Unrelentingly dark, On the Waterfront takes us to a place that few of us ever see, and gives us an antihero and a redemption tale that are among the finest achievements in cinema history. The gritty, mob-ridden docks on the edge of Manhattan have belonged to many different oppressed and minority groups (now it’s a haven for poor, crack-addicted transsexual prostitutes), but here they belong to the sort of long-faced men we saw back in How Green Was My Valley; of course, coal miners and longshoremen are kindred spirits — they’re both beholden to the corrupt will of dirty, greedy jerks who pay them nothing and make them witness to some hideous crimes.
In this film, the injustices perpetrated by Johnny Friendly and his band of fat-faced goons are just the frame for our window into the sad lives of the hard-working dock workers. From their midst emerges Terry Molloy, who is played by Marlon Brando with such precision and such gusto that you’d think he lived in a dumpy tenement with pigeons for years before stepping into the checkered jacket. And he probably did. Through his struggle with the long arm of the law, we watch as all the powerful forces in the world — business, justice, murder, Jesus — converge on a small part of Manhattan and play themselves out in epic fashion. The romance works. The noir works. The social justice angle works. And the result is a brutal and beautiful picture that is completely engrossing and awe-inspiring.
Many of the great moments — Molloy walking with blood streaming down his face, the famous cab scene, the near-death experience in the alley way — reminded me of great social justice movies from later in the century, including The Insider (which is heavily influenced by this movie), Do the Right Thing, and Schindler’s List. And, of course, many of its finest moments have clear influences in the classic films of Sergei Eisenstein (especially the end of this movie, which reminded me a lot of the Odessa Steps sequence.) But I couldn’t stop thinking throughout the whole movie about director Elia Kazan’s shameless blacklisting of his own colleagues during the Red Scare. It’s hard to make a movie about standing up for what you believe in, when you’re sending your friends to prison and leading the fight against the good people in Hollywood.
Still, Marlon Brando gives the performance of a lifetime here, as do many others… Eva Marie Saint as the mysterious and tragic sister of the first mob victim, Karl Malden as the paragon of virtue, Lee J. Cobb as the reckless and amoral union “leader.” It’s an indisputably classic movie, filled with phenomenal performances and a haunting and eternally relevant story. To give this masterpiece anything less than a 10/10 would be blasphemy.
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