A classic piece of realist drama, filmed on location in New York, and one of the most powerful films of its decade, which incorporates possibly Marlon Brando's finest performance (though my personal favourite for its raw power and revolutonary style is Streetcar followed by this one and the mess that is Apocalypse) and certainly Rod Steiger's. Brando is the ex-boxer ('I coulda been a contender') who, through a variety of circumstances including the murder of his corrupt brother (Steiger), stands alone against Lee J. Cobb's Mafiosi, who control New York's waterfront.
Both the writer, Budd Schulberg, and the director, Elia Kazan, had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and Brando's final transition from perceived stool pigeon to defiant hero is sometimes interpreted as their justification for their own actions. Whether this is so or not is unimportant, though it gives an added point of interest. Brando's performance as the inarticulate former pug whose inherent decency forces him, reluctantly, to take on the hoodlums is magnificient. And yet, in the much-paradied car scene wherein he delivers the 'contender' speech, he is almost acted off the screen by Steiger, appearing in only his second film. But then the entire cast is excellent and for once the Method style of acting, which they all embrace, is exactly right.
Schulberg, who wrote the script from Malcolm Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning articles about the work of a Jesuit priest (played by Karl Malden), later developed his screenplay into a novel and gave it a more downbeat, but undoubtedly more likely, ending. An introductory note to the film claims optimistically that corruption can be beaten by constitutional means; Schulberg's novel suggests realistically that it can't.
Brando researched the part of Terry Malloy by going down to the Hoboken docks and loaded crates whilst hanging around with the workers. He traded punches daily at Stillman's Gym and at the Actors Studio with Roger Donoghue, a former light heavyweight boxer.
First read-through of On The Waterfront was held at the Actors Studio on November 15, 1953.
The film was made for only $850,000.
Eva Marie Saint's first film.
5 STARS OUT OF FIVE
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