The Breaking Point

This is the second adaptation of Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not, and the one far closer to the book than Howard Hawks's famous 1944 version. The title had to change because Hawks had used the original. John Garfield wanted this film and specifically asked for Michael Curtiz to direct. He plays Harry Morgan, a war veteran scraping a living chartering his boat to fishermen and tourists. A second intervention by Garfield is what makes the film endure. He insisted that the character Wesley Park be Black and that the relationship between the two men be expanded. The novel carries a casual racism; the film discards it and turns Wesley into a dignified and loyal friend, a decision taken while the South was still segregated. Its closing shot is regarded as one of the harshest endings in American cinema, holding on a boy left alone on a dock. Garfield was blacklisted shortly afterwards, Warner declined to promote the film, and it went unseen for years. Who it is for: viewers who want the social side of film noir, a man pushed into crime by plain financial desperation. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the romance of the Hawks version. There is no Bogart-and-Bacall charm here, only exhaustion.