To Have and Have Not

Howard Hawks introduces the world to Lauren Bacall. William Faulkner makes a screenplay out of an Ernest Hemmingway work (well, sort of). Hoagy Carmichael sings and plays. Humphrey Bogart plays an amoral expat far from home trying to decide whether or not to help the free French. What's not to love?

The performances just leap off the screen, and the dialogue is sharp as all get out ("You know how to whistle") with a typical Hawksian love story featuring a typical Hawksian womanj-- tough, bruised, open-hearted and willing to lay it all on the line for the right man.

The story matters a little, but not all that much. The music gets a surprisingly large amount of screen time. I pooh-poohed the usually blurbs as wishful fluff, but damned if you can't really see Bogart and Bacall fall in love right on screen. Either that or they are the best actors ever.

Yes, the ending's a tad weak, and the supporting cast is unfamiliar yet reminiscent of other casts so that you find yourself recasting it (That should be Peter Lorre. Oh, Sidney Greenstreet, where were you?)

It has the humor, moral suspense, action and romance of Casablanca, but it is, particularly in its love story, more audacious and funny. And the music's better. It is, in the end, not as wholly awesome as its African cousin, but it is still a heaping plate of full-bodied awesomeness, not to be missed.