Daily Dialogue — July 10, 2015

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”

— To Have and Have Not (1944), screen play by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner, novel by Ernest Hemingway

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Subtext.

Trivia: At the funeral for her husband, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall put a whistle in his coffin. It was a reference to the famous line she says to him in their first film together To Have and Have Not (1944): “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”.

Dialogue On Dialogue: It’s an interesting fact of movie history that during the era of censorship (Hays Code), writers were forced to use subtext to convey story material that would have been deemed immoral if handled directly. This is a great example.