The Breaking Point (1950) ****

Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point (1950) features a perfectly nuanced performance by John Garfield, a feisty femme fatale brought to life by Patricia Neal, razor-sharp dialogue and impressive staging. This second screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have And Have Not (1937) is just as strong as (and in some ways better than) the 1944 Howard Hawks Bogie/Bacall version (though the two films are quite different).