On the Waterfront (1954)
Directed by Elia Kazan

Film Review

One of the most critically acclaimed American films of 1950s, On the Waterfront is a powerful morality tale which casts a critical eye over the corrupt labour practices that existed on the New York docks in the late 1940s.  The film was a triumph for director Elia Kazan, receiving no less than twelve Academy Award nominations, of which it won eight - in categories that included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best B&W Cinematography and Best Art Design.  The film cost just under one million dollars to make, but took nearly ten times that amount at the box office.  It is a film that still has the power to shock and move with its uncompromising portrayal of life as it was experienced by many in the austere decade that followed WWII.

Combining the elements of the conventional gangster film with an almost documentary-style approach to social realism, the film evokes a bleak, sinister world in which ordinary dockworkers are brutally oppressed and abused by corrupt unions controlled by unscrupulous mobsters.   Extensive location sequences were used - in the busy docks, cluttered slums and, most notably, on the rooftops - to convey a real sense of the harshness of life on the docks.  Cinematographer Boris Kaufman (who had previously worked on the films of French director Jean Vigo in the 1930s) frames this dispiriting urban landscape spectacularly to convey an acutely visceral sense of squalor, menace and hopelessness.   Leonard Bernstein's vibrant score (the only one he wrote for a film that was not a musical) adds to these impressions and is particularly effective at suggesting the seemingly leviathan threat posed by the gangsters.

As the film's improbable hero, Terry Malloy, the young Marlon Brando brings both a striking authenticity and a hauntingly lyrical presence. (Brando and Kazan had previously worked together on the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire.)  Brando's ugly naturalistic style of acting makes Malloy a convincing, inarticulate, morally ambiguous thug, but also someone we can readily engage with.  Malloy's transition from insensitive egoist to imperturbable moral crusader would most probably have looked painfully contrived if left to a less capable actor; Brando shows his character's inner transformation in a way that is never less than totally believable.  It is the raw intensity of his performance, one of his finest, that gives On the Waterfront its classic status and makes it such a compelling piece of cinema.

Film Synopsis

His dreams of becoming a professional boxer dashed, Terry Malloy finds work on the docks around New York.  His brother Charley is the lawyer for Johnny Friendly, a racketeer whose underworld activities allow him to control every aspect of life on the docks.   At Charley's bidding, Terry lures one of the dockworkers onto the roof of his tenement, from which he plunges to his death.   Terry gets to know the dead man's sister, Edie, who is convinced the death was no accident and that Johnny Friendly was implicated.  His conscience stirred, Terry decides to testify against Friendly, but soon realises that he is up against a truly dangerous opponent...