On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The black-and-white film was inspired by "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November–December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, but the screenplay by Budd Schulberg is directly based on his own original story.[1] The film focuses on union violence and corruption among longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.
For other uses, see On the Waterfront (disambiguation).On the Waterfront
"Crime on the Waterfront"
by Malcolm Johnson
- July 28, 1954
108 minutes
United States
English
$910,000
$9.6 million
On the Waterfront was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest films ever made. It received twelve Academy Award nominations and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. In 1997, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth-greatest American movie of all time; in AFI's 2007 list, it was ranked 19th. It is Bernstein's only original film score not adapted from a stage production with songs.
In 1989, On the Waterfront was one of the first 25 films to be deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress[2] and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.[3][4]
Plot[edit]
Terry Malloy is a former prize fighter whose career was cut short when he purposely lost a fight at the request of local mob boss Johnny Friendly. Terry now works for Friendly's labor union as a longshoreman while his older, more educated brother Charley is Friendly's right-hand man. One day, Terry is coerced into luring fellow worker Joey Doyle onto a rooftop, where he believes Friendly's henchmen want to talk Joey out of testifying to the Waterfront Crime Commission. When they instead murder Joey by throwing him off the roof, Terry is upset and confronts Friendly, but is threatened and bribed into acquiescence. Depending on their jobs and fearing Friendly's ruthlessness, the other dockworkers likewise play "deaf and dumb".
Joey's sister Edie shames the local priest Father Barry into calling the dockworkers to a meeting, where he tries unsuccessfully to persuade them to stand together. Terry attends as a snitch for Friendly, but when the meeting is violently broken up by Friendly's men, he helps Edie escape, missing how Father Barry convinces one wounded worker to testify. Friendly and Charley get angry at Terry for getting involved with Edie and not informing them of the testimony, dropping their usual joviality. The next day the worker who testified is killed in a staged workplace accident.
Father Barry makes an impassioned speech, comparing the murders to Christ's crucifixion. Like the other workers, Terry is still unwilling to testify, even after he is subpoenaed, but his guilt and regret grow along with his feelings for Edie as he sees her relentless pursuit of justice. He confesses his role in Joey's death to Father Barry and later to Edie, who runs away horrified.
To keep Terry quiet, Friendly sends Charley with a job offer. Knowing Friendly will have Terry killed if he refuses, Charley tries his best to persuade his brother, eventually even threatening him with a gun. Terry gently waves away and expresses regret about throwing his best fight, blaming Charley for setting up the fix. Charley gives Terry the gun and tells him to run. Terry seeks out Edie, who initially refuses to let him in. When they eventually kiss after a short struggle, Terry's name is called from the street and the two run out. After nearly being run down by a truck, Edie and Terry find Charley's body hung on a hook in the alley.
Terry goes to a bar intending to shoot Friendly, but is stopped by Father Barry, who persuades him to instead testify in court. Following Terry's damning testimony to the commission, Friendly is cut off from his powerful friends while facing indictment. Friendly bars Terry from any union jobs. Refusing to leave the city with Edie, Terry appears at the dock for the daily ritual where workers are chosen from the assembled longshoremen. Everyone is called to work except Terry, who taunts Friendly outside the nearby shack, shouting that he is proud of testifying.
Friendly goads Terry into attacking and getting beaten until he calls for help from his thugs, who stop just shy of killing Terry. This time, the longshoremen refuse to work unless Terry is allowed to work as well, and Joey's father pushes Friendly into the river when he tries to bully the men. Father Barry tells a badly injured Terry that he lost the battle but has a chance to win the war if he can walk into the warehouse. Father Barry and Edie get him on his feet and Terry stumbles up the gangway to stand before the warehouse, where the boss nods to Terry and tells them to get to work. The men follow Terry inside, ignoring Friendly as he lashes out with empty threats and his fists. The door closes behind them, leaving Friendly out in the cold.
Home media[edit]
The first home video release of the film was by Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment in 1982, on VHS and Beta. RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video later re-released it in 1984, 1986, and 1990, respectively, the latter being a part of the Columbia Classics line-up. Columbia TriStar later reissued the film on VHS in 1995 as part of the line-up's "Studio Heritage Collection", and the first DVD version was released in 2001. Among the special features is the featurette "Contender: Mastering the Method", a video photo gallery, an interview with Elia Kazan, an audio commentary, filmographies, production notes, and theatrical trailers. The film has been added to the Criterion Collection.
The 2013 Criterion Collection release presents the film in three aspect ratios: 1.66:1, 1.85:1, and 1.33:1. The accompanying booklet explains the reasoning behind this choice: "In 1953, Columbia Pictures was transitioning to the new widescreen format and declared that all its upcoming films, including On The Waterfront, would be suitable for projection in any aspect ratio from the full frame of 1.33:1 to the then widest standard of 1.85:1. The customary frame of European cinematographer Boris Kaufman (Twelve Angry Men, Baby Doll) split the difference at 1.66:1, so that all that was required was for him to leave extra room at the top and bottom of the frame and make sure that nothing essential would be lost in the widescreen presentation. At its premiere in 1954, On The Waterfront was projected at 1.85:1. Over subsequent decades, millions of television viewers became accustomed to seeing the film with the open-matte 1.33:1 framing, a presentation that has carried over into the home video era. Here, for the first time, Criterion is presenting the film in all three aspect ratios so that viewers can compare and choose the version they prefer."
Adaptations[edit]
In the same year that the film was released, Budd Schulberg published a novel simply entitled Waterfront based on his script. In the novel Terry Malloy dies. It is more heavily focused on the priest who stands up to the mob, and narrated in first person by him.
In 1984, the film script was adapted to stage by Schulberg, opening on Broadway in November. It had several technical innovations for the time, including lasers, filmlike scenic dissolves and sounds that enveloped the audience. As with Schulberg's earlier novel, the motivations of Father Barry are made more explicit, and the ending is less happy.[37] It was revised in 1995 and lasted for only 8 performances, losing $2.6 million, a record on Broadway for a non-musical at the time.[38]
The Indian film Kabzaa (1988) and Ghulam (1998) are inspired by On the Waterfront.[39]
A 2009 British production was directed by Steven Berkoff, who also played Johnny Friendly, with Simon Merrells as Terry. It played at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London, after the Nottingham Playhouse and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.[40][41]