Pit Stop

An atmospheric noir that takes place on both land and sea, Michael Curtiz’s 1950 crime drama The Breaking Point, the second adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” (the original, the 1944 version, utilized the novel’s title and paired Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall for the first time), is a gripping tale that never lets you go. A touch less cynical but just as fateful as your prototypical film noir, the narrative follows former marine Harry Morgan (John Garfield), a genuine yet gruff fishing boat captain who has never caught the break he has so hoped for. Working with his loyal-to-a-fault African American first mate, Wesley Park (Juano Hernandez), the pair have been together for twelve years, always just making ends meet.

Following in the vein of other epic adventure tales of the past, like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Lawrence of Arabia, ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’ and Apocalypse Now, writer/director James Gray’s adaptation of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z is a dangerously grand journey into the mysterious jungles of the Amazon. The 2017 feature is based on real life British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) – an Indiana Jones type, who, at the start of the narrative, is a military man with low standing due to his father’s previous actions (despite the fact Percy never met him). Looked down upon by the wealthy upperclassmen of the military, he is sent to the Royal Geography Society, where they try to persuade him to survey the border lines between Bolivia and Brazil (as the ever more desirable rubber plantations are leading towards war – the two governments have accepted the British institutions offer to do the job). Though wary, the Society members hint that this could be the perfect way to restore his good name, and Percy decides to take the position.

We often think of the western as being set in the sunbaked, sand-filled deserts of the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood epics. Turning this idea on its head, Robert Altman takes us into the frontier lands of the wet and snowy northwest (filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada), an equally picturesque yet no less hostile terrain, in the 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Riding into town with his bushy beard and no less hairy fur coat, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is a businessman looking for his next big opportunity. He sees the tiny, half-built town of Presbyterian Church (just over one hundred people) not as a hindrance, but as the perfect location to set up a one stop saloon, gambling den and whorehouse. Hiring some local men, they get to work while he heads off to procure the working girls – purchasing some lower class ladies for the gruff, rough, and equally low class frontier men of the area.

The story of a down-and-out boxer and his adorable son, 1931's The Champ, directed by King Vidor, is a tale of struggle and hardship as well as family, love and hope. The former champ, Andy Purcell (Wallace Beery – he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a rare tie with Frederic March), is for all intents and purposes, washed up. Though he is in the midst of training for his next bout, he continuously self-sabotages by turning to alcohol and then follows it up by playing dice, tossing the little money he has left away. His only saving grace is his young son, Dink (Jackie Cooper, one of The Little Rascals of the early sound era who went on to play Perry White in the first three Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve) – a child well beyond his years. A combination of tiny tramp and wise adult, he cares for his father like no one else. Trying to steer him away from booze and focus his wayward vision, he has a middling effect. Though his pleas reach his father, they do not stay his hand for long. The story is, in many ways, told through Dink’s eyes. The son of The Champ is usually followed by his trusty sidekick Jonah (Jesse Scott) and a plethora of other impoverished youths.