Port of New York

Fair or not, the most widely cited point of interest about László Benedek’s Port of New York is its status as the film debut of an unknown Russian-American actor named Yul Brynner, whose second film seven years later, The King and I (1956), after playing the starring role thousands of times on Broadway, would win him an Oscar and make him a huge star. A one-time anomaly in Brynner’s career, Benedek’s low-budget programmer, the only film in which Brynner ever had a head of hair, merits its own appreciation as a solid film noir smack dab in the middle of the cycle. Brynner very effectively plays a dashing, duplicitous villain, Paul Vicola, the head of an opium smuggling enterprise operating on the New York City waterfront (“a battleground against illicit contraband”). Scott Brady and Richard Rober play Treasury agents Mickey Waters and Jim Flannery who tail Vicola and his violent thugs, sometimes undercover, risking their lives to find a smoking gun. K.T. Stevens plays Vicola’s mistreated moll who tries to play both sides of the fence. Gritty and violent, at times brutally so, the film is bathed in thick shadows and noir lighting, and features a variety of classic noir settings, including smoke-filled back parlors, spot-lit interrogation rooms, and waterfront offices at night from which the creaking of the dock breaks the night silence. Note the use of Manhattan locations like Canal Street, Penn Station, and an early LaGuardia Airport that feels more like a bus terminal than an air travel hub.