1957's Edge of the City, directed by Martin Ritt, stars John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden and Ruby Dee. It's the story of a troubled man, Axel, who has a mysterious past that gradually comes out during the film. He has a connection that gets him a job on a loading dock working for Charlie (Jack Warden), a real meanie who takes kickbacks from his workers and rides them hard. Charlie has an intense dislike for a black man, T.T. (Poitier) who holds the same position. T.T. invites Axel to work on his team; Axel defies Charlie and does so. Axel finds a place to live and socializes with T.T., his his wife (Dee) and their son's white schoolteacher (Kathleen McGuire). When tragedy strikes, none of the men on the loading dock will talk to the police, and Axel has to come to grips with his values, what he stands for, and the meaning of friendship.This is a really excellent black and white film that curiously isn't really about being black or white! It's really about the limits one puts on oneself and knowing who you are. Charlie is a bigot and hates that a black man has a good position on the dock. T.T. teases Charlie and gives as good as he gets. There's no discussion of T.T. and Axel spending time together or of T.T.'s son having a white teacher with whom the family also socializes. What Axel, a loner, finds difficult is accepting any friendship or confiding in anyone - these things he learns through T.T.Poitier absolutely shines in "Edge of the City" - he's warm, energetic, loving and smart, a man with a real enthusiasm for life, afraid of nothing. Cassavetes is excellent and plays a character totally opposite - hiding in the shadows, chronically depressed and always nervous.The film leaves open what happens to Axel. Whatever does, he's a different man now.Strangely underrated and unknown film, possibly in the shadow of a lot of the angry young men films that came out in that era.

Axel Nordman (Cassavetes) shows up on the New York dockyards looking for a job, but with a hidden past. He gets one on condition that he pay a kick back to surly crew boss Jack Warden. While there, he strikes up a friendship with black man Sydney Poitier that unfortunately leads to a gut-wrenching moral dilemma for a man who, we learn, typically runs from his problems.The movie looks like Oscar winner On the Waterfront, feels like On the Waterfront, and most importantly, plays much like that 1954 Kazan production. However, its racial theme is ground-breaking for the time. The black Poitier and the white Cassavetes are treated as equals in every respect. It might even be called the first of the black-white "buddy" pictures that would later dominate so many action films.It helps that the two leads play so well off each other. Nonetheless, the movie's central flaw is failing to indicate why crew-boss Poitier pushes a friendship with the dour Cassavetes in the first place. He really goes out of his way to befriend the newcomer. But why he would cross racial barriers to do so is never really suggested. One possible explanation is that Poitier wants to use Cassavetes as a pawn in his rivalry with other crew-boss Warden, but then comes to genuinely like the guy. There's a hint of that in some of Cassavetes's suspicious reactions, but beyond that, the relationship appears unmotivated.If there's a single stage shot in the entire movie, I couldn't spot it. Everything is done on seedy New York location, without the usual movie extras. In that sense, it's an anti-Hollywood production, carefully deglamorized even down to the night club scene which itself looks like a real after-hours crowd. I suppose sociologists would dub this rather raw slice-of-life "a glimpse of the working poor".Yet, for all its virtues, which are many, the film remains too close to the Brando-Kazan movie for comfort. Here, a fine unknown actress Kathleen Maguire gets the role of the redemptive girl friend, Warden the role of the corrupt labor boss, while Cassavetes, like Brando, must suffer a bloody beating before regaining his moral standing and doing the right thing. Still and all, despite the derivative nature, the gritty urban drama retains enough of the original force to merit a look-see.

A skillfully directed film by Martin Ritt where a drifter and anti-hero, John Cassevetes lands in N.Y. to escape a tragic incident in his life, where he killed his brother in an automobile accident as well as going AWOL from the army.Cassavetes, always an intense actor, shows grit in his portrayal of a film. Am surprised that Montgomery Clift didn't get this part.Ruth White is his mother and does remarkably well in two scenes on the telephone.Once in New York, he befriends Sidney Poitier as the two work on the docks. Immediately, Jack Warden, a bully and villain in this film,takes a dislike to him and tragedy ensues when Poitier tries to defend his friend.Ruby Dee, plays Poitier's wife in this film, and is brilliant in a scene where she urges Cassavetes to reveal the killer of her husband.This is definitely an interesting film of moral values and the loner in society. With the backdrop of tenements, the right mood is depicted in the film.

Martin Ritt's first film offers an exceptional existentialist answer (three years later) to Elia Kazan's more conservative "On The Waterfront." While "Waterfront" benefited immensely from an electrifying Marlon Brando, who inadvertently disguised Kazan's offensive theme of trying to justify naming names (as Kazan did eagerly before the House Un-American Activities Committee), "Edge of the City" boasts a young John Cassavetes and an upstart Sidney Poitier daring to confront issues that "Waterfront" failed to acknowledge, namely, workers' rights and race relations."Edge of the City" boldly dives into this (then) unknown territory, and although the quite appealing black protagonist (Poitier) may seem a bit Hollywood simplistic, the courageous struggle against thinly-veiled bigotry and violence has hardly aged at all. One wonders how shocked initial 1957 moviegoers were at such a bold presentation of white-black relations (if some of the bigoted didn't leave the theater early, they must of left dumbfounded, if not offended). The last reel of the film will still surprise audiences, as it refuses to sink into expected clichés, including those that tainted "Waterfront." While both films climax with a fight in front of stunned workers, director Ritt avoids the tiddy simplicity of Kazan's ratonalizied ending. Only the most jaded viewers will not realize "Edge" remains such a radical and entertaining film.What's most disturbing about this lost classic: how it sadly stayed unavailable on any format, for reasons that remain quite cloudy until it surfaced in a Sidney Poitier compilation in late 2008. This film should be required viewing in high school or college history classes across the country, yet one can only find it on obscure late-night TV, if ever at all.