On the Waterfront

"On the Waterfront" was based on magazine articles by Malcolm Johnson; it was to be filmed in New York, partly because the locations demanded it, and partly because Elia Kazan, like Huston, Mankiewicz and Zinnemann, believed the atmosphere in Southern California was detrimental to his work. He was still angry about the cuts Zanuck had insisted on in "Man on a Tightrope", but nevertheless On the Waterfront was destined for 20th Century-Fox until Zanuck decreed that audiences were not interested in labor problems. The project was taken on by the independent producer, Sam Spiegel, who arranged a deal with Columbia, and whose help in all ways was "tremendous", according to Kazan. The film reunited Kazan with Marlon Brando, whose performance as Terry Malloy, ex-pug and longshoreman, is one of the best ever recorded on celluloid. A foreword claims that the "film will exemplify the way self-appointed tyrants can defeated by right-thinking people in a vital democracy", thus avoiding the main problem, which is how tyrants achieve power in the first place. Malloy defeats them not by persuasive convictions (467k) about democracy but by the old movie standbys, revenge and the strength that comes from love. The film's rich texture and dialogue disguise the fact that Malloy is activated by a familiar maxim, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do", but, as Brando makes clear, he is not accustomed to thinking. As events crowd in on him he uses his hands desperately in gesture or is forced back on an insolent grin; he under-reacts in contrast to the Admittedly striking histrionics of Rod Steiger as his brother, of Lee J. Cobb (253k) as the corrupt Union boss and a rather dotty Karl Malden as the local priest. Brando is most memorable in the For the love scenes with the equally impressive Eva Marie Saint, playing the neighborhood girl who encourages him in a quietly bantering way which effectively contrasts with the excitement of the rest of the film. It can be enjoyed as a thriller about corruption at least, till the denouement, when Malloy becomes a Capra-like hero and testifies before the Crime Commission, and is ostracized by his colleagues--but rises from a beating-up to martyrdom and atonement. The subject is emotional and volatile, filmed in a style appropriate to the occasion; Leonard Bernstein's score (sample 289k) is theatrical, but offset by Boris Kaufman's photography of Hoboken across