The actress Eva Marie Saint, who died Tuesday at the age of 102, took the movies by storm with her first feature, “On the Waterfront.” In it, she played the stalwart sister of a murdered dockworker. Her moral steadfastness in the role laid the groundwork for a career in which she specialized in sympathetic women who did their best to weather domestic and cultural storms. Here are ten movies that showcase her ability to add complexity and depth to “good woman” types who might seem like stock characters on the page.
On the Waterfront (1954)Doubling as high-water mark and statement of purpose, Saint’s first feature role won her the Oscar for best supporting actress and established her image as a complex “good woman” type, a moral standard-bearer set against an imperfect world. In “On the Waterfront,” Saint’s character is the first to take the fight to the mob-controlled union responsible for her brother’s murder and her decency both humbles and inspires a dockworker (Marlon Brando) into action. Brando’s groundbreaking performance tends to get most of the attention, but much of his tortured vulnerability comes in response to Saint, whose firm, quiet conviction stirs his slumbering conscience. The film stands as a rousing drama about doing the right thing and a pointed explanation for why the director Elia Kazan decided to “name names” before the House Committee on Un-American Activities two years earlier. Rent it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and You Tube.
‘A Hatful of Rain’ (1957)Offering itself as “The Lost Weekend” for morphine addiction, Fred Zinnemann’s white-hot melodrama, based on Michael V. Gazzo’s 1955 stage play, doesn’t do much more than cram four actors together in close quarters and turn up the gas. Set largely in a New York City housing project, “A Hatful of Rain” starts with a blowhard father (Lloyd Nolan) paying an unwanted visit to two sons, one of whom is a Korean War veteran (Don Murray) with a faithful wife (Saint) and a nice apartment, and the other of whom (Anthony Franciosa) he considers a loser. What he doesn’t realize is that the good son has a $40-a-day morphine habit and the bad son is going broke trying to keep his shady dealers at bay. Saint stands in the middle of this fireworks display, as her loyalty to her husband is tested by her feelings for his brother. Rent it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and You Tube.
‘North by Northwest’ (1959)Shrewdly cast against type as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature icy blondes, Saint first appears in “North by Northwest” as a shifty ally to an advertising executive (Cary Grant) whom a foreign spy (James Mason) and his henchmen have mistaken for another man. As the two flee their pursuers through middle America, eventually leading to a showdown on Mount Rushmore, her hidden motives are revealed, but Saint keeps him (and us) guessing about her loyalties right to the end. Saint and Grant’s chemistry adds an extra spark to Hitchcock’s most robust production, a scaled-up and vastly entertaining spin on the “wrong man” scenario he’d started with “The 39 Steps.”Rent it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home and You Tube.
‘Exodus’ (1960)Based on Leon Uris’s novel, the director Otto Preminger and the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s three-and-a-half-hour opus about the founding of the state of Israel casts Saint as the audience surrogate, an American nurse swept up by faraway conflict. Starting at a detention camp in Cyprus, where Jewish survivors of World War II await a United Nations vote on creating a homeland in Palestine, “Exodus” relies on Saint’s naïve and good-hearted widow to lead American viewers through a political transformation. The catalyst here is Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan, a Palestinian Jew who commandeers a ship of 600-plus and takes aggressive action to influence the U.N. vote — first by overseeing a hunger strike, then by leading the ship to Palestine. Their eventual romance ...
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