To Have and Have Not (film)

Infobox Film
name = To Have and Have Not


image_size =
caption = "To Have and Have Not" movie poster
director = Howard Hawks
producer = Howard Hawks
Jack L. Warner
writer = Novel:
Ernest Hemingway
Screenplay:
Jules Furthman
William Faulkner
Cleve F. Adams
Whitman Chambers
narrator =
starring = Humphrey Bogart
Walter Brennan
Lauren Bacall
Dolores Moran
Hoagy Carmichael
music = William Lava
Franz Waxman
cinematography = Sidney Hickox
editing = Christian Nyby
distributor = Warner Bros.
released = flagicon|USA October 11 1944
runtime = 100 min
country = flagicon|USA United States
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0037382

"To Have and Have Not" (1944) is a thriller romance war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is nominally based on the novel "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway.

Plot

The film is set in Martinique under the Vichy regime. In this exotic location, the world-weary fishing boat captain Harry 'Steve' Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) is urged to help the French Resistance smuggle some people onto the island. He is hesitant, until the person who had been hiring out his fishing boat gets accidentally shot. In desperation because he will not be able to recover the $825 he is owed, he ends up working with the Resistance and smuggles a husband and wife onto Martinique. Meanwhile, a romance unfolds between Harry and Marie 'Slim' Browning (Lauren Bacall), an American pickpocket who has come to the island. Throughout the movie, he has to prop up his buddy, Eddie (Walter Brennan), a rummy who is constantly requesting drinks and is the ultimate loose-end as he stumbles from scene to scene with Bogie and Bacall.

Background

Howard Hughes sold the book rights to independent director Howard Hawks. Hawks sold the rights to Warner Bros. William Faulkner, “out of print and broke”, was on the payroll, helping with the script. [Sperber and Lax 1997, p. 250.]

This was Lauren Bacall's first film, at the age of 19. Howard Hawks' wife "Slim" noticed Bacall on the cover of "Harper's Bazaar" and showed the photo to her husband, who soon sought out Bacall and signed her for the role. After filming began, a romance developed between Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, despite the disapproval of Hawks. This romance eventually led to Bacall's first marriage and ended Bogart's marriage with Mayo Methot, his third wife. It created a memorable onscreen chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, which would be used to advantage in several other movies, such as "The Big Sleep".

Although Hawks had a high regard for Hemingway's works in general, he considered "To Have and Have Not" his worst book, a "bunch of junk," and told Hemingway so; [Hawks telling Hemingway he could film his worst book and that this one was "a bunch of junk": interview with Hawks by Joseph McBride for the Directors' Guild of America, October 21–23, 1977, private publication of the Directors' Guild, p.21; quoted at length in Mast, p.243.] "You Must Remember This" (retrospective for Warner Brothers' 85th anniversary), "American Masters", PBS, broadcast September 23, 2008.] Hawks and Hemingway worked on the story together. The film preserves the book's title, and the names and characteristics of some of the characters, but nothing from beyond the first fifth of the volume. The setting was moved from Key West to Martinique. The screenplay was further developed by Jules Furthman, and, at the end, William Faulkner (an intense rival of Hemingway). [Mast relates the contributions of each of the people who worked on the screenplay. He says "the film's many upstairs sequences are Faulkner's primary contribution to the the film's conception" (p.257).] In addition, Slim's part was greatly extended to take advantage of the Bogart-Bacall chemistry.

Music

In the movie, Bacall sings "How Little We Know" by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer. Another Carmichael song, "Hong Kong Blues" (co-written with Stanley Adams), was also used. Carmichael plays Cricket, the piano player in the film.

Another song played in the film was "Am I Blue?", written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke.

Remakes

The second film version of "To Have and Have Not", titled "The Breaking Point" (1950), was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars John Garfield. It shifted the action to southern California and made Garfield a former PT Boat captain.

The third film version, titled "The Gun Runners" (1958), was directed by Don Siegel and stars Audie Murphy in the Bogart/Garfield role and Everett Sloane in Walter Brennan's role as the alcoholic sidekick, although Sloane's interpretation was less overtly comedic than Brennan's.

ee also

*"Casablanca" (1942), another film in which Bogart plays an American trying to stay neutral while running a business in Vichy-controlled territory.

Notes

References

*cite book | author=Mast, Gerald | title=Howard Hawks, Storyteller | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=1982 | location=New York | id=ISBN 0-19-503091-5

External links

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* [http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2008/06/63-to-have-and-have-not.html Review by Ed Howard at Only The Cinema]