EDGE OF THE CITY (1957)

The depiction of interracial friendships was a breakthrough in the on-screen portrayal of race relations in the United States. Sidney Poitier featured in a trio of what some critics now call “black-white buddy movies.” The first of these was this adaptation of Robert Alan Aurthur’s teleplay A Man Is Ten Feet Tall, with Poitier as the only member of the television cast to make the transition to the big screen. John Cassavetes stars opposite Poitier as a man on the run from his past. When he takes a job as a longshoreman, he ends up working for Poitier, one of the foremen, and is welcomed into his supervisor’s family circle. The only problem they face is a rival foreman (Jack Warden), a vicious racist who knows what Cassavetes is hiding. Poitier would go on to star in two other interracial buddy movies: Something of Value (1957) and The Defiant Ones (1958).

d. Martin Ritt, 86m, 35mm

Courtesy of The British National Archive, Park Circus and Warner Brothers Classics.

Print source: BFI National Archive. 35mm print preserved by the BFI National Archive.

The British Film Institute is the UK’s lead organization for film and the moving image. In 2025 the BFI National Archive turns 90 years old. From preserving early silent films on fragile nitrate film prints to collecting contemporary work via the latest digital innovations; from bringing to life unproduced ‘lost’ works through scripts and production sketches, to caring for the stills and posters of familiar cultural touchstones; and from their holdings of small-scale home videos to the most epic of cinematic odysseys, since 1935 the BFI National Archive has been a gateway to the past, present, and future of screen culture. The BFI National Archive at TCM Classic Film Festival this April, celebrating this major milestone, are presenting a number of rare archive film prints (including nitrate), new 35mm prints and restorations from their collection.