To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not (1944) bears little resemblance to the original story by Ernest Hemingway; director Howard Hawks and screenwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner turned it into a rehash of the recently released Casablanca, even including some of the same cast members! The plot unfolds in the French colony of Martinique in 1940, after the fall of France, when it was run by the Nazi-aligned Vichy government. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall add an American twist to this French Caribbean environment, making for a nice variation of a war-espionage film.

Bogart is American Harry Morgan, who runs a charter boat in Martinique with his alcoholic buddy Eddie (Walter Brennan). His current client is an American fisherman who can't seem to pay his bills. Harry and his client are both staying at a big colonial hotel run by a local Frenchman, appropriately called Frenchie. After a day of fishing, both men return there, and Harry bumps into a young teenage runaway Slim (Lauren Bacall) with whom he has undeniable sexual chemistry. Before he can do anything, he is approached by Frenchie and some other men, who are members of the French Resistance and want him to help them smuggle one of their members from another island to Martinique on his boat. Harry refuses and stomps back down to the lounge. All of a sudden a machine gun opens fire on the lounge, and people scream and duck. Harry's American client and a few other Frenchmen are killed. This is the work of the Vichy government, in an attempt to weed out some some Resistance fighters. Following the shooting, the French police chief comes in and takes Harry, Slim, and others in for questioning. They're looking for any information about the Resistance, and try unsuccessfully to bribe Harry.

Upon his release from police headquarters, Harry makes up his mind to help the Resistance, and agrees to do the job for Frenchie. Part of his motivation is that the money he earns will go to buying Slim's plane ticket back to America, freeing her from her lonely, broke existence in Martinique. That night, Harry sets out in his fishing-boat, only to find Eddie has hidden in the cabin, despite Harry's earlier insistence that he stay in town. Harry seems secretly relieved to have a partner, however. The two make it to the mysterious island in the fog, and pick up Free French member Du Bursac and his wife, Helene. On the way back, they encounter a patrol boat, which shines a spotlight on them and opens fire. Du Bursac is hit in the shoulder, but Harry manages to shoot out the spotlight and speed away without being chased. Back in Martinique, they transport the fugitives to a basement room in Frenchie's hotel. Harry is surprised to find Slim has not left for America, and has chosen to stay. She helps care for Du Bursac so that she can be with Harry. Unable to find a doctor who won't snitch to the police, Frenchie asks Harry to remove the bullet from Du Bursac's shoulder. After initial refusal, Harry agrees to do the surgery, and takes out the bullet without any problems. Du Bursac's wife is very grateful, which makes Slim jealous.

The next morning, Du Bursac is healthy and things are looking up. Slim has found a job singing in the hotel lounge. However, the police chief is snooping around the hotel. He gets Eddie drunk and questions him to see if what he suspects is true, but Eddie reveals nothing and plays an innocent drunken fool. That night, the police kidnap Eddie so they can use him as a bargaining chip with Harry Morgan, hoping for Harry to sell out the location of Du Bursac. They go up to Harry's hotel room to threaten him, while Slim and Madame Du Bursac hide in the bathroom. With Slim's help, Harry gets a gun from a desk drawer, kills a policeman, and turns the tables. Now that the police chief and two of his men are Harry's hostages, Harry can solve everything. He forces the chief, at gunpoint, to call headquarters and order Eddie's release; he also forces him to sign the paperwork releasing Harry, Slim, Eddie, and the Du Bursacs from Martinique for good. When this is done, the four of them leave for unknown adventures, while the lounge piano player sings and Slim does a dance out the door.

The Frenchmen on Martinique are all small men in white suits with thin moustaches and slicked-back hair. They seem not to fit in the hot, tropical climate and the colourful cultural setting. They seem to have little to do with the local blacks, except employ them as barmen. Upon close scrutiny, the people in the background of every scene are mixed without segregation; black sailors flirt with white women and buy them drinks, a mixed-race crowd stands around the piano and sing and dance together. The island is definitely a French colony first and foremost, and the local Caribbean culture is not very prominent.

The Caribbean is seemingly a place where Americans can go and not take sides; Harry's initial refusal in about every aspect of helping the French resistance is always accompanied by his insistence that he is on neither side and is just doing his job. Perhaps this is Harry's reason for being in Martinique, so he can be free from politics and drama and just make some money without being judged. But it turns out that even the Caribbean cannot escape the war's highly politicized and dangerous grip, and Harry is sucked into making a decision between doing the right thing while risking his life or remaining safe while helping no one. Slim is also trying to escape from some difficult past in Martinique, but is happy in the end to have given some of herself to a cause. And Eddie is also escaping in Martinique by drowning himself in a rum-bottle, but his help is actually indispensable to Harry and the Du Bursacs. The Caribbean may help obscure the line between right and wrong, but in the end the choice always has to be made.

Only Angels Have Wings

Let it never be said that Latin Americans have a monopoly on machismo. If Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings has no other point, it is to project an image of sturdy US masculinity, shielded from emotion or weakness by the rituals of camaraderie.

Cary Grant plays Geoff Carter, a no-nonsense "man's man" who's running an airline in the South American banana port of Barranca. His job is to ensure mail delivery over the Andes, but his planes can only just clear the lowest pass, at 14,000 feet.

What's more, the cordillera is frequently clouded in, while down at sea level the airstrip is often affected by fog as well as by near interminable rain. The young fliers who work for Carter have to take death in their stride. Early on, one of them is killed as he crash lands in the fog. He's consigned to instant oblivion by his comrades: "Who's Joe?" they say of their absent (former) friend.

Beyond the aerial stunts, brief shots of a mountain lookout from which "Tex" reports back to base on conditions at the pass, and an opening sequence on the wharf and in the bars of the town, the film's action takes place almost exclusively in the hotel and bar run by John "Dutchy" Van Reiter. Dutchy's bankrolling the airmail operation, and if he can fulfill his pledge to deliver the mail on time for one more week he's guaranteed a government contract and subsidy--with which he could buy more powerful planes that could soar more easily over rather than through the mountain range.

For the time being, though, Carter, Dutchy, and the young American fliers remain hemmed in, between ocean and cordillera, in a country whose culture and language none of them know (nor seem interested to learn), stuck in the bar when they're not up in the air, while outside all is rain, fog, cloud, and dark. They are forced to be independent, self-reliant, and affect indifference to the world around them, as though in revenge for the fact that that world seems to offer them little comfort or respite.

Into this charmless circle wanders Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), a speciality chorus girl en route from Valparaiso to Panama whose boat stops in Barranca for a brief few hours. Long enough, however, for her to be captivated by this outpost of endangered fraternity, while also shocked by its callous disregard for sentiment.

She chooses to stay on, at least until the next boat passes at the end of the week, and so witnesses a second feminine intrusion into the aviators' cramped environment: Judy MacPherson (Rita Hayworth's first major role) is Carter's former love interest, now married to an airman shunned by his colleagues for having broken their code of conduct, baling out of a stricken plane and allowing his mechanic to die.

Both women threaten but also affirm many of the airmen's values: Bonnie introduces some domestication (making a pot of coffee, which is initially denounced as "cooking," but later welcomed) as well as pressing Carter on his past, but she eventually takes up the refrain of "Who's Joe?" and ends the movie on the point of suppressing her own emotions by moving on, taking the next boat rather than staying in town. Judy, too, promises to be a disruptive influence, reminding Carter of all he has left behind, only to take on his tough-minded code of loyalty by learning to stick even with her disgraced husband.

In the end, some kind of compromise is achieved. Bonnie effectively takes the place of Carter's buddy, the older pilot ironically nicknamed "Kid," who dies manfully and alone but not before admitting his love for the man he calls "Poppa." Carter finally, but indirectly, asks Bonnie to stay with him, after shedding a reluctant tear or two for Kid's death.

And Judy commits herself to protect her wounded man. Not that he is alone: for these are all suffering bodies that we see on the screen. When Carter is accidentally shot in the shoulder, he's greeted with the observation "You've joined the rest of us cripples." These men are debilitated by their physical, emotional, and psychic injuries, but feel that their masculinity is demonstrated only by carrying on regardless.

Latin America has often been portrayed as a suitably rugged environment in which to test and prove masculinity: this is a theme that unites an entire tradition of movie-making from (at least) The Lost World onwards. Only Angels Have Wings does briefly offer an alternative, when at the very outset Bonnie peers into a bar in which the locals are dancing and singing, and finds herself carried away by the music and rhythm. But she soon rejects the possibility of immersion in local culture, and is delighted to meet fellow Americans: "Sure sounds good to hear something that doesn't sound like pig Latin."

As a result, however, she enters the caged world of paranoid masculinity constructed by these wounded Americans abroad.