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Brooklyn is indeed glimpsed beyond the bridge, as befits the literal-minded approach, but then again "you can't cook a view." The longshoreman (Raf Vallone) has lost interest in his wife (Maureen Stapleton), his teenage niece (Carol Lawrence) however will always be a Madonna in his eyes. Relatives from Sicily, illegal immigrants, struggling family man (Raymond Pellegrin) and would-be tenor (Jean Sorel). The latter falls for the ingénue, invoking the uncle's wrath along with his unconsciously incestuous desire. "The oldest racket in the country," older than that, Greek tragedy amid waterfront mugs. A companion piece to The Fugitive Kind, in other words, from Tennessee Williams to Arthur Miller and again there's the dilemma of "realism" for Sidney Lumet. (He does have the benefit of Rocco and His Brothers coming out since to illuminate the stance.) On one hand the cacophony of clanking dishes at the Automat, on the other the blond "Paper Doll" ready to burst into an aria atop a dock crane. "Sometimes, God mixes up the people," proclaims the lawyer friend (Morris Carnovsky). Marital rift, two figures on opposite sides of the bed, lateral pan to the dressing table's mirror with wedding portrait on the side. (Dissolve to a bus crossing the screen in a French studio's version of New York.) Horseplay on the living room until a real blow lands, long-shot to close-up plus a circling camera for the Judas call. "The truth is not as bad as blood," it comes down to a showdown of bailing hooks on a rain-slicked street. (The lawyer afterward walks toward the phone booth in the foreground, an echo of the earlier shot.) With Harvey Lembeck, Mickey Knox, Vincent Gardenia, and Frank Campanella. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |