To Have and Have Not written by William Faulkner, Jules Furthman, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, directed by Howard Hawks and with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the leading roles is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you have notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list and reviews on books from The GOAT site on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

To Have and Have Not written by William Faulkner, Jules Furthman, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, directed by Howard Hawks and with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the leading roles is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you have notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list and reviews on books from The GOAT site on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

8 out of 10

 

I am not a great fan of Ernest Hemingway, ever since I have read Intellectuals by Paul Johnson https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html and learned about how bad he can be, along with Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Jacques Rousseau and many others, I know, take the work, not the man

 

The Sun Also Rises https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-sun-also-rises-by-ernest-hemingway.html was an excellent read, only I made the mistake of taking it for a second time, and that spoiled it, which says nothing about Hemingway, it is just a biased view, and one should read professional critics, not amateurs, like me

To Have and Have Not has Humphrey Bogart in the lead role of Harry 'Steve' Morgan and Lauren Bacall as Marie 'Slim' Browning, I wonder if they met on the set of this motion picture, they have been married and I have read that he would get very sick and died of cirrhosis, I think, these were days when there was a major difference between the stars

 

Notwithstanding that, I have read an article in The Economist about the age difference, it is not as bad as public opinion would have it, it seems that a difference in marriage could make it more durable, Steve has this boat in Martinique, and he takes paying customers on it, they fish tuna, when they do not miss it, and he makes a living

This reminded me of Casablanca https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/casablanca-by-julius-epstein-philip.html wherein Bogart as Rick has another business, a café, and he meets with the Resistance, even if he is apolitical, suffering because of his lost love, and he has a chance to oppose the Nazis

 

In To Have and Have Not, it is not Casablanca, but Martinique, and we have the Vichy pro-Nazi regime and the Resistance trying to fight them, Steve is not into it, he is an American, but somehow ‘he does not like the goons of the Vichy outfit’, and he is offered this chance to help get one of the leaders out of harms’ way

Meanwhile, Slim aka Lauren Bacall lands on the island, without money, and though she is a talented singer, in the first place she steals from the rich, and she has the same target as Steve, it is the rich client who tired to cheat the latter out of the money for the use of his boat and services, and the local police intervenes

 

The local Vichy hoodlums are not like the French captain in Casablanca – at the end, they have this dialogue ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’, explained in Blue Moon https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/blue-moon-written-by-lorenz-hart-robert.html the best film of 2025 in my book

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’