Ray Lawler's play was a first rate piece of theatre - I've read it, seen it on stage, and it always works a treat, with finely drawn characters, a decent story and a powerful ending. You can understand the excitement in the late 50s when it was announced that Hecht Hill Lancaster bought the film rights - they didn't turn out schlock, they were known for prestige product like Marty and The Sweet Smell of Success.
But the result is a mess. It simply doesn't work. It never feels real - the setting, the characters - despite the fact it was shot in Australia. It's frustrating to watch accordingly - but also, it's fascinating because the basic stories and characters are still there... it's just that it was all tweaked enough to be ruined.
I don't mind the action was changed from Carlton to Sydney. If they went all that way to Sydney you can't be surprised they wanted to shoot a few scenes on the harbour, and at the beach and Luna Park. Sometimes the choreography is a little odd (getting the ferry to Bondi(. You do wonder why they didn't go the whole hog and shoot it in colour - I guess they picked black and white it is a gritty drama - in which case you wonder why they wanted the production values of Sydney... but anyway, it's not a major issue.
More problematic is cast. You've got English John Mills and Angela Lansbury and American Ernest Borgnine being American and American Anne Baxter being kind of cockney. All these people can act, they're very good actors. But you don't believe Borgnine and Mills as friends, or Borgnine and Baxter as lovers. The dialogue varies from Australian to cockney to Americanisms. At the risk of sounding overly nationalistic, Vincent Ball - in quite a large role as the up and coming cutter - isn't very good either.
In fairness, I wonder who else they could've cast. Burt Lancaster would've been great - of course Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, later so impressive in The Sundowners, would've been ideal. Real movie stars with top charisma would've helped - as Oz Movies pointed out, with this four you've got the second eleven. If you can't be a star, be a character actor, that's fine... but at least be authentic, be moving, be something.
Did director Leslie Norman ever consider Peter Finch, with whom he'd just made The Shiralee? Was Finch too little known in the US? Too young? Not available? Was Rod Taylor, who'd made Separate Tables for HHL, considered for the Ball role?
Even more problematic than the cast is the direction and writing. It's a poor adaptation - the basic play was a strong source material, but John Dighton has fiddled with it. There's this weird middle section where everyone is happy at Luna Park - Ball gives Borgnine his job back and Borgnine wins a boxing match and it's high fives all around. The ending is changed from something emotionally devastating to "oh that's alright let's smile and laugh" which robs the piece of any power and renders the whole thing pointless. Director Leslie Norman has no feel for the milieu, the characters, their dynamics, the themes.
So they had a classic of Australian theatre - not a very large field, admittedly - but the filmmakers stuffed it. It's bewildering why this hasn't been remade, properly.
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