Adina Mamon

Fine acting. Overrated. Flawed, self-serving premise concocted by Kazan to portray himself heroically after giving up names to HUAC. He was a snitch, not a whistleblower. Question: Why didn't the dock workers want to clean up their union?? Why were they so hostile to the authorities investigating corruption? Why was it so important for Malloy to line up for work after getting beat up to a pulp?

Rather shallow. Currently reading Dreiser's novel "An American Tragedy," in which Clyde (George) is not particularly sympathetic as the protagonist. Despite experiencing his own sister's ruination by a cad who knocks her up and ditches her, he exceeds that depravity by working his charm on Roberta (Alice), then insisting on intimacy or else loss of affection and then planning to drown her after she gets pregnant. Dreiser went to great lengths developing a character who was torn by his repressive and drab religious upbringing and the electric attraction of the fast life and hedonism. The first movie version made in 1931 with the novel's title captured more of this conflict than the 1951 movie which totally skipped over this element of Clyde's character. It misses the entire point of the corrupting effect of materialism and pleasure-seeking escapism, a hallmark of the cosmopolitan Industrial age in America.