The Breaking Point (1950)

Forgotton Classic Noir

Made in 1950 Warner Brothers' "The Breaking Point" is one of Hollywood's classic Film Noirs. Meticulously directed by the infamous Michael Curtiz
it is - after "Force Of Evil" (1949) - John Garfield's best picture!
Beautifully written by Ranald McDougall from a short story by Ernest
Hemingway this was the third time it was filmed by Warners. Both Earlier versions - "To Have & To Have Not"(1945) and "Key Largo" (1948)starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall but "The Breaking Point" was the definitive and broadest reworking of the story.
John Garfield giving one of his best hard boiled performances plays down-at-heel charterboat captain Harry Morgan who reluctantly falls foul of the law while trying to make ends meet for himself and his family.His
wife Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter) pleads with him to give up his boat THE SEA QUEEN, "pop says you can have a job anytime on his lettuce ranch in Salinas" to which Harry balks "Im not going to squat on my hunkers down in Salinas trying to pick lettuce quicker than the bugs can eat it - I'm a boat jockey, it's all I know!" But when a fishing party lets him down and he runs out of money in Mexico a shifty shyster lawyer F.R.Duncan (brilliantly played by Wallace Ford) entices him to take some illegal migrants back on his boat into the United States - "don't fight it Harry, relax, roll with it, let it happen" - he repeatedly advises, to which Harry rounds on him "you're poison! you'd sell your own mother if she was worth anything". Later Duncun inveigles him to take a quartet of gangsters out to sea when they flee after their racetrack heist, culminating in the movie's gripping and climactic set piece - a suspensful and bloody shootout aboard THE SEA QUEEN.
Peppered with sparkling dialogue throughout, everything in the film is splendidly executed. The movie just rattles along at a well defined pace!
Crisply photographed by the great Warner camera man Ted McCord ("Johnny Belinda"/"Treasure Of The Sierra Madre") his brilliant low key black & white Cinematography gives the movie a compelling visual style. Oddly enough though, the picture goes virtually unscored but it does boast a lovely and beguiling orchestral piece heard over the opening credits and the finale.
There is no music credit on the film except for Music Supervision by Ray Heindorf but the piece sounds suspiciously like something Max Steiner
could have written. In a letter from the esteemed composer to this writer
in 1968 he intimated to me that he had indeed written the piece - without credit - and added "I wrote it as a favour to Ray Heindorf".
A terrific movie that badly needs a DVD release. I am surprised that Warner Home Video did not already include it in one of their last couple of Noir box sets. Perhaps it will turn up in their next one? Or maybe in a Garfield box set? Who knows?

Classic line from "The Breaking Point" - when smart-mouthed good time girl
Patricia Neal, drinking in a mexican bar, ignores the clamour of a cock fight taking place in the background - Garfield asks "Don't you like cock fights?" to which she blithely replies "all that trouble for an egg"!
September 29, 2007

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