A Film Canon

To an even greater extent than Casablanca, To Have And Have Not situates itself on a melancholy imperial fringe - Vichy-occupied Martinique - whose centre has become so distant, or heterogeneous, as to cease to be an orienting, or meaningful factor, but which, for that very reason, is policed as if it were the centre. This produces an unusual nexus between realism and theatricality, presence and absence, whose most concrete index is an alternation between vivid ocean sequences and stagebound interiors. The latter are far less atmospheric than their Casablanca counterparts, as if the panoramic fluidity of smoke, song, charisma and conversation had been translated directly into the voyage Harry 'Steve' Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) makes to an outlying island - a threatening, rather than cushioning, presence, that circumscribes, rather than elaborates, his autonomy; or, rather, clarifies that, in both films, every elaboration is simultaneously a circumscription. In the same way, this increased pessimism imbues love with a much greater redemptive power, such that Bogart's world-weariness become a more transparent index of his sentimentality than anywhere else in his career, the narrative turning on an act of treason committed in the most detached, disinterested fashion, for the most romantic, heartfelt reasons, and his iconic rapport with Marie 'Slim' Browning (Lauren Bacall) blossoming into a real love affair, its import finally subsumed into the worldly, cigarette-lighting brotherhood typical of Hawks.