Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Movie Review

The Whistle Heard 'Round the World

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 12, 2016

The title card of the 1944 film that first paired Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall may read "Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not", but just about everything except the title and the hero's name had vanished by the time Hemingway's novel reached the screen. Working with screenwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner (yes, that William Faulkner), director Howard Hawks repurposed the writer's episodic tale of Depression-era rum-smuggling into an adventure echoing Bogart's earlier hit, Casablanca. They advanced the time period to World War II just after France fell to the Nazis and relocated the action from the Florida Keys to Martinique. Once again, Bogart was cast as a resourceful American expatriate struggling to remain aloof in a French colony ruled by the puppet Vichy regime. Once again, he lived in a hotel with an easygoing piano player as its star attraction. Once again, circumstances conspired to draw the reluctant loner into aiding a married couple fighting the Axis onslaught. And once again, Bogart's tough guy had his heart melted by a beautiful woman, except that this time Bogie got the girl, both on screen and in real life.

To Have and Have Not (or "TH&HN") completes the Warner Archive Collection's Blu-ray release of the quartet of films starring Bogart and Bacall, following The Big Sleep, Key Largo and Dark Passage. For reasons discussed in the Video section, TH&HN was the most challenging of the four restoration projects, but the results were worth the wait.

Harry Morgan (Bogart) is a fishing boat captain in Martinique, where he charters his boat to tourists, assisted by his alcoholic friend and first mate, Eddie (Walter Brennan). After the fall of France, the island becomes a battleground between the scattered forces of the French Resistance and the local police force, the Sûreté, headed by Captain Renard (Dan Seymour), who, like Claude Raines's Renault in Casablanca, answers to Vichy. (The similarity between the names of the two characters can hardly be a coincidence.) When the proprietor of Harry's hotel (Marcel Dalio, one of several Casablanca veterans in the cast) asks Harry to undertake a smuggling operation for the Resistance, the fisherman initially declines, but he reconsiders when a series of mishaps leaves him broke. The smuggled cargo turns out to be a Resistance operative, Paul de Bursac (Walter Molnar), who is accompanied by his wife (Dolores Moran). Just as Harry feared, his involvement with the Resistance puts him on a collision course with Renard and his underlings, including a tough bully played by gangster regular (and future TV mogul) Sheldon Leonard.

TH&HN's war-time intrigue is entertaining, but it pales next to the romantic fireworks that ignite when a sultry new arrival named Marie Browning (Bacall) saunters into Harry's hotel room requesting a match in a tone that suggests she wants to do much more than light a cigarette. Harry quickly christens her "Slim", and she routinely addresses him as "Steve". The nicknames, which were borrowed from pet names used by Hawks and his wife, are just one of many signs of the couple's instant connection, as they circle each other (literally so, at one point) with the wary intensity of two prize fighters. When Hawks realized what was happening between his two stars off screen, he craftily seized the opportunity to center the film on the romance blooming between their characters, expanding Bacall's role so that long stretches of TH&HN consist of nothing more than "Slim" and "Steve" sparring and jousting. A lot happens in TH&HN—clandestine meetings, gunplay, a boat chase, emergency surgery, musical interludes courtesy of the piano-playing Cricket (Hoagy Carmichael), a stirring speech against the Nazis worthy of Casablanca's Victor Laszlo and a tense showdown between Harry and the dastardly Renard—but all of it ends up feeding into the extended foreplay between the film's smitten couple, who, by all reports, only had eyes for each other both before and after Hawks called "Cut!"

The romance at the core of TH&HN reduces almost everyone else in the film to a supporting player, but there's an exception, and it's Harry's shambling sidekick, Eddie. In Walter Brennan's sly performance, the character becomes more than just a bundle of alcoholic tics and memory lapses. Brennan manages to make Eddie's perpetual confusion and routine cadging for drinks into endearing qualities. Every fan of TH&HN remembers Slim's lascivious inquiry about whether Steve knows how to whistle, but they also recall the nonsensical query with which Eddie challenges anyone he meets: "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?"

To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

To Have and Have Not was shot in lustrous black-and-white by Sidney Hickox (The Big Sleep and White Heat), and its presentation on Blu-ray presents major challenges. The film's negative has been lost, and the best surviving element is a nitrate fine-grain master positive archived at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Due to a variety of factors, including age-related deterioration, this fine-grain element required special handling in generating a new master for the Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Concerns regarding the viability of the fine-grain were sufficiently grave that the Blu-ray's preparation was accompanied by a project to generate new preservation elements, ensuring that TH&HN will remain available for future generations. A dupe safety negative was used to supply a few shots where the fine-grain had deteriorated past the point where it could yield a satisfactory image. As per current Warner policy when scanning the best available elements for purposes of preservation, the fine-grain master positive was scanned at 4K resolution.

After extensive digital repair and correction of densities and shading, TH&HN arrives on Blu-ray in a sterling presentation. With the exception of stock footage used for a few maritime scenes and the occasional rear projection, the image is sharp and detailed, revealing fine points and subtle textures in faces, sets and Bacall's knockout wardrobe. Blacks are solid, whites are crisp, shades of gray are well-delineated, and the film's grain pattern is natural and finely rendered. WAC has mastered the film at its usual average bitrate, just under 35 Mbps.

To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The original soundtrack recording for TH&HN disappeared with the negative, but WAC has reconstructed the mono mix from diverse sources, which the audio engineers have massaged into a coherent whole, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The dynamic range is limited by the technology of the era, but the dialogue and effects are all clearly rendered, and the energetic score by an uncredited Franz Waxman (Dark Passage, Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun) provides the appropriate musical backdrop to the film's combination of adventure and romance. Hoagy Carmichael's musical performances sound as good as they ever have, as does Bacall's singing debut during "Slim's" brief stint as a cabaret performer. (Rumors persisted for years that the actress' voice was dubbed, but they have long since been disproved.)

To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of To Have and Have Not. The trailer and cartoon have been remastered in 1080p.

• Bacall to Arms (1946) (1080p; 1.37:1; 6:13): A movie theater with a menagerie of customers shows a newsreel called "Warmer News" and a feature film entitled "To Have . . To Have . . . To Have . . .", etc. starring Bogey Gocart and Laurie Bee Cool.



• A Love Story: The Story of To Have and Have Not (480i; 1.33:1; 11:17): Produced for Turner Entertainment and narrated by Monte Markham, this 2003 featurette focuses on the Bogart/Bacall romance. Featuring interviews with Leonard Maltin, Robert Osborne and Bogart biographer Eric Lax.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.37:1; 2:49): The hard sell is almost comical.



• Lux Radio Broadcast (audio only; 58:58): Broadcast in 1946, this radio adaptation features Bogart and Bacall but none of the other original cast. The show concludes with a brief interview, a special whistle and a plug for The Big Sleep.

To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

To Have and Have Not is a unique creation, the result of a once-in-a-lifetime moment when art and life imitated each other so closely that it's impossible to tell which came first. Just as Slim and Steve exit arm-in-arm at the film's end, the actors married the year after the film's release and remained a couple until Bogart's untimely death in 1957. One can debate over which of their four films ranks the highest, but TH&HN has a lightness and charm unmatched by any of their subsequent outings. WAC has given it a first-rate presentation, which is highly recommended.