Deathmatch: "Casablanca" (1942) vs. "To Have and Have Not" (1944)

History

The unproduced stage play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" ended up sold to Warner Brothers for a record figure of 20,000 in 1942. Originally written by husband and wife team Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, the project had been retooled and renamed "Casablanca" once sold by Julius and Philip Epstein. 

"[Capra] asked Phil and me and half a dozen other screenwriters to join him in an effort our government considered very important--to write a series of films to be called "Why We Fight." We, of course, gladly consented. The Studio said, "No. We have just borrowed Ingrid Bergman from David Selznick to play the lead in "Casablanca." There is a stop date in the deal, which means that for every day we need Bergman beyond the stop date, we have to pay Selznick a fortune. We want you to start writing the screenplay of "Casablanca" immediately. You can't go to Washington." But we said we're going and we went." ("Prepared Statement of Julius Epstein, Screenwriter and Member, Writers Guild of America, West")

For four weeks, Howard Koch took up the project, offering 30 to 40 pages, including highlighting the reality and politics of pre-World War 2. But once back in Hollywood, the brothers Epstein were reassigned to the project. Casey Robinson also contributed three uncredited weeks of work as well as Warner Brothers producer Hal Wallis contributing the now famous line, "Louie, I believe this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

Production began May 25, 1942 and finished in August "eleven days late and at a cost of 1,039,000 dollars - 75,000 dollars over budget." (p. 79, James Crighton Robertson, The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael Curtiz) Starring Humphrey Bogart and the borrowed Ingrid Bergman from RKO, "Casablanca" was essentially a campground of some of the best European actors of the period: Conrad Veidt ("Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari") and Peter Lorre ("M") of the German Expressionist wave, Austrian immigrant Paul Henreid, the beloved Hungarian S.Z. Sakall, and British royalty Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet. 

"Casablanca" would go on to attain great status, but not without some criticism. Variety found "some of the characterizations a bit on the overdone side." (Casablanca | Variety) The New Yorker found Bogart's previous film "Across the Pacific" more preferable than the "pretty tolerable" "Casablanca." (p. 13, Aljean Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War 2)

Although the title of an Ernest Hemingway short story, "To Have and Have Not" is anything but the original. What had started out on a fishing trip in 1939 with the famous writer, Howard Hawks bragged to his friend that he could "make a picture out of [his] worst story, [...] that god damned piece of junk To Have and To Have Not." Hemingway already had a solid character in Harry Morgan where Hawks could simply "give [him] the wife. All [he had] to do is make a story about how they met." (There's Something About Harry: To Have and Have Not as Novel and Film - Bright Lights Film Journal)

But Hemingway had already sold the rights to his book prior to this meeting to RKO for 10,000. Paying Howard Hughes 92,500, Hawks then sold "To Have and Have Not" to Warner Brothers for the same price as well as a fourth of the gross receipts. Now with Hemingway's story in hand, most of the actual plot was scrapped except for names and some principal characteristics. Jules Furthman and, ironically, William Faulkner both have writing credits, the latter contributing to the upstairs sequences towards the end of the film. Hawks created the now famous "you know how to whistle" scene just for Lauren Bacall's screen test without any intention to be in the film.

The first Bogart-Bacall vehicle would go on to enjoy 3.65 million at the box office with varying degrees of criticism. Krahn from Variety considered "To Have and Have Not" as a "considerable picture [...] because of some neat characterization." (To Have and Have Not (1944) - Articles - TCM.com) The New York Times described the film as a "tough and tight-lipped tale [with] much more atmosphere than action of the usual muscular sort." Although Lauren Bacall's performance was heavily criticized and Bogart in his element at his "best when his nature is permitted to smoulder in the gloom," the common consensus had been that it was merely a Casablanca duplication.

"Just Remember This" to "How to Whistle"

In pre-WW2 Casablanca, "Rick's Cafe Americain" is a popular spot for both military officials and the refuges who seek passage to the still neutral America. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), the owner, finds the most unlikely patron in "all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." She being Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), Rick's married ex-love now with her husband and famous Resistance leader currently finding passage to America. Although holding onto two "letters of transit" that a crook killed two Germans for, Rick finds himself in a war with himself as to giving the letters to the woman he loves but cannot have and where his expatriate patriotism truly lies. 

Humphrey Bogart plays Harry Morgan in "To Have and Have Not" as a fishing boat charter in Martinique after the fall of France. When a pickpocket, Marie Browning (Lauren Bacall) steals his next client's wallet, there is a sudden a twist of fate involving a shootout between the Resistance and the police serendipitously shooting the client. Now under the suspicious eye of Martinique's police, Morgan is broke and ready to take any job even if it might involve a life-risking boat ride sending a husband and wife to safety.

Death Match Round

While Casablanca is indeed a classic with great actors speaking famously clever lines, I have to give it to "To Have and Have Not." Perhaps it's the suspension of disbelief considering the macguffin that are the letters of transit. While an entirely fictional device to pull and push the movie characters together and apart, there is no solid basis in reality that a document would allow free travel around Europe and Portugal pre-World War 2. However, there is possibly a genesis to this macguffin, according to Joe Janes from the University of Washington, "The closest document [...] is probably a "laissez-passer," a safe conduct issued for one-way travel to the issuing country, sometimes for humanitarian reasons, but also to allow diplomats of newly enemy nations to leave after war is declared."

There seems to be more at stake in "To Have and Have Not," with Humphrey Bogart's more romantic anti-hero character falling in love, both within film and real life, as he sheds a little of that cynicism at the beginning of the film. After being wrongly accused and interrogated by Martinique police, Morgan seems rather humbled by this experience even despite all the cynicism he offers authority figures. He treats both Captain Renard (Dan Seymour) and hotel owner "Frenchy" (Marcel Dalio) equally with an acerbic sarcasm, but Morgan's soft spot exists for his involuntary "carer" and first mate Eddie (Walter Brennan in a defining role) as well as his budding relationship with Lauren Bacall's Marie. The real life chemistry worked in the plot's favor as Morgan's affections become dangerous in having the transportation that could get more Resistance members out of the country resulting in less violence around his environment. 

Rick Blaine is Morgan's opposite, a more tragic anti-hero in having to make up his mind in a more smoldering setting of North Africa. Having fallen in love then left by an already married woman, Rick's heart is broken and has no reason to do anything but brood and avoid the political happenings around him for the first half of the film until his scenes with Ingrid Bergman (although at gunpoint with that astounding lighting effect via Adam Edeson and a soft gauze filter). Finding his ex-love back in his establishment, Rick is torn into a question of morals once finding that Ilsa and husband are looking for those weakly devised letters of transit much like how Morgan is unsure of taking on this new job.

But in "To Have and Have Not," his life is in danger, but in "Casablanca," his heart seems to rule his actions outside of all the political drama. Rick ends the film by choosing to not ignore the changes around him in possibly taking Renault's suggestion of joining the Free French movement in the Congo. Perhaps when "To Have and Have Not" was written and under the influence of the danger of WW2, Morgan, Marie, the Bursacs, and Eddie all climb on the boat Queen Conch heading to relatively safer shores, but not without some of that Bogart darkness. Even before the happier of endings in a WW2 related film, Morgan gives into his soft spot holding Captain Renard at gunpoint and forcing him to sign Eddie's prison release and harbor passages out of the country. 

Although both films are aesthetically stunning from the shots of Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca" to the extraordinary Weimar influence of shadows in "To Have and Have Not," the latter is far superior when it comes to the addictive mystique of the man Hollywood has affectionately nicknamed "Bogie" and this rarely seen vulnerability.