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To Have and Have Not

Screening on Film
Directed by Howard Hawks.
With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.
US, 1944, 35mm, black & white, 100 min.

Only nominally based on Hemingway’s novel, Hawks’ World War II-era morality play underscores the necessity of responsibility, even when burdened with the failure of others. Set in Martinique, the film features Humphrey Bogart as a cynical fishing-boat privateer who finally decides to fight for the French Resistance after falling in love with a girl (Lauren Bacall, here in her debut). To Have and Have Not is above all an atmosphere piece, however. Night clubs and hotel lobbies, strange shafts of light reflecting on the surface of the South Sea, witty exchanges and sexual double entendres—these are what has made the film a classic.

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Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: A–Z

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Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow