Best Picture: #27
Original Release Date: July 28, 1954
Rating: Approved
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes
Director: Elia Kazan
Quick Impressions:
On the Waterfront is a great film. As far as entertainment goes, it is every bit as suspenseful and captivating as more recent movies about crime syndicates and whistle blowers (movies that have the luxury of dialing up the intensity with R-rated content). Of course, the performances are top notch. Marlon Brando famously became the youngest ever Best Actor winner (at that time) with his emotive and complex portrayal of coulda-been contender Terry Malloy. And essentially every other actor playing a main character was also nominated for an Oscar for this film. (Eva Marie Saint actually won Best Supporting Actress for her debut performance as Edie Doyle.) Outside of Brando, my favorite performance belongs to Karl Malden (nominated for Best Supporting Actor), but standouts Rod Steiner and Lee J. Cobb were nominated, too. The (Oscar-winning) cinematography is also excellent, but what amazes me most about the movie is just how much it made me think.
I still can’t decide if Terry did the right thing. Is he a hero, or was he a fool (or both)? The story here is compelling, the screenplay well written. And the movie is entertaining and suspenseful. As I watched, I thought often of more recent movies about organized crime, especially John Wick and The Departed. This film holds up very well.
The Plot:
On the waterfront, nobody works unless the union gives them work. But the union is crooked. In fact, union boss Johnny Friendly just ordered the murder of Joey Doyle, the young man who was planning to testify against him. Former boxer Terry Malloy was the last person to see Joey alive, and pressure is on him to testify against Friendly. But Terry doesn’t want to rat out anybody, least of all the man who has watched over him and his older brother since their father died when they were young. Complicating matters, Joey’s sheltered sister Edie (who has been away at college, studying with nuns) is determined to stay on the waterfront until she brings Joey’s killers to justice (despite her father’s desperate pleas that she return to school). When Edie is joined in her crusade by local priest Father Barry, she begins to make actual progress. And then she falls in love with Terry Malloy.
The Good:
Lee J. Cobb gives an excellent supporting performance as crooked union boss Johnny Friendly, and I can see why the performance is nominated. The actor is doing good work. But the character is kind of an idiot.
Well, maybe that’s unfair. But he makes some shocking missteps for a man who believes he’s so smart. Everybody in this movie is trying to manipulate Terry Malloy, and Friendly is by far the worst at it. First he’s like, “Here kid. Have some money.” When that doesn’t work, he tries, “How would you like a lot more money?” And then he commits a grievous act of violence against Terry that is surely only more likely to make him testify. And this is the guy who has been influencing Terry’s life since he was just an orphan kid. He should know him better.
Meanwhile a federal officer who has never met Terry before approaches him with dead-on leading questions about the most defining event of his life (up to this point). “Too bad you lost that fight. How did that happen? Oh you threw the fight? Why? Wow. What happened next? How is your life going now?”) This type of priming sets Terry up for the one-two punch of the concerned priest and the grieving love interest. And suddenly, he’s metaphorically back in the ring, taking on corruption on the waterfront, and he can’t afford to throw this fight because his entire self-worth is caught up in the outcome.
My daughter got annoyed by how relentlessly everyone in the movie shamelessly manipulates Terry. In fact, she was so focused on this that she didn’t even comment when Terry burst into Edie’s apartment, despite her repeated shouts to go away, and then violently kissed her to stop her protestations. Usually this kind of move draws her very vocal scrutiny. Maybe something about Terry’s true vulnerability softened her towards him. I don’t know.
Brando does make Terry pretty sympathetic. I’ve never particularly liked Marlon Brando, but he’s wonderfully emotive and natural, and there’s something almost irresistibly charming about the way he throws random actions into his performance. (The moment when he puts Edie’s glove on his own hand is so strange and senseless that it adds a layer of realism to the performance. Stuff like that doesn’t usually happen in movies (not movies from this era, anyway). It happens in real life, just for no reason at all. (Of course, I suppose you could argue that the glove is significant because he’s a former boxer, and Edie is teaching him a new way of life, but I think it’s just a quirky bit of Method Acting.)
I personally could never decide what was right as I watched this movie. Obviously murder is wrong. But the criminals running the union on the waterfront are pretty entrenched. Edie’s behavior sometimes infuriated me. Her father (whose son has just been murdered) keeps begging her to go back to college. Instead, she insists on remaining on the waterfront, trying to solve the mystery. I kept wanting to yell at her, “It is not a mystery! Everyone knows who did it. You are going to kill your father.”
Watching this with my daughter, I kept telling her confusing things like, “Always tell the truth,” and, “But do not start fights with organized crime.” As I watched, Edie drove me crazy. Her whole attitude seems to be, “I have just discovered that injustice exists in the world.” What are you going to do Edie? “I’m going to put a stop to it.” How will you do that, Edie? “Why, I’m going to go all over town sobbing and pleading and guilt-tripping everyone who will listen!” She approaches the matter like an earnest version of Columbo (one who actually is as clueless as he pretends to be).
I’m not saying that one person can’t make a difference. But Edie does get more people killed. And let’s be honest, movie, later on, after the credits have rolled, a lot of the people still alive are going to be murdered, too. I do think Terry is courageous. But I think Edie is foolhardy and frustrating. Fortunately her innocence and lack of facts about what happened seem to shield her.
I have conflicted feelings about Father Barry’s method of attack, too. But I always like Karl Malden, and his (Oscar-nominated) performance here is extremely rousing.
But it’s Terry’s dilemma that really fascinates me. I’ve been considering the situation from his point of view for days.
Is telling what he knows his obligation? Is “squealing” (being a pigeon or a rat), the right thing to do? From one point of view, it’s a no-brainer. I mean, he has information about a murder. He must tell the truth to help the cause of justice. But from his own point of view, it’s much trickier. Even setting aside questions of prudence and practically, is ratting out his “friends” really the right thing to do? There’s something to be said for loyalty.
This is the angle of the movie Bombshell (an intriguing, if far-from-perfect film) that fascinated me, too. In that film, Megyn Kelly must decide if she should speak out against (aka “rat out”) Roger Ailes. But like Terry Malloy, she has a hard time deciding what to do. As shown in the movie’s version of events, Ailes actually did sexually harass her. But he’s also been a fairly decent mentor, giving her solid career advice and help. So she’s torn. Ultimately, Kelly does speak out against him, and one of the reasons must surely be that Ailes failed to have her back when she made an enemy of Donald Trump. He showed no loyalty to her.
And that’s the situation we have here, too. Back in the day, Johnny Friendly asked Terry to throw a fight. And what happened when he did? Whose interest did that serve?
Best Scene Visually:
Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie comes when the priest charges into the bar looking for Terry. In an earlier scene, Father Barry has promised another character that if he speaks out against the injustice on the waterfront, then he will be with him “all the way down the line.” This scene reminds us of the priest’s promise as Father Barry dramatically enters the building and walks all the way down the line of the bar to the opposite end where Terry sits. I love the depth of the shot, the way that we look all the way down the empty bar to see the priest enter through the door at the far end of the room and purposefully march (following that straight line) closer and closer to us (and of course, to Terry). (And then punches fly, and Terry tells the priest to go to hell–twice!!–and Father Barry orders a beer. What a scene!)
Also great is the use of the pigeon coop. So often, the wiring of the coop separates Terry from Edie or Terry from the world. He looks out on the waterfront through the wiring of the coop, and we see that he’s trapped in a kind of prison. And then, of course, late in the film, Edie climbs into the coop with him.
Best Action Sequence:
Who knew walking could be so dramatic! Terry’s long walk to work at the end of the film is pretty riveting, even more engrossing, actually, than the fight that precedes it (because we don’t see much of that).
To me, this pairs well with an earlier moment of intensity when an “accident” happens at work. For some reason, I always find horrific accidents or “accidents” on screen strangely engrossing (particularly when dramatic irony is involved, and the audience has time to think, “Oh no! Oh no!” while the character remains blissfully (and often carelessly) unaware of his coming fate). After this accident, the priest starts framing the violent murders and injustices plaguing the waterfront as crucifixions. So then when Terry manages to get up and walk, it’s fairly easy to view him as a Christ figure.
Best Scene:
“I coulda been a contender!” That’s what most people know about On the Waterfront. Even those who haven’t seen the movie (and I’d wager quite a number of people who haven’t even heard of the movie) still know the line, “I coulda been a contender!” And the scene in the back of the car between Terry and his brother when Brando delivers this line to Rod Steiger is, in fact, one of the most powerful moments in the movie. It’s easy to see why Brando won the Oscar (and why Steiger was nominated, for that matter).
I’d single this out as the best scene not just because of the fine acting and memorable dialogue, but also because it is the core of Terry’s entire driving dilemma.
Terry threw a fight once for Johnny Friendly. And where did it get him? Terry’s recollection and reevaluation of this key event colors his perspective on the current fight against corruption on the waterfront.
The Negatives:
Terry is absolutely hounded throughout the movie’s entire runtime. He did not kill Edie’s brother. Yes, he knows who did. But so does literally everyone else in town (or at least everyone who hangs around the waterfront, every character in this movie).
Father Barry, Edie, the authorities, they just don’t let up with their endless refrain of, “You have to do this Terry. There are two choices. Either you do this, or you’re a bum.”
Why does Terry have to do it? Everyone tries so hard to manipulate him, forcing him to believe a false dilemma. Either testify, or settle down and sink further into crime. Now eventually, Johnny Friendly forces the issue, but honestly, why should anyone be told, “Your choice is to take on organized crime and be murdered, or join organized crime and be an evil bum”?
I’m not sure that all the pressure the priest puts on Terry is entirely moral, either.
None of this makes the movie bad. But what does disturb me a bit is that after watching the film, I read that director Elia Kazan intended On the Waterfront to be a defense of his own decision to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee against colleagues accused of Communism. Apparently, for Kazan, On the Waterfront was an answer to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. I do not know if this is true. I’ve seen it written in several places online, but frankly, I just don’t know enough about the subject to comment with any authority. (I know, of course, that Kazan did testify against people, and I remember vividly when he won an honorary Oscar and Steven Spielberg (among others) pointedly did not stand or clap for him.)
But that idea is kind of unsettling (though it would certainly make a good unit or paper topic in an English class. I’d love to teach Kazan’s film and Miller’s play together, but first I’d have to do real research and know exactly what I was talking about).
I watched the movie bothered by the notion that Terry was being coerced and manipulated into the role of sacrificial victim. The idea that he must be willing to die for the expiation of collective sins with which he’s been vaguely affiliated is certainly present in the material. (Karl Malden could not punch the word “crucifixion” more heavily.) And the whole community has this bizarre insistence that they must both punish him and be saved by him.
I don’t like thinking that the viewer is being manipulated into believing that behaving like Terry is the way to be heroic if, in fact, this particular flavor of heroism is being pushed by the movie to justify the director’s actions and alleviate his own sense of guilt.
But I don’t know enough about the truth of these claims. I’d have to do actual research into the making of the film to say anything for sure.
Aside from that, my only real complaint is that I’m not thrilled with Eva Marie Saint’s performance. I like the actress, so the main problem may be that I find the character frustrating. It’s not that I think all women should be off with the nuns, but she behaves so recklessly, endangering herself and (especially) others. Her method of investigating her brother’s death is questionable. If she wants to clean up the waterfront, why doesn’t she go into politics? The character just drives me crazy. She seems strangely naive, although I will admit I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be.
Overall:
I really liked On the Waterfront. I found it consistently engaging, suspenseful and thought provoking. I’m glad I’m not in Terry Malloy’s shoes, though.