Search - The Garment Jungle on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1957 DVD Release: 09/23/2008 Format: DVD - Black and White,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 28 mins Studio: Sony Pictures Members Wishing: 4 Genres: Drama, Crime Drama, Social Problem Film

Vincent Sherman replaced an uncredited Robert Aldrich as director of this noirish and atypically pro-union film from the 1950's. Tulio Renata (Robert Loggia), an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, campaigns to unionize the employees of dress factory owner Walter Mitchell (Lee J. Cobb). Viscerally opposed to the union, Mitchell has hired Artie Ravidge (Richard Boone) to thwart Renata's efforts. In a complex oedipal sub-plot, Walter's son Alan (Kerwin Matthews) returns home and joins the firm following the suspicious death of his father's partner. Alan is more sympathetic to the union and attempts to persuade his father to sign a contract. Only after Ravidge kills Renata, and the elder Mitchell finally admits to himself that Ravidge is a thug who also killed his partner, does he agree to negotiate with the union. Before he can do so, however, he, too, is murdered by Ravidge's goons. It is then left to Alan, increasingly involved with Renata's widow Theresa (Gia Scala), to run the business, bring Ravidge to justice, and settle with the union. Similar to Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954) in its overt support of the labor movement, The Garment Jungle is clearly a liberal, not a radical, film. Rather than advocate class warfare, it asserts that honest unions and decent capitalists can work together honorably. The film's real fire is found in the personal conflicts between Tulio and Theresa and Walter and Alan. Cobb, Loggia, and Scala perform with intense and multi-dimensional passion. Particularly noteworthy is Theresa's fury at her husband for taking excessive, and ultimately fatal, risks. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide

Lee J. Cobb - Walter Mitchell
Kerwin Mathews - Alan Mitchell
Richard Boone - Artie Ravidge
Valerie French - Lee Hackett
Robert Loggia - Tulio Renata
Gia Scala - Theresa Renata