You couldn’t make an urban waterfront drama in 1957 without genuflecting toward story beats & characterizations out of ON THE WATERFRONT/’54. Here, scripter Robert Alan Aurthur hitches a ride on it, along with nods at Herman Melville’s BILLY BUDD*, moving ever closer to the Kazan/Brando classic in some late conscience-stricken heroics to gin-up a knockdown copycat climax. Loaded with tasty debuts and/or breakthru roles for Sidney Poitier, John Cassavettes, Jack Warden, Ruby Dee and director Martin Ritt, the one letdown is Kathleen Maguire, a non-starter as the nice girl Cassavettes takes bowling. (Eva Marie Saint she ain’t.) A job-hunting drifter with a past, Cassavettes buds up with friendly floor manager Poitier whose small stevedore crew is in conflict with the kickback tactics of brutal rival Jack Warden. Pulled between these two, Cassavettes is a man on a rack. Not that he grows an inch from it, looking a foot shorter than Poitier in full-figure two-shots. He also comes up short in the acting department against Poitier’s natural vibe, still effective while Cassavettes’ Method brooding now seems wildly over-masticated. Mostly, Ritt’s straightforward direction keeps everyone in line, his lack of technique reading as honesty. And if he can’t sell action (fights feel like they never left the rehearsal hall), his strengths served him well for decades. What he can’t do is skirt Aurthur’s reach for Clifford Odets proletariat poetry . Poitier actually apologizes for it at one point. The film now coming off as a dramatic stretch.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *What a Billy Budd/John Claggart combo in Poitier/Warden. Alas, no color-blind casting in films for another six decades!
DOUBLE-BILL: Aurthur wrote another two for Poitier. (neither seen here) The change-of-pace rom-com, FOR LOVE OF IVY/’68, and an up-to-date political suspenser THE LOST MAN/’69 where Poitier met wife of 46 years Joanna Shimkus.
No comments:
Post a Comment