Saw To Have & Have Not on the big screen tonight... (1 Viewer)

[Scott Leopold]

I had never seen this previously, and I was blown away. The Victoria Theatre, which is a traditional stage theatre, has a summer movie series every year. They have free soda & popcorn prior to the movie, live music, a short (this year it's a cartoon, last year it was a Shadow serial), then a feature film. So far this year we've seen In the Heat of the Night, Hello Dolly, and The Harvey Girls. We've had a good time so far, but tonight was spectacular.

One thing I've noticed is the varying quality of the prints they show. The only movie we saw last year was Bringing Up Baby, and it was in pretty miserable shape. In the Heat of the Night was in decent shape, Hello Dolly looked soft and like it had been dragged through the dirt a few times, while The Harvey Girls looked fairly crisp & clean. Tonight's print was interesting because it appeared to be made up of several others. Once was a nice, crisp print. It had some damage, but otherwise looked great for a 58 year old movie. A short portion looked pretty bad, like an overexposed print that had been run through a meat grinder. There was no actual damage, but it looked pretty bad compared to the rest of the movie. The rest was a breathtaking nitrate print. While it had a little damage and a couple nicks & scratches, it looked absolutely beautiful. Luckily, almost all of the most notable/famous parts of the movie were on the nitrate print. These portions were some of the most stunning pieces of film I've ever seen--the fact that they included a 20 foot high, 19 year old Lauren Bacall didn't hurt, either.

The movie itself was great. This is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. I'm nuts not only about Lauren Bacall, but also Humphrey Bogart & Howard Hawks, and the combination was phenomenal. While a couple things were a bit off the mark--Bacall's singing voice made me twinge on a couple notes, and Sheldon Leonard's French accent couldn't be anything other than amusing--the rest of the movie more than made up for these minor, minor points. The comedy in the movie is great, and the entire audience was roaring with laughter so much as some spots that I missed some dialogue. The dialogue itself was one of the best parts of the movie--witty, sharp, concise, and full of some of the best innuendo & double-entendre ever filmed. Everything pales in comparison, though, to the chemistry between Bogey & Bacall. They're always great together onscreen, but this was their masterpiece.

The whole experience left me salivating for a DVD release. Well, that, and Lauren Bacall.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Plus, it's got Hoagy. Never forget that!
I love Hong Kong Blues and am glad to have that exact performance on CD. Now, if we could only get the DVD. . . .

 

[george kaplan]

A great film (fairly underrated around here).

Unfortunately, being 1944, the song is censored. Still a good one though.

 

[Peter Kline]

The age of a film really has nothing to do with how it looks, usually. It is the print one sees. Some 60s films have not held up well in the looks departmen while earlier films have been preserved properly. Hopefully this film will undergo restoration for DVD. That would, of course, only be in the digital domain most likely so theatrical showings will still be older worn-out prints I'm afraid. Digital is great, but it has given the studios excuses not to restore prints on film. Too bad. Oh yes, it's a fun film.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Nice film, though I've seen it fewer times than I have read Papa Hemingway's novel (which is far, far from his best work). This is a case where a film adaptation improves slightly on the book. (Another one would be Fahrenheit 451. And To Kill a Mockingbird.)

 

[Greg_S_H]

Unfortunately, being 1944, the song is censored. Still a good one though.

I have the song in both flavors, but that is the superior performance, IMO. At least, of the versions I have. It's also a case of having heard the censored version first, so it sounds more "right" to me.