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.
