Captain Harry Morgan and his friend Eddie run a fishing boat out of Fort-de-France, the island’s main port. The port is also a hotbed of violence as the Vichy officials battle with rebels who support the French French and the Allies.
Harry tries to remain neutral, but he finds his status harder to maintain when economic hardship forces him to accept a fee to get French resistance fighters onto the island.
As he romances an American stranger, Slim (Lauren Bacall), Harry is drawn deeper into the war effort.
Can he survive?
Proof that a movie featuring a small cast talking in a hotel can be exciting, To Have and Have Not is easily one of the best movies in the festival.
While there are similarities to Casablanca - as there have been with the other films in the Academy’s schedule - To Have and Have Not stands out.
Like the 1942 film, the dynamics of friendship, love, and loyalty are key to the film’s action and suspense.
The introduction of Lauren Bacall adds a welcome addition of sex to the familiar romance. The catalyst for the duo’s legendary on and offscreen relationship, Bacall’s chemistry with Bogart is palpable throughout.
Set in 1940 but released four years later, the film is a parable for America’s position between the Allies and the Axis at the outset of the war. Harry Morgan is a professional who minds his business and tries to keep out of the spheres of either the Vichy authorities or the rebels trying to unseat them.
This movie is great, but watching it after Sirocco highlighted its strengths. This movie is less interesting for its plot than its focus on the relationships between the characters - and how the pressure of outside forces brings out their true selves.
Unlike Bergman’s angelic Ilsa, Bacall’s Slim is a born schemer - she has had to find her own way in the world, and bears no guilt or divided loyalties. She also sees through hypocrisy and personas, sizing up Harry as soon as they catch sight of one another.
In a neat reversal, it is Bogart who is the object of desire - although Bacall’s performance ensures this view is imbued with a little more lust than Rick’s.
Most of the film’s action takes place in tight interiors - or interiors rendered claustrophobic by crowds of people. There is a constant sense of surveillance, and of benign under siege. There is also a sense of community, of the bustle of everyday life, of people finding solidarity, joy and romance together.
On paper, To Have and Have Not might come across as stagey, but the finished film has the pace and dynamism of an action movie - except the characters trade barbs instead of bullets.
There is a subset of movies which I love where the world of the movie is so vivid, you would want to hang out and marinate in the ambience. To Have and Have Not is now one of those movies.
I wish I had caught it sooner.
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