Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point is a more desolate and fatalistic version of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not than the playful Howard Hawks film. The numerous writers on the Hawks film jettisoned all but the first few chapters of the novel. Ranald MacDougall's screenplay for The Breaking Point is more faithful to the novel, but shifts the locale from Key West to the West Coast and gives the seaman protagonist, Harry Morgan, a wife and two daughters. Morgan's motivation to give a better life for his family leads him to take on questionable tasks that have tragic results.
Along with his work in Force of Evil, I think John Garfield's performance as Harry Morgan ranks as his best work. It is a soulful performance, but there is a sense of his real life plight leaking into the picture. After his wife had been exposed as a Communist by Red Channels, Garfield had been hounded by HUAC and the FBI. The collapse of his production company, after the commercial wipe-out of Force of Evil, was a huge blow. He subsequently signed a two picture deal with Warner Brothers, which he had left in frustration only a few years before. He was a hunted and beleaguered man and it is impossible to look at this film and not see it.
Fortunately, Michael Curtiz was an esteemed and beloved colleague (at least by Garfield) who had directed him to great success in Garfield's film debut, Four Daughters. Garfield's Harry Morgan is less insolent and more desperate than Bogart's. The Breaking Point is not a romantic fantasy like Hawks' film. The surroundings are more seamy and there is even a cockfight in the background of one scene. Max Steiner's score is used judiciously with silence often punctuating the tension. The voice overs by Garfield make the film seem like a narrated nightmare. The movie concludes with a winsome crane shot of a boy experiencing the ultimate trauma, the death of a parent.
Garfield was always stout as an action film lead, but The Breaking Point shows his range. Garfield is very tender and vulnerable in his domestic scenes, his macho carapace discarded. Phyllis Thaxter, who played an parade of patient wives before her career was sidetracked by polio, was never better and has a palpable erotic chemistry with Garfield. As a good time girl, Patricia Neal is miscast. When she sings along to a jukebox, one can't help but compare her to Bacall (and Hoagy Carmichael) and find her wanting. She spars well with Garfield, but her manner doesn't jibe with his Method. Juano Hernandez as Morgan's first mate and Wallace Ford as Morgan's oleaginous lawyer are memorable. Effective entertainment from 1950 that has not aged.
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