I’ve been intrigued by classic films since I became fascinated with quality filmmaking and studying its art. In classic films you often see drink and/or drinking used as a metaphor much more often than you do today. I’m not talking about Days of Wine and Roses sort of in-your-face with alcoholism and its destruction of a man’s soul, but more of how drinking (and smoking) were used as character signals for dramatic subtext, whether it be, ‘hey, that guy just lit a long thin cigarette, he must be morally ambiguous,’ or it’s in a sexual context where sharing a drink with pregnant pauses and dramatic lighting display the growing tension between two people who may just well be married to boot. In other words, drinking and smoking used to be used as dramatic shorthand to great effect. Where sexual tension was once gracefully handled between two characters by the touching of their hands at the passing of a bottle or cocktail glass it is now grossly on display and, more often than not, handled without the slightest hint of subtlety or panache. It’s ironic that what sexuality was once kept off-screen for propriety’s sake is now left on-screen, often with all the delicacy and respect afforded a plumbing training video, and what was once a romanticized and accepted part of adult life, drinking, has been co-opted by the forces of political correctness and is often left off-screen or avoided entirely (except as a means to self-destruction), much to our loss.

So, I present to you, To Have or Have Not, a movie that discovered Lauren Bacall at 19 (!) and brought she and Humphrey Bogart together during and after the filming of it (he would divorce his wife soon after and marry Bacall, much his junior) and is essentially a poor man’s Casablanca. Not to say it isn’t a great film, but beside Casablanca it falls well short; though Bacall and Bogart’s chemistry is mesmerizing. In this case, a bottle of whisky is used to underline the burgeoning tension in their relationship, and the exchange of the bottle between them, after she’s swindled it from an unsuspecting French Naval officer, underlines how they are vying for both information about each other as well as control over the dynamic between them. After he’s left her at the bar with the naval officer we get this:

She’s brought a bottle of whisky (or rum, he uses water with it, but because they’re in Martinique it may well be rum) and she goads him about her behavior at the bar though he denies it bothered him. Finally, once he makes them both drinks and he asks her about her ’story’, because she took a slap in the face from the Vichy gestapo without flinching, she gets upset and leaves; him, literally, holding the bottle.

It takes him all of about five seconds to beeline for her room across the hall – wouldn’t you? -where, once again, the bottle is treated as currency; neither of them willing to commit to its ownership but both using it as impetus to see more of and learn more about one another. 

Soft mood music begins playing as he knocks on her door and she, distraught and upset about his challenging her to expose herself, invites him in. The bottle continues to be used as an excuse to connect with each other as he says, ‘You left this.’

The discussion continues to escalate their emotional gamesmanship and she begins to divulge details about her life, how she brought the bottle to Bogart’s character to embarrass him, and her possibly sordid past. Finally, after the climax of the scene, captured in the image at the top of this post, he leaves, her looking forlorn and lost, and once again, looking to use the booze as a pretense to join him.

‘There’s that bottle again,’ Harry says when he finds her at his door again, mentioning what a ‘problem’ the bottle is becoming. However, the third time is the charm as in this exchange and ‘gifting’ of the bottle between them the interaction culminates in their first kiss as the critical moment in the film arrives; when Harry decides to help the French Resistance and, in the process, Bacall’s character ‘Slim’. The tension released, the bottle disposed of in their thoughts, and Slim remarking that they must simply try the kissing again (but next time with Harry shaved), she leaves Harry’s room with the immortal line:

Slim: You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and…blow.

So, you’ll have to pardon this lengthy and self-indulgent post all in the name of my recognizing more and more how drinking is used in classic films as a stand-in for emotional development, again, as shorthand for social dynamics and character depth or dimensions (see: Bogart’s soliloquy in Casablanca, ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the world…’ with his lonely drink in hand). Mind you, not a drop of alcohol is actually consumed in the scenes I’ve outlined, but it’s an ever-present calling card to the universal appeal of alcohol in its ability to bring people together and be used as a catalyst to connect strangers. Whereas, with the mores of today’s cinema, as I’ve mentioned, it’s almost exclusively portrayed as a self-destructive element or to quickly, and lazily, outline a characters’ major character flaws. In To Have or Have Not it’s treated as a great companion to an affair of the heart, and I couldn’t agree more. Cheers, Harry and Slim.

And just so you don’t go away empty-handed, here’s a cocktail developed in the name of Humphrey Bogart called the ‘Bogey Cocktail’.

Bogey¹

• 1 oz gin
• 1 oz dry vermouth
• 1/4 oz Bourbon
• 1/4oz Pernod
• 1 dash lemon juice

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled then strain into a cocktail glass.

A minor variation can be found here. And as the man himself said, ‘I should never have switched to martinis.’

On a side note, Jay at Oh Gosh! did a nice (and much more concise) piece on drinking and classic films with Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Check it out here, good stuff.

1. from Stan Jones’ Jones’ Complete Bar Guide [↩]