Edge of the City (1957)

Edge of the City (1957)

Underrated director Martin Ritt’s first film! Ritt would go on to receive his only Best Director Oscar nomination for Hud (1963) despite directing Best Picture nominees Sounder (1972) Norma Rae (1979) & Nuts (1987) and directing 13 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances (three of which who won: Patricia Neal Melvyn Douglas and Sally Field in the aforementioned films). Formerly blacklisted because of his involvement with the Communist Party Ritt later directed Woody Allen in the fictional HUAC comedy drama The Front (1976).

This Robert Allen Aurthur (All That Jazz (1979)) written race relations drama stars Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes as co-workers who develop an unlikely friendship laboring on the docks together and then battle a corrupt & racist boss played by Jack Warden. Ruby Dee plays Poitier’s wife; Kathleen Maguire plays a love interest for Cassevetes’s character Axel North. North is given work despite being an army deserter because he’s thought to be "one of the boys" that is until he befriends Tommy Tyler (Poitier). Named Axel Nordmann at birth he’d been estranged from his father (Robert Simon; mother played by Ruth White) before he’d joined the Army. North is intrigued and then drawn to Tyler who’s blissfully optimistic despite the constant onslaught he receives from Warden’s Charles Malik. The film’s climactic scenes are showdown fights between these conflicting parties.

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