Hounded out of the States as a Commie (fellow DGA member Sam Wood outed him), Edward Dmytryk actually made (in the U.K.) that left-leaning agit-prop proletariat ‘noir’ HUAC vainly searched Hollywood for. The film never got a proper American release, Dmytryk returned, ‘named names,’ served time, & found himself upgraded to ‘A’ projects which never lived up to his promising early ‘B’ stuff. Pietro Di Donato’s once influential novel tells a fatalistic story of an Italian/American brick layer, always on the verge of better times, who loses his soul when he rises to foreman during tough depression times. Dmytryk does some impressive work within the restrictions of an indie U.K. production, but he’s ultimately defeated by a twice too earnest script and a lackluster cast that has to work overtime to fake that Brooklyn flavor. Five years on, another HUAC alumni, Elia Kazan, would get this sort of thing right, but ON THE WATERFRONT wasn't made in Jersey, but in New Jersey.
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