Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

Best movie ever!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Vincent Sherman was always a good director of melodramas, particularly if he had a strong leading lady. He made "The Garment Jungle" in 1957 after the original director, Robert Aldrich, was taken off the picture. You could hardly call it a problem picture but it did deal with the issue of Trade Unions and, in its way, it did find Sherman out of his comfort zone, (Aldrich was much better suited to the material). Nevertheless, it's a good example of its kind with a strong cast headed by Lee J. Cobb and featuring the likes of Robert Loggia, Richard Boone, Wesley Addy and Joseph Wiseman in supporting roles. However it's let down somewhat by its handsome, wooden lead, Kerwin Mathews, who always looked better shirtless, in baggy pants and with a scimitar in his hand. It was also lacking in a strong female lead; Gia Scala and Valerie French are as good as we get here and while both are very pretty neither was ever likely to be Oscar-bait. No "On the Waterfront" then but still worth seeing.

The Garment Jungle is directed by Robert Aldrich and Vincent Sherman. The screenplay is adapted by Harry Kleiner from "Gangsters in the Dress Business" by Lester Velie. It stars Lee J. Cobb, Kerwin Matthews, Richard Boone, Robert Loggia, Gia Scala and Valerie French. Music is by Leith Stevens and cinematography by Joseph Biroc.Alan Mitchell (Matthews) returns from the War to help his father Walter (Cobb) run the family fashion designer factory. Unfortunately he finds a business being protected by local hoodlum Artie Ravidge (Boone), who has the backing of Walter, and who is defiant in not letting the Union into the company. Things are about to turn very ugly and Alan is right in the middle of it.Robert Aldrich is uncredited in a lot of sources, but the film was 98% his work. Cobb had a sulk about where his character was going, it all came to a head and Columbia head Harry Cohn, not needing much of an excuse to fire Aldrich (who was sick as well), brought in Sherman to finish the film. Or at least that's the party line story...Aldrich's mark is all over the film, the harsher edges involving racketeers and violence are unmistakably his. The characterisations are pungent with varying degrees of menace, betrayal, cowardice and stoicism, with morals and ethics brought into sharp focus. Much of the pic is filmed indoors, which is a shame because when Biroc gets to photograph outside in the New York locales, we can see that we could have had a visual film noir treat. Instead we get a very good pro- Union drama with noir tints, though the softening of a key character, which Aldrich didn't aspire to, leaves you wondering just how much more spicy things could have been. 7/10

The struggle for the worker to get a decent living wage with a few benefits has been removed from the consciousness of the proletariat since Ronald Reagan broke the ATC union in the eighties. Since then the populace has been persuaded into believing that the worker is best left to the trickle down generosity of the employer. This film is a throwback to that struggle and has a message packed with a powerhouse persona of greed, violence, and suppression. It utilizes realistic on location street photography to give a hard boiled and bitter verisimilitude. There are other flashes of "realism" not usually found in typical Hollywood films. Some very slick indoor photography and gripping performances throughout deliver this expose in a package marked "stay out of it, or its your baby's legs next". Tough stuff for the conservative, establishment, 1950's.

"If you don't want to be nervous, do yourself a great big service. Stay away as far from Seventh Avenue".So sings Barbra Streisand in the 1961 Broadway musical "I Can Get It For You Wholesale". "The Garment Jungle", made four years before, is an expansion of those lyrics, and shows how scary that industry is. From the very beginning, where one of the partners of a garment making industry is brutally murdered, to the gripping ending that features a memorable roof-top chase sequence, "The Garment Jungle" is to the unions of the garment industry what "On the Waterfront" was to longshoremen. While it probably lessens the impact with the passage of time between the two films (three years can make a big difference), "The Garment Jungle" is still pertinent today because of the prevalence of major fashion houses and top models in that industry. Lee J. Cobb, a character actor I've come to respect more recently by seeing some of his less known films, gives a performance that is filled with small nuances of humanity thanks to the relationships he has with his son (Kerwin Matthews) and girlfriend (Valarie French). Gia Scala and Robert Loggia are good as union workers fighting Cobb and crime boss Richard Boone while getting Matthews on their side. This leads to conflicts between father and son, and a very brutal murder. Boone is wonderfully despicable (and grotesque), and stage and TV actor Wesley Addy (whom "Loving" viewers will recognize as kindly powerful patriarch Cabot Alden) is unforgettable from the moment you see him. How someone so seemingly civilized as Addy could end up being so deadly is a great twist. Quodos to the casting directors for their ingenuity in really putting some great people who rarely got their due in this film.I really liked the interaction between the models preparing for a fashion show. (One of them is Joanna Barnes of "Auntie Mame" and "The Parent Trap" fame). The script is non-stop excitement. My only complaint was that there seems to be an important element deleted from the final print of how Scala made it from her mother-in-law's house to the D.A. with evidence. This is not a great film by any means; It seems very TV anthology series in concept, expanded for theatrical release, but somehow it all comes together and is quite satisfying. Columbia's late 50's film noirs were the best; They seemed to keep the genre going a few years longer than other studios output.