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.