On the Waterfront
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Imagine what it must have been like for audiences in the early 1950s to see the likes of Marlon Brando on their neighborhood movie screens. Seeing Brando in a burst of films like The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, and On the Waterfront must ht from almost anything that had come before. The reason is that Brando had come out the New York thave been electrifying. Brando’s performances in those films were raw, psychologically real, radically differeneatre scene where he’d learned a style of acting called “method”, which pushed actors to draw upon their own personal experiences to fire their performances.
“Before Brando” and “After Brando”.
Brando’s approach to “method” exploded the conventions of film acting so completely that the seismic shift that happened in movie acting at that time is sometimes called “Before Brando” and “After Brando”. For me, his explosive performance in 1954’s On the Waterfront ranks as one of the greatest ever put on film.
In the movie, Brando plays Terry Malloy, a slow-witted ex-prizefighter who’s taken too many punches to the head and now works as a longshoreman for a corrupt union run by a menacing underworld boss named Johnny Friendly.
With childlike loyalty, Terry does whatever Friendly tells him to. But when Terry finds out that Friendly used him as an unwitting pawn to set up the murder of another dockworker—a close buddy of Terry’s who was about to testify to a crime commission about corruption in the union—Terry’s loyalty to Friendly starts to crack.
When the crime commission subpoenas Terry to testify what he knows about the union…Friendly threatens him to keep his mouth shut—or else. Soon, Terry’s conscience is ripping him apart, especially when he finds himself falling in love with the sister of the dockworker friend he helped send to his death.
Brilliantly directed by Elia Kazan, with a masterful screenplay by Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront won eight Academy Awards that year, including Best Picture and the Best Actor award for Brando. The scene in the back of a taxicab where Terry tells his brother Charlie that he could have been a contender…that he could have been a champion if Charlie had only believed in him is heartbreaking; truly one of the most treasured moments in film history.
Top to bottom, the movie is packed with unforgettable performances. The dream cast includes Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint.
There is so much more to say about this landmark film, enough to fill a book. From the genius behind its creation…to its revolutionary influence on the film actors who carry on the practice of “method” in their craft today. Suffice it to say, I give On the Waterfront a glorious four out of four stars.
