"The Breaking Point" and "To Have and Have Not"
Two vastly different takes on Hemingway.
By Alan Herrmann
MOVIE CRITIC
In 1944, Warner Bros studio released the film To Have and Have Not, directed by Howard Hawks and based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. Legend has it that Hawks and Hemingway were friends and Hawks bet Hemingway that he could make a great movie from his worst book. Hawks chose To Have and Have Not and film history was made … not quite.
First off, this is not Hemingway’s worst book. It’s actually a pretty good read. Second, beyond the title and a few character names, the film has very little resemblance to the novel. But it gave Hawks a working title and it starred Humphrey Bogart and newcomer Lauren Bacall, who would shortly become the hottest couple in Hollywood. Plus, the screenplay had some help from the famous novelist William Faulkner.
For the most part, the movie-viewing public loved it, but critics were mixed. Some felt that the Hawks, Bogart, and Bacall team were Hollywood gold, while others felt the film was too much Casablanca revisited and too little Hemingway. I tend to be in the latter camp. The film was studio-driven and tried to capitalize on the success of Casablanca by ignoring most of Hemingway’s plot and copying much of Warner Bros's beloved romantic tale of international intrigue.
The story was changed notably to reflect the current issues concerning World War II, emphasizing refugees and the French resistance. It also included a somewhat cynical protagonist (Bogart) who ends up being one of the good guys, just like Rick Blaine and other familiar Casablanca characters, from desperate refugees and evil Nazis to a corrupt policeman.
The story even takes place in another French territory, Martinique. This was a significant departure from the working-class desperation of Harry Morgan exemplified in the novel, which was published during the height of the Great Depression.
After the end of World War II, Hollywood took a more cynical look at humankind, and the genre—or sub-genre, depending on point of view—referred to by the French as film noir (“dark cinema”) took hold. Many of the films were based on hard-boiled crime stories by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich, but their writing style can be traced back to the simple, direct, and often tragedy-laden storytelling of Ernest Hemingway.
By 1950, film noir was in full swing, and Warner Bros took another stab at To Have and Have Not, but this time they made far fewer changes to the novel. Michael Curtiz was in the director’s chair and John Garfield and Patricia Neal played the leads in the second movie, which is titled The Breaking Point. Phyllis Thaxter played Garfield’s devoted, but not naïve, wife as a fully realized character. Garfield’s Harry Morgan is an imperfect soul who straddled the line of law and lawlessness in true noir fashion.
Harry is a charter boat captain who is deep in debt and struggling to support his wife and two kids. He is in danger of losing his boat and his home if he can’t find more work. After being cheated by a customer who left behind a cynical but worldly mistress—beautifully played by Patricia Neal—Harry agrees to take on a job smuggling illegal Chinese immigrants from Mexico to California in his boat. Things go terribly wrong, a man is killed, and once again Harry is left broke and even more desperate. He is forced to try one more last-ditch job with little chance of success or survival.
No question about it, this is a violent and heart-wrenching film. But it is also a film with courage and complexity. John Garfield gives one of the best performances of his career. He’s not just a tough guy but a man of contradictions, a man who adores his wife and children but spends too much time away from them. A war hero who once had a code of honor but finds himself breaking the law.
Patricia Neal’s Leona is a party girl with a history of getting mixed up with the wrong guys, but she notes something different and deeper in Harry Morgan. She sees his moral compass fluctuating in several directions and getting further away from true north. Leona meets Harry’s wife, Lucy, and the women are jealous of each other, but they also share a mutual admiration for one another.
Eventually, Harry Morgan will retrieve his code of honor, but at a great cost: the loss of his charter business partner and friend Wesley.
Besides giving an impressive performance, Garfield apparently wielded some influence with the production and suggested the character of Wesley be portrayed by Juano Hernandez, an African American actor. Garfield leaned left politically and some of his socio-political values are found in the film. But 1950 was the heyday of political witch hunts and Warner Bros dumped Garfield and The Breaking Point would quietly vanish into Hollywood history.
Unfortunately, Garfield was accused by virulent anti-communists as being a fellow-traveler, ending his Hollywood career and sending him back to the New York stage where he suffered a heart attack, dying at the age of thirty-nine. Friends and family believe it was the stress of the accusations made against him, and his refusal to name names, that contributed to his premature death.
As for the earlier Bogart and Bacall version, it still gets significant attention with the cute quotes and all, but I feel it’s still stuck in limbo between Hemingway’s vision and Casablanca and, even with the help of William Faulkner and Howard Hawks, it achieves neither.
Eventually the Bogart-Bacall magic does kick in, somewhat ironically, in three great film noirs: The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. These are entertaining films and easy to find on certain streaming services. The Breaking Point is more difficult to find but when you do, you’ll understand why it was well worth the hunt.
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