Edge of the City is a 1957 American Film Noir drama directed by Martin Ritt, adapted by screenwriter Robert Alan Arthur from his 1955 teleplay A Man Is Ten Feet Tall.
Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes), who evidently has been a drifter for a while, finds himself at Hudson Yards in New York, looking for work. He knows a guy who knows a guy, and so he gets hired as a stevedore unloading freight from trains that pull into the Hudson Yards station. He first comes under the supervision of a cruel, vicious foreman, Charlie (Jack Warden), who bullies Axel while also demanding a kickback on his salary. However, Axel makes friends with Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier), a black man and another foreman at the station. Axel leaves Charlie's crew and joins Tommy's.
Axel and Tommy become best buddies, with Tommy and his wife Lucy (Ruby Dee) going so far as to match up Tommy romantically with a friend of theirs named Ellen. However, Axel has a secret. When he was hired, he gave his name as "Axel North." When a man recognizes Axel at a club, he hurriedly exits. Finally, Axel tells Tommy: he is a deserter from the Army. Unfortunately for everyone, Charlie asks around and finds out Axel's secret.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Tommy is dead, and Axel will presumably be serving time in an Army prison for desertion. But he redeemed himself by going to the police, and Charlie will face justice.
- Blackmail: Charlie asks a mutual acquaintance and finds out the truth, that Axel is a deserter. He uses this to blackmail Axel into coming back to his crew and kicking back even more of his salary.
- The Bully: Charlie, who goes out of his way to be a mean, aggressive jerk. It's not enough for Charlie to threaten Tommy with exposure and blackmail him, no, Charlie also has to take the truck that Tommy was using to haul crates around. (In fact this provokes the big confrontation.)
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Charlie is nervously puffing on a cigarette at the police station after he murdered Tommy, as all the stevedores stand in line while they wait to be interviewed. He doesn't have to worry, though, as no one cooperates.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Axel was about to leave town. But after Lucy screams at him that he was never really Tommy's friend because he didn't stand up for Tommy, Axel goes to the police, and then confronts Charlie.
- Contrived Coincidence: Tommy has to run out of a nightclub when a guy in an Army uniform recognizes him—the Army guy having last seen him over six months ago and on the other side of the country in San Francisco.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Tommy dies while cradled in Axel's arms, after Charlie stabbed Tommy In the Back.
- Fake-Out Opening: The first scene has Axel running pell mell through dark, rain-slicked alleys. Is he being chased by gangsters, or police? No, he's just rushing to catch a ferry.
- In the Back: How the fight between Charlie and Tommy ends, with Charlie stabbing Tommy in the back with a grappling hook, after Tommy had tried to call a truce.
- My Greatest Failure: Axel is haunted by the tragic death of his older brother Andy. Andy got a fancy new car and egged his 17-year-old brother into taking the wheel and joyriding on the highway. Axel was doing 98 mph when the car blew a tire, and Andy was killed in the crash.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Charlie, a virulent racist who is driven to rage by the very sight of Tommy working at the depot, bossing white men around. Charlie doesn't want anybody working for Tommy. In fact, the real reason Charlie picks on and bullies Axel is to provoke Tommy into a confrontation.
- Quitting to Get Married: It's only an offhand reference, but Lucy says marriage resulted in "cutting off my brilliant career." After Tommy is killed Lucy says she'll have to start working again at whatever that career was. (Given the brief discussion Lucy and Ellen have about how the legal system treats Puerto Ricans, Lucy seems to have been an academic or advocate of some sorts.)
- The Remake: This was the filmed version of a teleplay called A Man Is Ten Feet Tall, which aired as a 1955 episode of Philco Television Playhouse that also starred Sidney Poitier.
- Shipper on Deck: Tommy and Lucy take active action to match up Axel and Ellen, pushing Axel to go out with them, pushing Axel to walk Ellen to the door when they drop her off after a night out. It works.
- The Unfavorite: In the backstory. Axel says that when he was growing up his parents always favored his brother Andy. Axel says that "I didn't even mind," because he hero-worshipped Andy himself.
