"On the Waterfront" (1954)

“Conscience—that stuff can drive you nuts!” –Marlon Brando, as Terry Malloy

One of American cinema's most honored and popular classics, “On the Waterfront” is Elia Kazan’s electrifying,  cutting-edge expose of corruption on the docks near Hoboken, New Jersey; and how one average guy found the strength to bring down the mobsters who ran them.

“On the Waterfront” is also a love story of awkward tenderness, a fitting counterpoint to the searing, powerful chronicle of gangland crime and blue-collar injustice.

Marlon Brando is Terry Malloy  an ex-boxer whose career soured after his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) made him throw a big match under orders from the Mob.  Terry lacks ambition, gave up on his dreams of glory, and feels shame for becoming a “bum”.  Terry takes the soft jobs Charlie arranges for him on the docks, and aligns himself with Charlie’s boss, a gangland bully named Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) who determines who can work every day.  Terry, along with scores of working-class guys who line up to be chosen to work, keeps his head down and his nose clean.  

Friendly and his mob have taken over the dockworker’s union from men who are desperate to work and can’t afford to speak out.  It is a culture in which exposing wrongdoing is taboo, and where whistle-blowers are branded as snitches.  

The “pigeon” is a significant motif in the film.  Terry and his buddies raise homing pigeons on the rooftops of their tenements. Being known as a “pigeon” is a terrible stigma, and results in being shunned and avoided, or facing deadly recrimination.

Terry does favors when called upon, never worrying about the consequences. When he sets up his friend Joey for Johnny Friendly’s henchmen, thinking they only want to lean on him a little, they murder him instead.  Terry is conflicted over his part in Joey’s death, but he refuses to speak out.  

His feelings become more complicated when he meets and falls for Dede, Joey’s grieving sister (a terrific Eva Marie Saint in her first movie).  Also pushing Terry to come clean, and help take back the union, is a rebellious Catholic priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), who uses the authority of the cloth to counsel and rebuke the mistreated workers, and rage against their greedy bosses.

How this is all resolved makes for one of American cinema’s strongest, most enduring classics, that despite its trappings as a crime drama, plays more like a European New-Wave film.  Its liberating, free-moving camerawork, gritty realism and jazz-flavored score, give it a fresher, more modern feel than the latest blockbusters.

Elia Kazan, who himself was a controversial figure during the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950, knowingly and passionately directs Bud Schulberg’s rapid-fire, unsentimental screenplay.  And if you listen closely to Leonard Bernstein’s orchestrations here, you can almost hear the seeds of what would become his most famous score for that iconic tale of love and gang violence, “West Side Story”.

There is no direct parallel here between Terry Malloy’s story of organized crime and what is happening today with the pandemic.  However, the film’s treatment of universal themes like fear, love, and courage inspires us to take a new look at how we might cope with the urgent concerns facing us.  

Like Terry, we are dealing with the fear of a dangerous force, that strikes with unpredictable volatility.  We are trying to move between clearly drawn lines of opinion that divide us, amidst a lot of uncertainty, not wishing to take sides but wanting to preserve a good life, or even just stay alive.

“On the Waterfront” is the story of fear and need.  Terry Malloy is a man stuck in the middle, trying to avoid harm yet wishing to do what’s right. He lives in a culture bound by a rigid code of conformity, and ignores the wrongdoing he sees so as not to become an outcast among the only people he knows.  He is afraid of loneliness and isolation, until he encounters the voice of reason from a fiery priest, and finds love with a gentle young woman who lost her brother due to his involvement.

Terry must choose: either maintain the code by which the dockworkers live, and accept a life of precarious safety under the tyranny of the Mob; or to break the code of silence to hold on to Dede, who is “the first nice thing that ever happened" to him, and in so doing risk his life.

It’s hard for me to accept how the crisis we face, and the possible ways to end it, have become so highly politicized and polarizing  in the face of so much that is still unknown.  I feel that if I take any action at all, I can be ostracized by one side or another.  While one side is shaming another for not wearing masks, another side is taking up arms against their local officials to force businesses to open.  Ultimately, like Terry Malloy, each of us has to look into our own conscience, and do what is right for us and those we care about.

Beyond the excellent direction, top-notch technical work, tight script and excellent score, “On the Waterfront” succeeds by virtue of its acting. Almost every performer does career-best work that grows richer with every viewing.  

I think this is the best performance Marlon Brando has ever given.  I admit I am not a huge fan of Brando.  I admire much of his work, but he is often too mannered and showy, using his tics to compel us to watch him act, rather than to understand the character he is playing.  In Terry Malloy, Brando found the perfect fit for his toughness and tenderness.  Here, he pays close attention to the actors he plays against rather than emoting in a far-off place; and his concentration gives his reactions and mannerisms a touching authenticity. His performance won him his first Oscar.

Rod Steiger, as Charlie, is amazing in his film debut, playing a man even more precariously in the middle. He is Johnny Friendly's right-hand man, yet he must protect his wild younger brother from Friendly's disfavor.  The famous scene between him and Brando in the back of a taxi (“I coulda been a contender”) works because Steiger communicates his feelings in a direct and understated way, as he tries desperately to save his brother.  Steiger would go on to chew the scenery in later films, but here he is heartbreakingly right, conveying with his eyes and voice all the right shades of emotion.

Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar in her debut as Dede, a kind woman who becomes a fighter after the death of her brother.  Her matter-of factness and tenderness as she slowly wins Terry over is marvelous to watch.  Karl Malden does a fine job delivering the “message” monologues, giving them a humanity and a force that is compelling,  cleverly turning them into something more honest and powerful than mere sermons.  

As Johnny Friendly, Lee J. Cobb turns up the volume to eleven on a ten-point scale.  (It’s saying a lot that Cobb is more histrionic than Rod Steiger.) He makes Johnny Friendly a menacing presence, shouting his dialog more as the film progresses, to help disguise the fact that his is the only role that borders on cliché.

“On the Waterfront” is a film that I have warmed up to over the years.  It is a hard-edged story softened by a gentle romance at its heart.  As I get older, I find the film to be a rich and rewarding emotional experience, conveying life's ambiguities in a dramatically strong and satisfying way.  I enjoy revisiting it regularly.