167. To Have and Have Not (1944)

Directed By Howard Hawks

Synopsis

Captain Morgan is a guy who rents his boat out for fishing. After he loses a costumer and he has no money and he wants to help Slim out of Martinique he takes a job helping the Free French. This gets him into all kinds of trouble. Eventually he gets the girl.

Review

This was a pretty fun film to watch, Howard Hawks continues his tradition of strong women in this, and Bacall is probably the coolest, sexiest little thing to hit the screens. Bogart is a known quantity and he makes his best impression of Rick here. He is apparently selfish and only looking out for himself, but then he has a good heart and does the right thing. You know, Bogart.

Another good thing about the film is the soundtrack, the songs in it are pretty cool, it has a kind of Jazz that I really like and Cricket is a great character. Lauren Bacall's voice can be a bit Nicoish, but hey I like Nico.

In the end there isn't anything really surprising and original about this, but it is a really good film, it works well in its genre. It isn't too fancy, but the script is quite well written (it should be it's William Faulkner adapting Hemingway) and the characters are likeable and Lauren Bacall steals the show. See it.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

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. Incidentally, 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.

The whole film is on Youtube!, just search for it, meanwhile you get Bacall singing: