Tonight's movie was "The Breaking Point" (1950) on Criterion. John Garfield (of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" fame) stars as an ex-Marine, a former Purple Heart recipient in WW2 who is now the captain of a small fishing boat docked in Newport Beach, California. But business is not good. He is in financial straits, behind on his boat payments, and matters are made worse when he takes a "wealthy" couple down to Mexico to fish marlin, and they skip out on him at the end. It turns out they weren't wealthy at all, only dressed the part, and they scammed him. The woman, Patricia Neal (a great actress with a weird style) feels bad about what happened, and becomes friendly with Garfield. There is a subtheme throughout the movie involving his loyal wife, who sticks with him through thick and thin, and her discovery of his new friendship with the coy and attractive Neal. This subtheme creates a slight conflict in Garfield's marriage, but it really signifies his bond of love with his wife. Remember, he is a Purple Heart recipient, a man of valor.
But he is almost broke, and he is about to lose his boat because he can't afford the payments. And as he tells his wife, the job is all he knows. He can't just up and become a lettuce picker in Salinas (yeah, Ernest Hemingway wrote the book the movie is based on).
So despite his upstanding moral code, and his insistence on remaining a fishing boat captain, he has his weaknesses, and his main weakness is financial. Thus the dilemma of the film : Garfield doesn't wanna lose his boat, but he has no money to pay for it.
Enter Hoodlums. It seems that Garfield is acquainted with a shady lawyer, who he runs into down in Mexico. The lawyer is aware Garfield is about to lose his boat, and offers to connect him to a "client", a Chinese middleman who offers Garfield a sizeable fee to smuggle some Chinese workers into the United States via San Diego, a crime that - if he is caught - could get Garfield ten years in prison.
So begins the main thrust of the plot, in which Garfield throws away his moral code so that he will be able to keep his boat and continue to provide for his family which includes two young daughters.
The Chinese caper, however, leads him down a slippery slope, and now he is entrapped in a bigger problem, which I'll not tell you about. That problem causes him to reluctantly enlist his services to an even more dangerous group of criminals, who plan to.......well, I won't tell you what they plan to do.
Any spoiler would take away from what is a very tight and suspenseful Noir with a climactic ending. The whole thing builds to a crescendo - Garfield's involvement in crime to pay his bills, his other involvement with Patricia Neal, which is only a friendly association but still slights his devoted wife. And finally Garfield - a really good actor who only lived to be 39 years old - is torn internally, because he has sold himself out to earn money and provide for his family, even though his wife has offered to get him a foreman's job on her father's lettuce farm. He's gotta do things his way, and it costs him. He gets himself in so deep with bad guys that he can't get out.
Or can he? You'll have to see the movie to find out, and I give "The Breaking Point" an enthusiastic Two Thumbs Up. I had never heard of this film until I did a Criterion search in the Libe's database, so maybe it is a new Criterion release, I dunno. It is a crackerjack Noir in any case, a thriller that takes place On The Waterfront (as was popular in 1950, with Steinbeck & Hemingway, et al), and it is directed by the great Michael Curtiz, of "Casablanca" fame. The finale is major league, and you just know it influenced future directors like Scorcese and Coppola.
So........watch it, I say.
That was all the news for the day. No hike. Those will not be as frequent in the near future due to increasing job considerations, but I will still make every effort to Get Out There When I Can.
In the meantime, You can out there for me, and Elizabeth I am glad you are doing so. I did see one post today, via your friend Nate, that included the phrase "Had an absolute blast", which I thought might have been a response to my own request yesterday that you Have A Blast on your trip with your Mom.
My intuition, so far as communication is concerned, is very much intact as you can see. I never miss a thing. :):)
If you indeed are having a blast, then that makes me happy. I will get out there at some point myself. Things have a way of smoothing out and stabilising, and though my job requires a lot more attention now, I am pretty good at stabilising situations. In fact, I think I am very good at it.
Stability is my thing, or one of my things. I like to think I have more than one Thing, lol.
So, to recap : an excellent and very hard-boiled Noir this evening, with a different setting - partly on a boat. No hike, but still reading and almost finished with Maury Terry's "The Ultimate Evil", which I would highly recommend if you are not squeamish.
Tomorrow night I will explore a couple of details about 1989, involving "K", the girlfriend of Mr. D at the time. I know I said that I would not mention gender, but in this case "K" - so far as I have been able to determine - had no involvement in the events of 1989, and so I don't feel it hurts her to mention her status as D's girlfriend. "K" was a peripheral figure, but one who provided extremely important information to me, way back in 1993. And by bringing it up, which I will do tomorrow, we will see yet another connection that provides more evidence leading to Mr. D's participation in a scenario that led up to the events of September 1989.
We will do that tomorrow. In the meantime : xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Big time love.
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