In Howard Hawks's "To Have and Have Not" (1944), neither Harry "Steve" Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) nor Marie "Slim" Browning (Lauren Bacall) has a backstory explaining their personalities and motivations. Morgan asks Slim how she ended up in Martinique, but she only comments on narrative expectations: "This is about the time for [...] the story of my life." She doesn't go on to tell it; instead, Morgan draws conclusions from her behavior: "That slap in the face you took. [...] You hardly blinked an eye. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do that. Yeah, I know a lot about you, Slim." A character's actions, then, make backstory superfluous. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 January 2021)

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