Film Noir!

I was watching some DVD "extras" (what's the point of a DVD if you don't watch the extras?) and learned some interesting things about 1950's Breaking Point from Warner Bros, based on Hemingway's To Have and Have Not.  The director, Michael Curtiz, was, of course, probably the greatest director in the history of movies.  He did it all.  Comedy, musicals, romance, period drama, crime drama, biopics, war epics, and of course film noir.  The people he worked with complained bitterly about his autocratic style, yet a glimpse at their resumés shows they worked under him again and again and again.  Because he brought out the best in his actors, and it showed in their awards.  

The Breaking Point was WB's second bash at an adaptation of To Have and Have Not.  The first - and most famous - came out in 1944, starring Bogart and Bacall, and about the only thing it shares with Hemingway's novel is the title and the names of some of the characters.  It was not well received. Some called it Casablanca II. In 1950 they decided to give it another try.   "We bought the book (for $20,000)  and still haven't made the movie," said Hal B. Wallis, the WB producer.  John Garfield was chosen for the lead, Patricia Neal for the femme fatale, and Phyllis Thaxter as the good wife, struggling to drag her man back from the brink.  They produced a brilliant and gritty film, with Curtiz's signature micromanaged camera shots and lighting, and a stark realism unusual for its time.  Yet politics would nearly kill it, and leave it relatively unknown even today.

In June of 1950, as production was wrapping, the political pamphlet Red Channels was published, naming over 150 alleged communists - "red fascists and their sympathizers" it called them - who had infiltrated the movie industry.  John Garfield was named and Warner Bros found itself in a bind.  Much like the Stalinist regime they so despised, it was enough to be denounced to become a pariah; no actual proof needed to be forthcoming.  Garfield became unemployable, but production was complete.  They couldn't just scrap the film without making some attempt at recouping their losses.  The film was released in September anyway, and received critical acclaim.  The New York Times wrote:  "Warner Brothers, which already has taken one feeble swing and a cut at Ernest Hemingway's memorable story of a tough guy, To Have and Have Not, finally has got hold of that fable and socked it for a four-base hit in a film called The Breaking Point, which came to the Strand yesterday. All of the character, color and cynicism of Mr. Hemingway's lean and hungry tale are wrapped up in this realistic picture, and John Garfield is tops in the principal role ... Some solid production and photography along the coast and in actual harbors for small boats round out a film which is gripping and pictorially genuine."

Then, after just a few weeks, the film was pulled from theatres, not to see the light of day again for many, many years.  Garfield strenuously denied being a communist, describing himself as liberal-minded but a thorough democrat, but his wife was a party member.  The stress of the House UnAmerican Activities hearings which followed a year or two later would send him to an early grave at the age of 39 due to a heart attack.  

The film is now public domain and Criterion has done a wonderful HD restoration.  

I was watching TCM's Noir Alley the other night and they played Born to Kill.  It has an neat take on the usual noir stock characters - basically they are all inverted, so the femme fatale and her untrustworthy cronies are male; the anti-hero is female.

The movie begins with Anti-hero Helen finalizing a divorce in Reno when she crosses paths with "homme fatale" Sam Wilde.  The two are playing craps at a casino when acquaintance Laury Palmer says hello to Helen; Laury has in tow a man that she decided to use to make Sam jealous - and the trick seems to work.  Sam Wilde follows the couple back to Laury's house, where he brutally murders them both.  Laury's small dog escapes the house and runs to Helen in the street.  Helen stumbles upon the corpses when returning the dog.  The scene is beautifully bleak - the murders themselves were so ghastly and raw that it's surprising they made it past the censors (it's at the very end of this clip).




Both Sam and Helen head to San Francisco and end up on the same train - during this trip their lives intertwine and - as expected with film noir - neither will be the better for it.  Sam marries Helen's foster sister, Georgia, with every intention of carrying on an affair with Helen on the side.  

Helen suffers the usual plight of the classic noir anti-hero - she is sucked into the dark world of the homme-fatale - and their connection will fill her life with danger, sin and ultimately end in death.  She struggles against the attraction, and uncovers the depths of evil within her self...  in the end she holds to her own code and tries to free her sister from this man who is so destructive and irresistible - and she pays for this action with her life.




On a side note, Sam Wilde has an oddly, like-able - but completely psychotic in his own way - friend who accompanies him to San Fransisco...  Marty Waterman.  Marty is played Elisha Cook Jr. - who really makes this part something special.  He usually plays the mad dog / crooked thug in noir (tearful killer in Maltese Falcon - poisoned go-between in Big Sleep).  This role as a friendly psychopath really superb - you even manage to like him as he tries to lure old women to their death in the desert...





LOL.  A lot of fun to watch!