6) “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.” – To Have and Have Not, 1944
This line, from the 1944 film To Have and Have Not, landed at number 34 on AFI’s list. The movie itself is based on a 1937 novel by Ernest Hemingway, directed by the incomparable Howard Hawks, and stars legendary movie couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in their first on-screen pairing. Despite this incredible pedigree, the film is good but not quite great, and plays more like Hawks’ own (lesser) version of Casablanca than a Hemingway-esque masterpiece.
Of course, Bogie and Bacall do have great chemistry together, which is most famously exemplified by the scene in which Bacall says the above line to Bogie (who then lets out a low whistle). The problem with this line is not that it’s bad but that it has aged poorly; at the time, this was an incredibly suggestive bit of dialogue.
Today, however, it sounds like the kind of eye-roll-inducing quip that would show up in one of the cheesier James Bond movies (probably something from the Roger Moore era).
Also, at the time of filming, Bogart was 44 years old. Bacall, on the other hand, was only 19, and that just makes the whole thing a bit creepy.
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