alcoholic who can only be persuaded to betray his friends if you withhold the alcohol. However that doesn’t matter as every time he is on screen he lightens the tone. He is a welcome addition to the film adding a levity that no other character can provide. Likewise, relative newcomer Dan Seymour, a character actor who primarily appeared in bit roles uncredited until the year prior to this, is delightfully cocky and smarmy as Captain Renard, the local authority who is certain Harry has smuggled in resistance members but lacks enough evidence to pounce. 

There is a lot going for To Have and Have Not, yet it can’t quite live up to its own ambitions. It wants to be an important picture but lives in the shadows of much better cinema. At no time is it unwatchable but it struggles to shake off an overall feeling that it could have been so much better had it not tried to redo that which had worked before and tried for its own identity. It is that flaw that makes it a lessor film in Bogarts oeuvre and really only worth seeking out to see where Bogart and Bacall began. The two would go on to star together in three more pictures, all of which were improvements over this one. Still, this is not a bad film, just an underwhelming one.

Conflict (1945) ***

Release Date: June 15, 1945

Running Time: 86 minutes

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Rose Hobart, Sydney Greenstreet, Alexis Smith

Directed by: Curtis Bernhardt

Two years prior to The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Humphrey Bogart is cast as a wife killer. The primary difference between the two films seems to lie in a more concrete motive the audience would easily be able to latch onto rather than a dull level of confusion involving paintings and bribery. Here the motive is straight forward, love. Or perhaps lust would be a better word for what Bogart is seeking here.

The film opens on Bogart as Richard Mason, a man celebrating his fifth anniversary with his wife Kathryn (Rose Hobart). From the start it is obvious the marriage is an unhappy one, something Kathryn needles Richard about. She sees that he has an infatuation for her younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith), and he doesn’t bother to deny it. Kathryn will not grant him a divorce and takes pleasure in letting him know that. Later, at the anniversary party, Dr. Hamilton (Sydney Greenstreet) entertains the guests with a story about an unhappy couple that will in many ways mirror the events to come.

On the drive home, Kathryn and Evelyn are talking and Kathryn attempts to convince her sister to leave town to visit their mother who is lonesome. Angered by this, Richard crashes the car, suffering a broken leg while the passengers escape unscathed. While recovering, Richard exaggerates the seriousness of his injury, pretending to need a wheelchair long after the cast has been removed. Under this guise, and arranging a work meeting that will prevent him from accompanying his wife to a mountain resort, he plans the perfect murder, one that he seemingly would be unable to have committed. The plan works out perfectly with one little exception. On her way out of town, Kathryn stops by Dr. Hamilton’s home and is gifted a rose that he pins to her jacket. This simple act of kindness will eventually be the key to unraveling her murder.

As a mystery, Conflict struggles a little. There really isn’t a true mystery here. We see the murder take place so we know Richard is the guilty party. The film is also very obvious when revealing the slip-up that will eventually be Richard’s undoing. We catch the mistake right away and, more importantly, the film wants us to know who else caught the mistake and knew what it meant. That robs the film of much of the suspense. Later into the picture we get what feels like an homage to The Tell-Tale Heart as little things start to happen or appear that would seem to suggest Kathryn may yet be alive. These events may confuse and disorient Richard but not the audience who was privy to the earlier slip-up and can put two and two together. 

This film could have been a train wreck with the wrong cast involved. What saves it is a truly stellar, if a little over-the-top performance by Bogart. We see from scene one that he is a deeply unhappy man wishing to be out from this marriage to a woman everyone around him thought was not a good fit. Dr. Hamilton even mentions at one point that no one thought the marriage would last. Richard and Kathryn are good at putting on a face around their friends but in private things are a little more honest and raw.  Bogart is an expert at portraying this pain and resentment. We feel for him, even though we can’t get behind him when he channels those feelings into murder.

Rose Hobart has a much harder part to play here. She has only a few scenes to get across where she is at in this relationship. Her interactions with Richard directly are sharp and mean-spirited at times yet we can also see that deep down she still loves Richard. When Richard is unable to go with her to the mountain resort she seems disappointed. Later, on the drive up the mountain alone, when she comes across Richard out in the middle of nowhere, she seems happy to see him at first, an emotion that would only be expressed in this situation were it were genuine. Rose has so little screen time as Kathryn yet we learn everything we need to know about her side of the marriage in those few scenes. 

Alexis Smith is plain awful in this film. She is badly miscast as the naive younger sister. She was much better served as the home-wrecker Cecily in The Two Mrs. Carrolls. She is never convincing when she is on screen and watching her act here is just plain painful. Sydney Greenstreet is better but he doesn’t have much of a character to work with. Dr. Hamilton is notable in one way though. It’s the only time he and Bogart co-starred in a film where he played a good guy and Bogart was the villain. 

Conflict is a good film but not a great one. The story is derivative and too heavily telegraphed to be much of a mystery. The supporting characters are all either forgettable or miscast. It glides by on the charisma of its two leads, Bogart and Hobart, who do an excellent job of showing rather than telling. This, and some fantastic filming (just look at the car crash and you’ll be amazed what can be done without CGI or fancy stunt driving) elevate this from its B movie trappings.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) **

Release Date: March 4, 1947

Running Time: 99 minutes

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith, Nigel Bruce, and Ann Carter

Directed by: Peter Godfrey

An artist with a sadistic secret, a trusting wife who begins to suspect her husband is trying to kill her, and a rich woman who is trying her hand at home wrecker. All of this sounds like a typical season on a uninspired soap opera. For a daytime drama this might be passable but for an A-list motion picture starring some of the biggest actors and actresses of the day it is downright disappointing. 

Humphrey Bogart stars as Geoffrey Carroll, a painter who begins the film wooing Sally Morton (Barbara Stanwyck) while hiding from her that he is still married. When she finds out he lies and tells her that he is in the process of leaving his wife who, by his account, is an invalid. He also reveals that he has a daughter, Bea (Ann Carter). Sally wants nothing to do with all this and leaves him. Shortly thereafter Geoffrey’s wife dies from a mysterious illness and, soon after, Geoffrey and Sally get married.

Through a friend of Sally’s, Geoffrey is introduced to Cecile Latham (Alexis Smith), a wealthy woman who has set her eyes on him under the pretense of commissioning him to paint her portrait. What she really has in mind in to get between the couple and take Geoffrey for her own. Geoffrey is hesitant at first but eventually agrees to the job. Shortly thereafter, Sally starts getting sick much the same way the original Mrs. Carroll did. 

Reportedly Bogart didn’t want to be here at that time making this film. During the production he and Lauren Bacall tied the knot, even shutting down the filming while they went off on their honeymoon. Whether this event effected his performance or not can be debated but he does come across as not totally committed to the role. There are times where he looks like he would rather be somewhere else than on this set. Even when the moment calls for him to portray intensity he is not very convincing here. While some of his most intense performances were still in the future, most notably The Treasure of the Sierra Madre the following year, he had demonstrated in the past that he was capable of playing things dark and charming. 

Not all of the blame for this film falls on Bogart’s shoulders though. Barbara Stanwyck is equally poor in a role she allegedly took out of sheer boredom. In the early scenes she is entirely too chipper. Later on, as her suspicions of her husband deepen, she descends onto overacting and some of the most outrageously hilarious voice over ever put on screen. Whether you blame her for this or shift that blame to Peter Godfrey, the director, for staging it that way as well as not reigning in his actors, it amounts to the same, an over-the-top performance that is disjointed and laughable.

The rest of the cast is game, yet amount to mere caricatures. Nigel Bruce is perhaps the worst of these as Dr. Tuttle, an alcoholic physician whose boisterousness is only eclipsed by his ineptitude. Alexis Smith is a generic gold digger with the only distinction being she is the one with the gold. The only true standout amongst the secondary cast is young Ann Carreras the daughter Beatrice Carroll. Ann made a career out of playing characters like this and she is fantastic here, livening up every scene she is in.

This was never going to be a great film. It’s roots are as generic and cliché as the final product. The greatest performers would struggle to make this even a good film and, as mentioned above, it had some of the greatest performers in it. It’s a B film filled with A-list actors and actresses and as such it cannot possible escape that trapping. At best it is a somewhat generic thriller. At worst, it is a completely forgettable film best swept under the rug.