"The Breaking Point" is technically considered to be a remake of Ernest Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not," first brought to the screen with Bogie and Bacall. But it feels like a whole different story in just about every conceivable way. John Garfield excelled at playing prototypical noir heroes, desperate men doing desperate things when feeling trapped by an unfair fate. This is the role he has here, and watching his character dig himself deeper and deeper into shady doings that he knows are shady from the outset is like watching a slowly unfolding car accident. Patricia Neal is extremely fetching and knows how to deliver a sardonic one liner like no one's business, but the script doesn't do a whole lot with her other than have her appear here and there as window dressing. The stand out for me was Phyllis Thaxter as Garfield's plain Jane wife. It's refreshing in a film from 1950 to see a housewife portrayed as something other than a mindless cipher for her husband's thoughts and desires. Instead, she has a mind of her own and reserves of strength he might not give her credit for.The most quietly astonishing thing about "The Breaking Point" is its treatment of Garfield's friend and ship assistant, a black man played by Juano Hernandez. The fact that he's black is a complete non-issue in the film. He's treated as an equal by Garfield and his family, and none of the stereotypes about black people that were so prevalent in movies from this time period, even in movies with their hearts in the right places, are present here. The final scene of the film involves this character's son, and it's so striking, and so devastating, that in retrospect the entire film almost seems to be about that scene even though it has almost nothing to do with everything that's come before it.Michael Curtiz provides the no-frills direction.Grade: A

John Garfield's penultimate film was a more faithful adaption of Hemingway's minor novel To Have And Have Not yet ironically the original title had to be changed for reasons that elude me as I have always believed that titles cannot be copyrighted. Be that as it may Garfield turns in a fine performance as Harry Morgan, married this time around and sailing out of California rather than Havana. Phyllis Thaxter is excellent as his world-weary wife and Patrica Neal's whore in all but name complements her perfectly and gets the lion's share of the one-liners. Wallace Ford is suitably oily as the architect of all Morgan's troubles and Juan Hernandez lends sterling support as Morgan's crew-cum-friend.

He's abrasive, truculent and dangerous, but Garfield is also mesmerising in this powerful film.Based on a novel by Ernest Hemmingway, the story is about WW2 veteran Harry Morgan (John Garfield) who runs a charter fishing boat business that is sinking financially. The lack of money impacts on his long-suffering wife, Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter), and his friend Wesley Park (Juano Hernández).When he is ripped-off by a client in Mexico, Harry becomes involved with shady deals involving using his boat for people smuggling and eventually rescuing gangsters. Along the way, his loyalty to Lucy is tested when he meets party girl Leona Charles (Patricia Neal). Everything comes to a head in a battle on the boat, but the ending is a tough one with a particularly poignant last scene.I only saw this film recently when it turned up on TCM. I thought it must have some connection to Huston's "Key Largo" because both have a very similar shootout on a fishing boat at the end. However, the only connection is that Huston probably pinched the ending from Hemingway's novel – "Key Largo" is actually based on a play by Maxwell Anderson. Later I realised that I had indeed seen the other two versions that were made from Hemingway's novel. All three are superior films; the Audie Murphy version, "The Gun Runners", probably features his best performance."The Breaking Point" was directed by Michael Curtiz, and the style of the man who made "Casablanca" shines through.Harry's descent to the dark side is understandable in the context of the story; circumstances continually conspire to bring him down, and he is too trusting of people who are basically scumbags. Garfield was perfect in the role – Harry Morgan is a man who has the nerve to walk the line between the legal and the illegal. He was a war hero, and feels that his service to his country should have provided better opportunities now that the war is over.The script is smart and the dialogue crackles in the exchanges between Garfield and Patricia Neal. In fact, the lines are nearly as brilliant as were those for Bogart and Bacall in the first adaption of the story, Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not".Sunny coastal footage is balanced with dark, moody studio shots highlighting the dark and light of the story. This is a classy piece of work from a novel that seems able to stand any number of interpretations.

Having just seen the Scorsese-restored print of this film at Noir City 10 in San Francisco, I was struck by several things; Garfield's portrayal of a veteran caught up in a terminally narrow view of his own masculinity, Patricia Neal's over the top sensuality contrasted to Thaxter's mousy but devoted wife; and the unbelievably poignant ending along with the unusual treatment of race throughout.The relationship between Juano Hernandez' Wesley and Garfield's Harry is about as race neutral as it could be. Yes, the white guy is the "boss", but he IS the boss, and the fact that his subordinate is black is not at all made into an explicit comment beyond the fact that the reverse would, of course, have been unthinkable in a movie of this time (or even, for the most part, in our own time.) But the fact is they are partners - and they seem truly friends beyond their business relationship. All seems quite "natural". There is an odd scene when Wesley brings his son (apparently Hernandez' real son) along to Harry's house one morning and Harry's two daughters take him off to school with them where it certainly seems that the kids have never met each other before although their fathers have worked together for (we find out later) is 12 years - indeed since before any of the kids were born. Perhaps Joseph (the little boy) is just shy and although he has met the girls before he is reluctant to say hi to them; perhaps this is indeed a reflection of a race-relation-induced reticence on his part, which would not at all be unreasonable.In any case (and here come the spoilers), when Wesley is ultimately shot and then unceremoniously tossed overboard near the film's violent climax we see that Harry is completely devastated; so much so that he hatches an even more desperate reckoning with the "men from St Louis" than he had already been anticipating. Indeed, he seems at that point to be content to die if that is what it takes to avenge his friend; he simply had not considered that this might be the cost of his scheme to get out from under his financial troubles – that someone else would have to pay a price for his problems. Harry dispatches all the bad guys, and is shot up so badly he must be carried off the boat once it is towed back to port by the Coast Guard. This is where the surprising role of race comes in. We see Joseph, Wesley's son, in the crowd at the dock as Harry's wife and daughters are standing in tears, distraught at the prospect of Harry's demise or at the very least the loss of a limb, are shown huddled together, being solicitously taken care of the by the authorities. Harry is put into the ambulance, and the girls and his wife go off to the hospital, too. We see Patricia Neal (with yet another new "captain") and she is allowed to comment on the proceedings. And then we see a shot from above, showing the dock as the police clear the crowd away and tell everyone to go home until the only person left is little Joseph, whom no one paid any attention to, and who is looking forlornly at the boat, waiting for his father to come ashore. The camera holds this shot, and then the film closes.Here we were just seconds away from being allowed to imagine the ending being about Harry's becoming reconciled to a different version of his own masculinity, one in which is not a tower of independent strength and violent self-sufficiency, even so much as to declare, in a rather different tone than he had earlier, that one is "nothing when you're alone" and telling his wife he needs her and will do whatever she says (when earlier this dialogue had been completely reversed), and even to the extent to letting the docs remove his shattered arm. And then Michael Curtiz makes the focus of all the emotion built up over the last hour and a half not Harry and his problems, but the fate of this little boy, completely neglected by those around him, both those who knew him and the officials who might at least be expected to ask why he is still hanging around. We know that HE is going to have to go home to tell his mother (who we know exists from an earlier interchange between Harry and Wesley) that Wesley is nowhere to be found…I don't think I have seen a more astonishing, and humanely interesting ending to a film of this type and period. This film bears re-watching and much thought; certainly a lot of thought (and collaboration between Curtiz, Garfield, and Neal) went into it.(It should be noted that there is a fairly rare treatment of Chinese people in this movie as well, both as criminals (human trafficker) and victims (those trafficked) and that this element, too, bears some further consideration; certainly the portrayal of Chinese in the picture is resolutely unsympathetic (and not just in comparison to the treatment of the few black characters) and this is rather surprising given that other films of the period portray them sympathetically as wartime allies and as American citizens and the "Red Chinese" only intervened in the Korean War as the film was being released so that could not have figured into the portrayal of Chinese when the film was actually being shot.)