I took issue below with Terry Teachout's curious preference for To Have and Have Not over Casablanca. Chatting about Bogart movies with a friend this weekend, I think I have a slightly better explanation for why Casablanca is the right vehicle for him and TH&HN is not.

My friend mentioned that she has some trouble with all of those old Bogart films because she finds Bogart so physically repulsive that he detracts from the role. To be sure, H.B. was not Hollywood's prettiest face, a fact that (unsurpisingly) seems to bother more female viewers of the films than male ones. [Female members of my family voiced a similar complaint about Something's Got to Give last Christmas.]

Of course, in both TH&HN and Casablanca, Bogart comes away with the girl. But part of what makes Casablanca work-- part of what makes Bogart's Rick one of his most enviable and sympathetic roles-- is the way Rick enchants the women in Casablanca.

We are given the impression that Rick is a generally popular character, but the women who drift into the scenes (mostly) don't seem hung up on him in a particularly romantic way-- they seem attracted to him and his mystery just the same as Rick's male patrons. There are two major and obvious exceptions to this, two women who do fall for Rick-- and hard.

One, of course, is Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa Lund, and the other is Yvonne;

Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember.

Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?

Rick: I never make plans that far in advance. ...

Yvonne: Rick, I'm sick and tired of having you --

Rick: Sasha, call a cab.

Have you ever seen the prerelease cut of The Big Sleep? Turner Classic Movies has run it a couple of times, and I'm not sure it's available any other way. The film was all ready for release, and then the big reaction of To Have and Have Not caused the studio to pull it and heat up the relationship between Bogart and Bacall--which they did at the expense of chunks of plot. Watching it is a bit of a trip in three ways: 1) It's like watching a film from a parallel universe: It looks and feels like the movie one's familiar with, but is eerily not the same; 2) The plot makes sense this time around; and 3) The Bogart/Bacall relationship is nothing but a professional one. The fact that the romance is a last minute graft explains some of your reaction.

"Of course, in both TH&HN and Casablanca, Bogart comes away with the girl."

Right. Just after Godot’s triumphant entrance into Moscow with the Three Sisters.

My Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index is a mere 40%. I like Teachout's blog a lot, I do, but really-- Johnny Mercer over Cole Porter? The Moviegoer over The End of the Affair? To Have and Have Not over Casablanca?

Yeesh.

There's nothing like finding oneself in agreement with The New York Times' highly dubious Ethicist to make one rethink one's position. Nonetheless, it's only fair to note that the Ethicist and I agree on something-- upon reflection, I'll stick to my guns, but it did give me pause.

He writes:

It is futile to insist that a complicated symbolic act has only a single meaning. Different people can do the same thing for a variety of reasons.

Thanks to all who linked to my TNR Piece on Justice Thomas last week-- Josh Chafetz, Glenn Reynolds, James Joyner, Stuart Buck, "JDB", Betsy Newmark, Spencer at Mediocrity's Copilot, Bryan at Sly Bri, John Stevenson, Tom at Big Tent, Amber Taylor, Lawrence Solum, Howard Bashman, Jeremy Pierce, Roger Schlafy, Mark Adams, John Coleman, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Ken Masugi, Steve Dillard, Jonathan Adler, Eugene Volokh, and Randy Barnett for trying to link to the piece before his co-bloggers beat him to the punch; thanks also to memeorandum for giving the piece its very own memeorandum entry (and apologies to anybody herein neglected).

UPDATE: And thanks to Robert Johnson (who didn't much like it) and Ralph Luker (who doesn't say).

Tomorrow is International Kissing Day (for related issues, see here), so it's time for another poem. Since I spent nearly all of yesterday lolling and lollygagging in the sun or zooming along highways 50, 404, and 495, I had some trouble dreding up a good one for today. Luckily, friend of Crescat Dimitrity Masterov has come through:
When We with Sappho, by Kenneth Rexroth

“. . . about the cool water
the wind sounds through sprays
of apple, and from the quivering leaves
slumber pours down . . .”

We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
Summer in our hair, and the smell
Of summer in our twined bodies,
Summer in our mouths, and summer
In the luminous, fragmentary words
Of this dead Greek woman.
Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Your grace is as beautiful as sleep.
You move against me like a wave
That moves in sleep.
Your body spreads across my brain
Like a bird filled summer;
Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
But like a nimbus that hovers
Over every other thing in all the world.
Lean back. You are beautiful,
As beautiful as the folding
Of your hands in sleep.

We have grown old in the afternoon.
Here in our orchard we are as old
As she is now, wherever dissipate
In that distant sea her gleaming dust
Flashes in the wave crest
Or stains the murex shell.
All about us the old farm subsides
Into the honey bearing chaos of high summer.
In those far islands the temples
Have fallen away, and the marble
Is the color of wild honey.
There is nothing left of the gardens
That were once about them, of the fat
Turf marked with cloven hooves.
Only the sea grass struggles
Over the crumbled stone,
Over the splintered steps,
Only the blue and yellow
Of the sea, and the cliffs
Red in the distance across the bay.
Lean back.
Her memory has passed to our lips now.
Our kisses fall through summer’s chaos
In our own breasts and thighs.

Gold colossal domes of cumulus cloud
Lift over the undulant, sibilant forest.
The air presses against the earth.
Thunder breaks over the mountains.
Far off, over the Adirondacks,
Lightning quivers, almost invisible
In the bright sky, violet against
The grey, deep shadows of the bellied clouds.
The sweet virile hair of thunder storms
Brushes over the swelling horizon.
Take off your shoes and stockings.
I will kiss your sweet legs and feet
As they lie half buried in the tangle
Of rank scented midsummer flowers.
Take off your clothes. I will press
Your summer honeyed flesh into the hot
Soil, into the crushed, acrid herbage
Of midsummer. Let your body sink
Like honey through the hot
Granular fingers of summer.

Rest. Wait. We have enough for a while.
Kiss me with your mouth
Wet and ragged, your mouth that tastes
Of my own flesh. Read to me again
The twisting music of that language
That is of all others, itself a work of art.
Read again those isolate, poignant words
Saved by ancient grammarians
To illustrate the conjugations
And declensions of the more ancient dead.
Lean back in the curve of my body,
Press your bruised shoulders against
The damp hair of my body.
Kiss me again. Think, sweet linguist,
In this world the ablative is impossible.
No other one will help us here.
We must help ourselves to each other.
The wind walks slowly away from the storm;
Veers on the wooded crests; sounds
In the valleys. Here we are isolate,
One with the other; and beyond
This orchard lies isolation,
The isolation of all the world.
Never let anything intrude
On the isolation of this day,
These words, isolate on dead tongues,
This orchard, hidden from fact and history,
These shadows, blended in the summer light,
Together isolate beyond the world’s reciprocity.

Do not talk any more. Do not speak.
Do not break silence until
We are weary of each other.
Let our fingers run like steel
Carving the contours of our bodies’ gold.
Do not speak. My face sinks
In the clotted summer of your hair.
The sound of the bees stops.
Stillness falls like a cloud.
Be still. Let your body fall away
Into the awe filled silence
Of the fulfilled summer --
Back, back, infinitely away --
Our lips weak, faint with stillness.

See. The sun has fallen away.
Now there are amber
Long lights on the shattered
Boles of the ancient apple trees.
Our bodies move to each other
As bodies move in sleep;
At once filled and exhausted,
As the summer moves to autumn,
As we, with Sappho, move towards death.
My eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
Autumn of your uncoiled hair.
Your body moves in my arms
On the verge of sleep;
And it is as though I held
In my arms the bird filled
Evening sky of summer.