The Breaking Point (1950)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Best movie ever!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The Breaking Point (1950)Forget for a second that this is a Hemingway story, or that it was more famously and loosely made into a movie ("To Have and Have Not)" with Bogart and Bacall in 1944.Here was have John Garfield playing with great realism a boating man, Morgan, who has hit hard times. So he is tempted by an illegal run for some big money. And it goes badly. Then, to get out of that jam, he is drawn into yet another one, which goes even worse.So this is really a story of a man against the odds. He's basically a good person, which we see in how he treats his partner, his wife, his kids. But it's partly because of those others that he feels he has to come through and make some money. In a way, this is what Hemingway's novel is all about--how a man copes with crisis. (This is always what Hemingway is about, in a way.) It's great starting material.The two women in the story, made to look slightly similar, are key in a Hemingway kind of way, too, because a Hemingway man is essentially torn by love all his life. Morgan's wife is terrific in a simple, unexciting way, and when Patricia Neal appears very sexually hungry, Morgan at first is not interested. Neal's character is not quite a noir femme fatale, since she really wants nothing for herself, but is a distraction and siren.The two of them are terrific. Around them are a whole swarm of characters, some with important roles and excellent character actors, but we really get inside the head of Garfield and we really feel the weirdly brazen and carefree intensity of Neal. So why is this a forgotten film? For one, Garfield is a low key leading man. He always is. His effect is subtle. And Neal isn't a steaming hottie or an outrageous caricature like some leading (blonde) women in these crime films. And then, frankly, they don't totally have chemistry on screen, which is neither one's fault alone, and which isn't so inaccurate to the story.And about Hemingway? The book is great. You have to like his style and his manly view, but if you can adapt to that, read it. Easy reading, too. And he set the scene in the waters between Florida and Cuba, which is where he lived and fished. The Bogart version was set in the war, working for the French Resistance in Europe. The Garfield version was set (and shot) in California, with a trip to Mexico. A later version (1958) is set in Florida.This is actually a first rate movie. Part of the success depends on the writing-both Hemingway and the sharp, noir-influenced screenplay by Ranald MacDougall. Note that the photography is by the great Ted McCord (Sound of Music, East of Eden, etc.).The plot has some deeply personal aspects, both with Morgan's wife and kids as they barely scrape by and with the temptation of the sort of femme fatale played with a cool sharpness by Patricia Neal. And it has a serious crime plot with several angles that develop and disperse and develop further. It moves from dark night scenes to open water scenes to a faked fog ending (a flaw, visually, because you can tell it's just been processed for lower contrast even though the sun is out). The movie also has some aspects that strike me as socially relevant, starting with the smuggling of a group of Chinese people out of Mexico at the start and ending with the tragic dilemma of a little African-American boy left literally alone on a big open dock at the final fade. This last aspect (which I can't get specific about without spoiling something) points to one of the really big interpersonal parts of the film that is key, and that I wish had been developed just a hair more because it's so key.On my third viewing, I continue to like it a lot. See it.

***SPOILERS*** Fishing boat Captain Harry Morgan, John Garfield, reaches his breaking point when all the pressures of keeping his prized possession-his boat-drive him to commit a robbery at the Santa Anita Racetrack. After being involved in a Chinese smuggling operation in order to be able to get back to the US from Mexico after his two fishing customers Hannagan & his moll Lona Charles, Ralph Dumke & Patrica Neal, stiffed him Capt.Morgan, or Cappy as he likes to be called, ends up killing his pre arranged, on his boat, contact Mr. Sing, Victor Sin Yung. That's after Mr. Sing pulled a piece, or gun, on Cappy when he refused to pay him his shipping free or $200.00 a head for each of smuggled 8 Chinamen that he promised Sing to sneak into the USA.Now back in L.A with a possible murder rap, the killing of Mr. Sing, facing him the dispossession of his fishing boat for non payments is the very last thing that Cappy has to worry about. It's the sleazy and oily F.R Duncan, Wallace Ford ,who got Cappy involved with Mr. Sing & the 8 Chinamen who's now blackmails him into getting involved in a race track robbery planned by the notorious Danny & his Boys headed by Danny, Guy Thomajan, himself. Danny wants Cappy ,on his fishing boat, to be the gangs getaway driver after the robbery is pulled off. What's even worse if that's at all possible is that Cappy's old lady Lucy, Phyllis Thaxter, is threatening to leave him an take the kids along with her if he doesn't stop running around with the blond & sexy Lona who in fact Cappy really has no interest in! Lucy gets so jealous of Lona and her supposed attraction to her hubby Cappy Morgan that she dyes her dark hair blond, to the shock and dislike of her two young daughters, just to impress him!Painting himself into a corner Cappy reluctantly goes along with Danny & his Boys plans to knock off the race track but has an ace, or a pair of .38's, up his sleeve if anything goes wrong. Like Danny knocking him off when he gets the job done by sailing him and his boys to the safety of Catalina island. As for the that lowlife and back stabbing F.R Duncan he gets his at the race track when trying to outrun the police and make it together with Danny a& Co. to the L.A pier he's shot in the back by racetrack security guards. That all happens while Duncan offers no resistance to the cops or security guards who shot him! Which is a big was a no-no to the then Hayes Commission, a good guy never shoots a bad guy in the back, back in those days but in him being the slime-ball that he was the Hayes Commission must have overlooked it.***SPOILER*** wild shoot-out on Cappy's boat the "Sea Queen" by Danny & the Boys after they offed Cappy's first mate and good friend Wesley Park, Juano Hernamdez, and left him there to rot before dumping him, with Cappy's help, into the Pacific Ocean. Cappy knowing that his fate would be the same as Wesley's got his chance,in checking the boats motor,to pull out his hidden .38's and blow the whole murderous bunch,Danny & the Boys, away. But not after being plugged a good number of times himself by them that in the end Cappy had to have his right, and good, arm amputated in order for him to survive! Survive to start a new life as the manager at his wife Lucy's brother's lettuce farm outside Salinas California.P.S Very emotional scene at the very end of the movie when we see a distraught confused and worried young Joseph Park, Juan Hernandez, all alone on the pier as all the attention swirls around Cappy in his heroic acts in the movie. No one and I mean no one bothered to tell Joseph the fate of his dad Westly who was shot and thrown overboard by Danny & the Boys. But on second thought since Joseph's dad was deep sixth and by then very probably shark bait no one on shore really knew what happened to him.

Garfield is the owner of a charter boat, The Sea Queen, and is having financial problems. His boat is taken from him and he has to support his wife and kids. So far, so Hemingway, more or less.It's not very Hemingwayish thereafter, although that doesn't matter much. Howard Hawks' "To Have And Have Not," was based on the same short novel as this film but didn't stick to the novel's plot either. Why should they? Who wants to watch movies about a one-armed fisherman who gets killed at the end? Garfield agrees to rent his boat for use in a getaway by some big-time robbers. He plans to capture them all and collect the reward that will get him out of hot water. But the thieves scramble aboard at an awkward moment and must shoot Garfield's buddy and helpmate, Juano Hernandez.The angry Garfield takes the boat to sea pursued by the Coast Guard, which plays the role in this movie that the stern and uncooperative cops play in most noirs. There follows an exuberant shoot out along the lines of "Key Largo." The performances are okay. Garfield is Garfield. Phyllis Thaxter -- I don't know. She's a little elegant for the part of the dutiful, loving, proletarian housewife. She was a judge's daughter, after all. Patricia Neal, a fine actress, is not essential to the story and is made up and garbed in an ungainly way. The gangsters are stereotypically nasty in their looks and behavior.The final gun fight is excitingly staged by the seasoned director Michael Curtiz and the set is mounted on gimbals that give the illusion of a small boat at sea -- a nice touch -- with hanging objects swinging from their hooks and deck chairs pivoting wildly on their stands. Another nice touch, not too sentimental: when the Sea Queen is towed back into port and the bodies removed and Garfield is taken to the hospital, the crowd on the pier disperses while some cop waves his hands and goes through the familiar routine -- "Move along. Nothing to see here." The pier quickly empties and in that desolate silence only one small figure is left in long shot -- Hernando's little boy, looking around, wondering where his father might be, not knowing that he's been murdered and his body dumped at sea.

Taut thriller with John Garfield, a war hero, who has become the head of his own fishing boat. With a wife (Phyllis Thaxter) and two girls to support, Garfield, as always, is down on his luck and there are the seedy people he meets who will lead him down to a path of illegal activities.Amazing that the first group dealing with the smuggling of Chinese men into the United States wasn't fully developed into a story of its own.Patricia Neal is the brassy blond he meets on one of his excursions.In his pursuit of getting money to survive, Garfield falls in with a bunch of bank robbers who shall use his boat as an escape hatch.Typical melodrama here with 3 solid performances. It's really nothing out of the ordinary, even with Ernest Hemingway penning it.