The Mob

The Mob is a 1951 film that is part of the Criterion Columbia Noir collection, but it isn't really a noir; it's more of a gangster film, and it's interesting that the word "mob" never is uttered. We do hear the word "rackets" though, and it prefigures much of what On The Waterfront, released three years later, would tackle.

While strictly a B film, The Mob is elevated by the performance of Broderick Crawford as a cop named Johnny Damico. The film begins in noir fashion, in a driving rain storm, the camera zooming into a pawn shop. Crawford is buying a ring for his girlfriend, but on his way home witnesses a shooting. The perpetrator says he is a cop and shows Crawford his badge, but then disappears. It turns out he wasn't a cop, and Crawford expects to be fired. Instead, his superiors send him undercover to work as a longshoreman, trying to find the man who killed another cop.

The Mob is a lot of fun, as Crawford has been given a lot of great patter. Sarcasm rules the day. He checks into a dive hotel and the clerk asks him if he wants a room. "No, I'm here to look at the decorations," he snaps. Crawford, who is a big lug of a man, takes to his role as a minor hoodlum with great zeal, and enjoys throwing his weight around, sometimes literally.

The Mob is also full of recognizable actors. Ernest Borgnine appears as a union boss, with Neville Brand as his gunman (he and Crawford have a doozy of a fistfight). John Marley, who was memorable as studio boss Jack Woltz in The Godfather, plays a waterfront boss, and an uncredited Charles Bronson has a few lines as a worker. Richard Kiley, who is most famous for roles in musicals, is a longshoreman Crawford befriends. He is not what he seems, and a scene in which he enlists his wife and sister to get info on Crawford goes wonderfully wrong when Crawford takes a shine to the wife.

Directed with some flair by Robert Parrish, The Mob does have some incredible coincidences and leaps in logic, but these are only thought of after the fact. This is the kind of movie that people would have seen in a double feature, back in the good old days.