Recently, along with 15 others, Sidney Poitier was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama as an “agent of change,” and so I went back to revisit his film canon and found an interesting surprise. Poitier’s great acting career reached its peak in the turbulent yet race-defining 1960s. However, he was at an artistic crossroads, a veritable career stalemate where his role as a strong African-American who defies societal norms while personifying the decent citizen led to creative atrophy.

edge_of_the_city

How does one defy stereotypes, and lead a diverse career if one is trapped, forever pigeonholed as THAT straight cat who always makes the right move, always stands tall in the face of evil, and never drifts too far into anyone’s faulty plan? Poitier struggled with those issues throughout his career, but back in 1957 when this week’s Hidden Flick was filmed, he was just another bright star on the horizon, ready for his next big break.

What makes Edge of the City significant isn’t just the 30-year-old’s vigorously righteous performance, but that the film also features Ruby Dee, the dynamic actress/writer/activist, Jack Warden, who always appeared to be in every cleverly-written character role from the 60s to the 80s, and John Cassavetes who would go onto gritty acting and directorial triumphs later on in his career, while married to the brilliant actress, Gena Rowlands. In the end, however, it is Poitier’s soaring presence which towers over the film.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick, Edge of the City…

Directed by Martin Ritt, who had his fair share of persecution in his early career when he was singled out by the House Un-American Activities Committee and subsequently blacklisted due to alleged Communist ties, the filmmaker was in fine yet amoebic form here, and later went on to an outstanding career directing such landmark films as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Great White Hope, Sounder, and The Front.

In Edge of the City, Cassavetes plays a character with a history of hidden knowledge. Although he appears to be a morally-astute chap, there seems to be something just a little dark surrounding his motivations. He gets a job as a New York railroad worker, and is immediately befriended by Poitier’s charming character. Meanwhile, Warden plays the hard ass union thug who somehow knows that Cassavetes’ past is a bit suspicious.

And so begins (or is it ends up in?) the stalemate—the game of Tic Tac Toe, or Pong, as it were—where the players have the same abilities, and one is never crowned victorious, but the sound of the game is forever ricocheted in some eternal digital delay loop. What drives the film past that halt in the momentum of the action is the friction between Warden and Poitier which silently slumbers underneath the grey cinematic surface.

Prejudice is an ugly thing because it lumps individuals into group definitions, and while some groups can be written about in a positive light, to level criticism towards a lone man because of his alleged negative heritage isn’t just wrong, it’s another form of stalemate. Poitier symbolizes the Black Everyman who somehow achieved a productive role in the ’50s society, in this case a hardened railroad worker providing for his family in their New York apartment, away from the docks, and away from the trivialization of his character.

Which is all so airy fairy and bleeding heart liberal if it wasn’t still true—a man’s performance is sometimes ridiculed based on his heritage, whether he’s a black man in America, an Irishman in London, or a sober mensch in a downtown working class bar.

In Edge of the City, a sometimes melodramatic and embarrassingly-sincere film which parallels some of the live theatrical performances which were prominent on American television in the late ’50s and early ’60s, one gets the sense that whereas prejudice may always be among us, one can always defeat the cultural stalemate by thinking long and hard about the right and true decisions that need to be made on a daily basis. It ain’t so much doing the right thing all the time, but it sure helps to get back around to it after a lifetime of poor decision making.

We here at Hidden Flick dedicate these sometimes sappy thoughts to all the loveable losers who were given one more chance. Meanwhile, we also salute a man who is definitely a winner, in every sense of the word, breaking down barriers, and ushering in an era when a man’s achievements were measured by their cultural value, despite his sometimes difficult career aspiration questions: Sidney Poitier.

- Randy Ray