The Tarnished Angels (1958) & To Have and Have Not (1944)

The Tarnished Angels

Directed by Douglas Sirk
US, 1958, b/w, 91 min.
With Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack

"Adapted from William Faulkner’s Pylon and considered by the author to be the best film realization of any of his novels, The Tarnished Angels is set in New Orleans during the 1930s. Reuniting the cast from director Douglas Sirk’s previous film, Written on the Wind, the film stars Robert Stack as a World War I ace who works as a carnival flier, Dorothy Malone as his parachute-jumper wife, and Rock Hudson as a newspaper reporter who looks on as Stack’s unhappy family fights a battle forsurvival. Through the film’s striking black-and-white CinemaScope camera work, Sirk’s preoccupation with the spaceof interpersonal relationships has never been more clearly or dynamically expressed. The illusion of freedom afforded by flight stands in stark contrast to the hobbled, earthbound concerns of Sirk’s characters. As German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder succinctly noted: "I have rarely felt fear and loneliness so much as in this film.""


To Have and Have Not

Directed by Howard Hawks
US, 1944, b/w, 100 min.
With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan

"Only nominally based on Hemingway’s novel, Hawks’ World War II-era morality play underscores the necessity of responsibility, even when burdened with the failure of others. Set in Martinique, the film features Humphrey Bogart as a cynical fishing-boat privateer who finally decides to fight for the French Resistance after falling in love with a girl (Lauren Bacall, here in her debut). To Have and Have Not is above all an atmosphere piece, however. Night clubs and hotel lobbies, strange shafts of light reflecting on the surface of the South Sea, witty exchanges and sexual double entendres—these are what has made the film a classic."

Blurbs from the HFA website

Note: Two absolutely bad-ass movies complete with cruel, world-wise men and women. It was funny how almost every scene in To have or have not involved somebody either lighting up or putting out a cigarette.