Papa's Words Made Flesh

Casablanca director Michael Curtiz and screenwriter Ranald MacDougall’s The Breaking Point (1950) is notable for giving voice to Ernest Hemingway’s distinctive language and portraying Black characters equal with Whites. 

Notable for the time, first mate Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez) plays a responsible Black equal to protagonist Harry Morgan (John Garfield) in Michael Curtiz’s The Breaking Point (1950).

This is the second Warner Brothers film based on Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not,” less a novel than a pastiche of stories but the source of a pair of films as good as they are different from each other. 

The Warners’ first crack at the story is one of the great classics of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In the war years, screenwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner fashioned it for director Howard Hawks as a star vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and film-newcomer Lauren Bacall. Less concerned with the original story than cool for its day, Bogart’s “Steve” trades double entendres with Bacall’s “Slim”, Water Brennan’s lovable rummy first mate Eddie avoids bee bites, and Hoagy “Cricket” Carmichael takes Dooley “Sam” Wilson’s place at the piano in a drama is set in Vichy-ruled Martinique to get anti-Axis propaganda on the menu.

Hoagy “Cricket” Carmichael and film-newcomer Lauren “Slim” Bacall chew scenery in Warner Brothers’ first cool crack at Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not.”

Curtiz and MacDougall’s postwar version used more of Hemingway’s novel but shifted the setting from the Caribbean to the postwar Pacific. Retitled The Breaking Point, the Warners’ second film opens in Newport, California, with its lead John Garfield reading an adaptation of the novel’s first paragraph in a voice-over. This establishes Hemingway’s stylistic cadences and repetitions in a more coherent narrative than the original as the cast navigate a series of Hemingway-like situations. Often mistaken for simplicity, Hemingway’s modernist style is easier to parody than copy. MacDougall has done a remarkable job adapting it for the screen.

John Garfield’s look and his characters’ attitudes made him an ideal Everyman for 1940s filmgoers.

Garfield’s Harry Morgan is one of his best roles and among the most authentic Hemingway characters on film. His look and his character’s attitudes made him an ideal Everyman for 1940s filmgoers the way Hemingway’s voice spoke for his generation. And notably here, where Morgan’s first mates had been semi-reliable rummy port rats, MacDougall and Curtiz make him a responsible Black equal, Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez), with a son the same age as Morgan’s two elementary school-age girls. Furthermore, the relationship MacDougall created between Park and his son Joseph (Hernandez’s actual son Juan) make for a small though poignantly Hemingwayesque father-and-son subplot.

Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez) sends his son Joseph (Juan Hernandez) to school with Connie (Donna Jo Boyce) and Amy Morgan (Sherry Jackson) in The Breaking Point (1950).

The Breaking Point tells the story of a one-time decorated World War II PT boat commander living his dream of running a fishing charter out of Newport on which he supports his wife Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter) and two small children. He owes money all around but gets by, aware that Lucy, who is devoted to him, would like to see him put the war behind him, sell his boat the Sea Queen, and settle down to domestic family life.

Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” sets sail on film with Harry Morgan (John Garfield) taking Brannan (Ralph Dumke) and Leona Charles (Patricia Neal) on a fishing charter.

The action opens with Hannagan (Ralph Dumke), an American playboy, hiring the Sea Queen for a fishing trip. Hannagan shows up with his attractive and mercenary pickup Leona Charles (Patricia Neal) and the drama sets sail. Harry interests the sophisticated Leona. She looks on Hannagan less as a mate than a paying proposition but her aggressive flirtation Harry’s way goes nowhere—at first. And then Hannagan stiffs Morgan and Wesley the charter fee, flying back to the US leaving the boys and Leona busted flat in Ensenada, Mexico. A dodgy American lawyer, F. R. Duncan (Wallace Ford), turns up in an Ensenada cockfighting bar with a lucrative proposition for Harry that involves a Chinese “coyote” named Mr. Sing (Victor Sen Yung) who wants to traffic eight Chinese men into the US.

Shady lawyer F. R. Duncan (Wallace Ford) introduces Chinese human trafficker Mr. Sing (Victor Sen Yung) to Harry Morgan (John Garfield).

Aware that the scheme could mean serious jail time if caught, Harry tries to cut Wesley out to steer him clear of trouble. But both Wesley and Leona end up on the boat with Harry headed back to California. Without revealing spoilers, these ingredients set the narrative on its Hemingway course. Harry’s first inauspicious brush with a scheme for solving his money problems; his ongoing relationship with steady Wesley; sleazy Duncan, his clientele, and US authorities; lithe Leona who keeps turning up and Lucy his beloved and jealous wife, all make for enough challenge and conflict to sustain a proper Hemingway story.

Sophisticated Leona Charles (Patricia Neal) and jealous wife Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter) help make screenwriter Ranald MacDougall’s The Breaking Point (1950) a proper Hemingway story.

The movie climaxes in a mannered film noir-style heist involving a quartet of bow-tied gangsters in sharkskin and fedoras. 

The Breaking Point (1950) U.S. Warner Brothers/Criterion (97 minutes). Directed by Michael Curtiz; screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 novel “To Have and Have Not”; cinematography by Ted D. McCord; editing by Alan Crosland Jr.; music by Max Steiner; produced by Jerry Wald.

Closing shot: a Black boy’s relationship with his father makes for a small but unusual and poignantly Hemingwayesque father-and-son subplot in The Breaking Point (1950).