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A sharp, sexy wartime adventure with crackling banter, star chemistry, and Howard Hawks’s cool, effortless pacing. It’s less about plot mechanics than attitude, romance, and the pleasure of watching two icons invent a new kind of screen spark.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 1h 40m
Director: Howard Hawks
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall
A Martinique charter boat skipper gets mixed up with the underground French resistance operatives during WWII.
Howard Hawks
Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall
A sharp, sexy wartime adventure with crackling banter, star chemistry, and Howard Hawks’s cool, effortless pacing. It’s less about plot mechanics than attitude, romance, and the pleasure of watching two icons invent a new kind of screen spark.
Howard Hawks turns a wartime resistance story into a breezy, flirtatious showcase for attitude. The plot is sturdy enough, but the real engine is the chemistry: Bogart’s dry, weathered cool meeting Bacall’s astonishingly self-possessed debut presence. Their scenes feel like they’re inventing a private language in real time.
What makes the film endure is how casual it is about its own greatness. It moves with the confidence of a movie that knows exactly how much to leave unsaid. The resistance intrigue, nightclub atmosphere, and tropical setting all add texture, but the lasting impression is the sense of two people sizing each other up and deciding to enjoy the duel.
If you come for wartime suspense, you may find the movie lighter and looser than expected. If you come for classic Hollywood at its most magnetic, it’s essential. Bacall is the revelation, Bogart is in peak form, and together they make the film feel both timeless and unmistakably of its era.
SilentDawn (4★) · 1044 likes
73 Lauren Bacall's entrance is superstar level. Nonchalantly lighting a cigarette, it's as if the entire screen opens up for her presence. The movie as a whole is pretty great, but you're here for Bogie and Bacall, and holy shit, do they deliver.
phoebe 💫 (3.5★) · 953 likes
hi letterboxd dot com, tonight I’m thinking about how in every scene in this, humphrey bogart and lauren bacall look like they’re sharing a private joke, and maybe that’s just love
KYK (4★) · 627 likes
what the....i’m not new to lauren bacall but every time she appeared i got hella goosebumps like i was discovering her screen presence for the first time? wow, her POWER. 35mm. MoMA.
mandijo (4.5★) · 580 likes
From IMDB: Lauren Bacall wrote in her autobiography that it was in the third week of shooting that friendly banter between her and Humphrey Bogart turned into something more. At the end of shooting one day, "...he leaned over, put his hand under my chin, and kissed me. It was impulsive - he was a bit shy - no lunging wolf tactics. He took a worn package of matches out of his pocket and asked me to put my phone number on the back. I did." ❤️❤️❤️
cassandra (4.5★) · 489 likes
Lauren is so beautiful it hurts. That black dress??? That little dance she does at the end??? Yes I’m obsessed.
The closest essential companion piece: wartime romance, moral pressure, and iconic studio-era chemistry in an exotic setting.
For more Bogart at his coolest, with Hawks-style verbal sparring and a dense, seductive noir atmosphere.
A tense, character-driven Bogart vehicle that pairs danger with sharp interpersonal friction and classic studio-era grit.
Another Hawks film built on professional camaraderie, coded dialogue, and romantic tension under pressure.
If the appeal is rapid-fire banter and romantic combat, this is Hawks at his most dazzlingly verbal.
For Bogart’s hardboiled persona and a lean, iconic noir framework that complements the film’s coolness.
Adventure and romance collide through mismatched partners whose chemistry carries the entire film.
For wartime espionage, romantic tension, and elegant studio craftsmanship with emotional stakes.
A stylish postwar intrigue film with atmosphere, wit, and a morally slippery underworld.
A glamorous, sexually charged classic that thrives on star presence and dangerous attraction.
If the appeal includes sharp dialogue and seductive fatalism, this is a peak-era noir counterpart.
For polished 1940s mystery, romantic obsession, and a similarly immaculate studio sheen.
wartime resistance, romantic tension, star chemistry, witty banter, exotic setting, loyalty and friendship, underworld intrigue, classic Hollywood glamour
classic Hollywood, wartime adventure, romantic drama, noir-adjacent, banter, star power, 1940s, resistance, exotic locale, screwball edge