To have and have not 1944 - A classic war time action-romance in the shadows of Casablanca

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael

"A masterful blend of comedy, romance, and action, Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not is filled with the director's signature situations and relationships. The characters could have been lifted from any one of a number of Hawks films: a strong, stoic hero (Humphrey Bogart), a clueless sidekick (Hawks regular Walter Brennan), and a bold, sexually-charged heroine (Lauren Bacall, in her screen debut). A few scenes even recur in the director's other films, such as the classic, post-kiss line, 'It's even better when you help'. Jules Furthman and William Faulkner loosely adapted the screenplay from an Ernest Hemingway novel; though the setting of To Have is the Caribbean, the characters and Bogart's unselfish transformation is clearly reminiscent of 1942's Casablanca. Hawks would exploit the tremendous chemistry between Bogart and Bacall again in his next film, 1946's The Big Sleep.
The film's enduring popularity is primarily - if not solely - due to the sexy chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, especially in the legendary 'You know how to whistle, don't you?' scene. The most salutary result of To Have & Have Not was the subsequent Bogart-Bacall marriage, which endured until his death in 1957. For the record, a more faithful-to-the-source cinemadaptation of the Hemingway original was filmed in 1950 as The Breaking Point." - www.allmovie.com

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