As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Shelley Winters always seemed to specialise in playing roles of rather seedy, superficial glamorous, looking women who are down on their luck because they mix in bad company.Here she mixes with an assortment of low life Chicago characters, having married a man executed in the electric chair for murder.This fact she hides from her son (James Darren) because he is too young to bear the truth.Her son is gifted at music but Shelley has too many balls in the air trying to raise her family on the wages of a bar room hostess/waitress because she does not possess any other marketable skills.Dubbed on the soundtrack was a snippet of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata and Chopin which her son "plays" in preparation for his audition at the conservatoire in Chicago.Burl Ives is on hand to give a surrogate father's advice to James Darren and Shelley to keep them on the straight and narrow.He plays a drunken ex-judge who gives his life trying to save Shelley and James from an evil drug pusher played by Riccardo Montalban.A young Jean Seburg plays the love interest to James Darren the latter of whom I first saw in the 1961 film "The Guns of Navarone" which had a stellar cast.Passable, I rated the above film 6/10.

Based on African-American novelist Willard Motley's book (1958) of the same name (title from 19th century Irish Patriot Robert Emmet's famous execution speech, see below). This story takes up the plight of two of the original characters from "Knock" and illustrates the frustrations of a group of residents living on "lower class" East Madison Street in Chicago, circa late 1950's.Nellie Romano (Shelly Winters) is a single Mother bringing up her only son Nick (James Darren), a promising young piano virtuoso. Unfortunately, they and their neighborhood friends are each burdened with the sad fate that "for the wrong turn sometime earlier" they must endure their chosen lot in life. But this tale is not a sappy string-together story of separate woes; rather (in the beginning) an optimistic hope for the future if the pieces of the puzzle fall just right.Of course, our 'extended family' realize early that the chances of the puzzle's success are remote, as they only have their personal disasters to judge success. There is Nellie's sad story, a past the whole neighborhood knows of, save Nick and the "defrocked" Judge (Burl Ives) who has commuted his own sentence to the bottom of a bottle rather than a court of law. Also a prostitute (Jeanne Cooper), an ex-prizefighter (Bernie Hamilton), the smack addict (Fitzgerald) and a paraplegic (Walter Burke) who in their own way try their best to make each other happy.Along the way they careen into the lower tiers of an immoral society of disreputable scum-bags, including racketeer Louie Ramponi (Montalban). What transpires next is the 'family' banding together for survival; but the question is, are they strong enough to escape a 'bottomless pit' without even a knotted rope for escape? Maybe the apple of everyone's eyes, young Nick can.

I am very pleased to see all of the positive responses here at IMDb to a film that was not considered to be much in its day. Very well done, and a lot more frank then you would expect from the era.Not really a sequel to KNOCK ON ANY DOOR---the relationship is minor at best, non-existent at worst. You don't have to see the first movie to understand this one.A very positive thing is the relationship between the lead (James Darren) and his alcoholic mother (Shelley Winters). He knows all about her past but loves her anyway, and the dialogue is good. Far too many movies perpetuate the stereotype that parents and children of the opposite sex cannot, or should not, discuss serious "adult" issues intelligently.Strongly recommended bit of film noir.

Kind of a cross between "West Side Story" (though it's Chicago's West Side) and "Golden Boy" without Clifford Odets' lyricism, this sleaze-obsessed melodrama benefits from location filming that shows how awful the Chicago slums looked in 1960 and a motley, oddball cast. James Darren is the sensitive hood/concert pianist (and though he's proficient at the keyboard, he's hardly the prodigy the script makes him out to be), being raised by Shelley Winters at her Shelley Wintersiest, screaming and sobbing and unhinging easily. She and an assembly of longtime slum pals, including an uninteresting Burl Ives as a drunken ex-judge, are trying to give the kid a decent upbringing amid all the squalor. There are also Ricardo Montalban, excellent as an insidiously evil-charming dope peddler; Ella Fitzgerald, who gets to act a bit and isn't bad; and Jean Seberg, not quite credible as the Lake Shore girl Darren loves. The direction is uninspired, and the screenplay a little contrived (when it wants us to know Ives loves Winters, it just has him confess to the camera), but what's fascinating is the brio with which the filmmakers depict all the sex and violence and addiction and grimness. It's as if they were trying to show how grownup they are by thrusting all that misery in your face. It moves fast, and if your attention starts to wander, be assured, Shelley Winters will be erupting again soon.