Saw To Have and Have Not, a Howard Hawks film based on a Hemingway novel starring Humphrey Bogart. Yes, this is a Man's film. We have Bogart the fisherman in corrupt, 1940s Martinique. He runs into some freedom fighters and a smokey bombshell of a woman. She's the love interest and Bogart, with his callous indifference and sometimes hostility soon has her begging to take his shoes off and run him a bath (but will he let her? No, he's too red-pilled for that.) Anyway, Bogart's in full-on anti-hero mode, full of sneers and leers. There's a Hawks-ian bumbling sidekick, a wino, who was probably a lot more horrible and pathetic in the Hemingway novel (if indeed he existed at all.) This is an international noir in the style of Casablanca. It's not as good I don't think, but it's pretty good. It even has a evil, mincing, fat guy.
The film is well made, stark blacks and whites with swaying, striated shadows overlaid. The characters are noble and desperate. The movie gets a little too up the protagonist's ass a couple of times (I mean gosh he's just such a man~!) but this is kind of to be expected from the time and from Hawks and from Hemingway and Bogart. Faulkner was also involved, as a scriptwriter. Apparently they all used to sit together on canvas chairs with the day's script and they'd swap lines, cutting and improvising merrily together. My sympathy is with you Faulkner.
I'm being snide and grudge-y but it's really a good movie after all. It's very virtuous and brave and we could all use a bit of virtue and bravery I suppose. I think of Hawks as the Spielberg of his time, marrying crowd-pleasing stories with top-notch film craft, even capturing pure art here and there. A solid film.
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