disgusting, overrated, pointless

Absolutely Fantastic

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Yaddda, Yaddda, Yaddda, this story has been written and re-written a thousand and one times before and this particular iteration was another forgettable below par performance. John Garfield reminds me a lot of similar mannerisms of a combined Humphrey Bogart and Charles Bronson persona. Although his performance as the struggling captain Harry Morgan of a small fishing boat and the father of two young girls who he adores (and at the same time ignores) , and a loving wife, is admirable, the film itself is by no means a memorable one.As I began watching the film it only took about the first 15 minutes to figure out where the storyline was headed and I was not wrong with my assumptions. After the first 15 minutes the film grew less interesting and thus my yaddda, yaddda, yaddda intro.I give this melodrama a poor 4 out of 10 rating.

I didn't think there existed such a movie, but I was wrong, though earlier versions of this same story, Key Largo and To Have and Have Not also were pretty good. Nothing else Hemingway wrote really translated well to the big screen, not The Snows of Kilamanjaro, not For Whom the Bell Tolls, not The Old Man and the Sea, not The Sun Also Rises nor A Farewell to Arms. All movies from those novels are terrible bores in my opinion and if you look them up here in the IMDb, the ratings these movies got bear me out. But this movie with John Garfield playing luckless boat captain Harry Morgan with the two female leads played by Patricia Neal as the likable, attractive, world wise, cynical whore and Phylis Thaxter as his loving but insecure plain wife who loves him more than as she says she could love any other man on this earth were both terrific. So you want to see a really good movie with a story written by Ernest Hemingway and like me, you think no such thing exists? See this movie!

Having just seen the Scorsese-restored print of this film at Noir City 10 in San Francisco, I was struck by several things; Garfield's portrayal of a veteran caught up in a terminally narrow view of his own masculinity, Patricia Neal's over the top sensuality contrasted to Thaxter's mousy but devoted wife; and the unbelievably poignant ending along with the unusual treatment of race throughout.The relationship between Juano Hernandez' Wesley and Garfield's Harry is about as race neutral as it could be. Yes, the white guy is the "boss", but he IS the boss, and the fact that his subordinate is black is not at all made into an explicit comment beyond the fact that the reverse would, of course, have been unthinkable in a movie of this time (or even, for the most part, in our own time.) But the fact is they are partners - and they seem truly friends beyond their business relationship. All seems quite "natural". There is an odd scene when Wesley brings his son (apparently Hernandez' real son) along to Harry's house one morning and Harry's two daughters take him off to school with them where it certainly seems that the kids have never met each other before although their fathers have worked together for (we find out later) is 12 years - indeed since before any of the kids were born. Perhaps Joseph (the little boy) is just shy and although he has met the girls before he is reluctant to say hi to them; perhaps this is indeed a reflection of a race-relation-induced reticence on his part, which would not at all be unreasonable.In any case (and here come the spoilers), when Wesley is ultimately shot and then unceremoniously tossed overboard near the film's violent climax we see that Harry is completely devastated; so much so that he hatches an even more desperate reckoning with the "men from St Louis" than he had already been anticipating. Indeed, he seems at that point to be content to die if that is what it takes to avenge his friend; he simply had not considered that this might be the cost of his scheme to get out from under his financial troubles – that someone else would have to pay a price for his problems. Harry dispatches all the bad guys, and is shot up so badly he must be carried off the boat once it is towed back to port by the Coast Guard. This is where the surprising role of race comes in. We see Joseph, Wesley's son, in the crowd at the dock as Harry's wife and daughters are standing in tears, distraught at the prospect of Harry's demise or at the very least the loss of a limb, are shown huddled together, being solicitously taken care of the by the authorities. Harry is put into the ambulance, and the girls and his wife go off to the hospital, too. We see Patricia Neal (with yet another new "captain") and she is allowed to comment on the proceedings. And then we see a shot from above, showing the dock as the police clear the crowd away and tell everyone to go home until the only person left is little Joseph, whom no one paid any attention to, and who is looking forlornly at the boat, waiting for his father to come ashore. The camera holds this shot, and then the film closes.Here we were just seconds away from being allowed to imagine the ending being about Harry's becoming reconciled to a different version of his own masculinity, one in which is not a tower of independent strength and violent self-sufficiency, even so much as to declare, in a rather different tone than he had earlier, that one is "nothing when you're alone" and telling his wife he needs her and will do whatever she says (when earlier this dialogue had been completely reversed), and even to the extent to letting the docs remove his shattered arm. And then Michael Curtiz makes the focus of all the emotion built up over the last hour and a half not Harry and his problems, but the fate of this little boy, completely neglected by those around him, both those who knew him and the officials who might at least be expected to ask why he is still hanging around. We know that HE is going to have to go home to tell his mother (who we know exists from an earlier interchange between Harry and Wesley) that Wesley is nowhere to be found…I don't think I have seen a more astonishing, and humanely interesting ending to a film of this type and period. This film bears re-watching and much thought; certainly a lot of thought (and collaboration between Curtiz, Garfield, and Neal) went into it.(It should be noted that there is a fairly rare treatment of Chinese people in this movie as well, both as criminals (human trafficker) and victims (those trafficked) and that this element, too, bears some further consideration; certainly the portrayal of Chinese in the picture is resolutely unsympathetic (and not just in comparison to the treatment of the few black characters) and this is rather surprising given that other films of the period portray them sympathetically as wartime allies and as American citizens and the "Red Chinese" only intervened in the Korean War as the film was being released so that could not have figured into the portrayal of Chinese when the film was actually being shot.)

***SPOILERS*** Fishing boat Captain Harry Morgan, John Garfield, reaches his breaking point when all the pressures of keeping his prized possession-his boat-drive him to commit a robbery at the Santa Anita Racetrack. After being involved in a Chinese smuggling operation in order to be able to get back to the US from Mexico after his two fishing customers Hannagan & his moll Lona Charles, Ralph Dumke & Patrica Neal, stiffed him Capt.Morgan, or Cappy as he likes to be called, ends up killing his pre arranged, on his boat, contact Mr. Sing, Victor Sin Yung. That's after Mr. Sing pulled a piece, or gun, on Cappy when he refused to pay him his shipping free or $200.00 a head for each of smuggled 8 Chinamen that he promised Sing to sneak into the USA.Now back in L.A with a possible murder rap, the killing of Mr. Sing, facing him the dispossession of his fishing boat for non payments is the very last thing that Cappy has to worry about. It's the sleazy and oily F.R Duncan, Wallace Ford ,who got Cappy involved with Mr. Sing & the 8 Chinamen who's now blackmails him into getting involved in a race track robbery planned by the notorious Danny & his Boys headed by Danny, Guy Thomajan, himself. Danny wants Cappy ,on his fishing boat, to be the gangs getaway driver after the robbery is pulled off. What's even worse if that's at all possible is that Cappy's old lady Lucy, Phyllis Thaxter, is threatening to leave him an take the kids along with her if he doesn't stop running around with the blond & sexy Lona who in fact Cappy really has no interest in! Lucy gets so jealous of Lona and her supposed attraction to her hubby Cappy Morgan that she dyes her dark hair blond, to the shock and dislike of her two young daughters, just to impress him!Painting himself into a corner Cappy reluctantly goes along with Danny & his Boys plans to knock off the race track but has an ace, or a pair of .38's, up his sleeve if anything goes wrong. Like Danny knocking him off when he gets the job done by sailing him and his boys to the safety of Catalina island. As for the that lowlife and back stabbing F.R Duncan he gets his at the race track when trying to outrun the police and make it together with Danny a& Co. to the L.A pier he's shot in the back by racetrack security guards. That all happens while Duncan offers no resistance to the cops or security guards who shot him! Which is a big was a no-no to the then Hayes Commission, a good guy never shoots a bad guy in the back, back in those days but in him being the slime-ball that he was the Hayes Commission must have overlooked it.***SPOILER*** wild shoot-out on Cappy's boat the "Sea Queen" by Danny & the Boys after they offed Cappy's first mate and good friend Wesley Park, Juano Hernamdez, and left him there to rot before dumping him, with Cappy's help, into the Pacific Ocean. Cappy knowing that his fate would be the same as Wesley's got his chance,in checking the boats motor,to pull out his hidden .38's and blow the whole murderous bunch,Danny & the Boys, away. But not after being plugged a good number of times himself by them that in the end Cappy had to have his right, and good, arm amputated in order for him to survive! Survive to start a new life as the manager at his wife Lucy's brother's lettuce farm outside Salinas California.P.S Very emotional scene at the very end of the movie when we see a distraught confused and worried young Joseph Park, Juan Hernandez, all alone on the pier as all the attention swirls around Cappy in his heroic acts in the movie. No one and I mean no one bothered to tell Joseph the fate of his dad Westly who was shot and thrown overboard by Danny & the Boys. But on second thought since Joseph's dad was deep sixth and by then very probably shark bait no one on shore really knew what happened to him.