Director Elia Kazan (left) with Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Brando with Eva Marie Saint
Brando with Eva Marie Saint
Brando applying his own makeup
Brando (far right) with Eva Marie Saint (left) and Karl Malden (center)
ON THE WATERFRONT A
USA (108 mi) 1954
d: Elia Kazan
Conscience...! That stuff can drive you
nuts.
—Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando)
—Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando)
It’s impossible
to separate this film from its place in history, coming after director Elia
Kazan testified against fellow members of the film industry before the House Un-American Activities
Committee that launched an investigation about communist infiltration into
American life, which has entered the mythology of American history, giving rise
to McCarthyism,
a term synonymous with the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy for conducting what
has been described as a witch hunt, making headlines through accusations of
subversion or treason, yet failing to uncover any corroborative evidence that
America or the film industry were ever infiltrated by any subversive
group. Under the guise of rooting
out communism, HUAC was clearly motivated by anti-Semitism, as the committee’s
hidden agenda was to expose Jewish collaborators as anti-American, as Jews
comprised an overwhelmingly large percentage of witnesses called before the
committee, where 6 of the original Hollywood
Ten were Jews, and one of those who was not Jewish was accused of
“writing like a Jew,” each subpoenaed to appear before Congressional hearings
where they were viewed and treated as criminals, despite the fact there wasn’t
one iota of truth to any of these accusations, yet it didn’t stop the committee
from delusionally making them anyway, irrespective of the damage done to
destroyed lives and careers. For most of
the accused, the committee itself was never thought of as a legitimate body, as
their entire reason for existence was rooted in fabricated falsehoods and guilt
by association, so the vast majority simply refused to cooperate. The televised process was viewed as a
humiliating charade, as the committee as well as the FBI already knew every
name that informers mentioned. For Kazan
to testify so willingly was a brazen insult, giving legitimacy to a witch hunt
and credence to a Congressional kangaroo court that should have been ridiculed
and mocked for their irrationality, but it also guaranteed his future working
in Hollywood, as his career thrived while others were put out of work. Kazan’s testimony ended the careers of former
acting colleagues, along with the work of playwright Clifford Odets, who was
personally tormented by the public reaction to the testimony, with his career
suffering profoundly afterwards. Kazan
was vilified for his actions, willingly cooperating as a friendly witness with
a committee who’s underlying aims were bogus and bigoted, yet remained defiantly
unapologetic afterwards, taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times to justify his decision, becoming the most
reviled witness to testify, losing his lifelong friendship with playwright Arthur
Miller who refused to speak with him afterwards, yet his behavior became the
subject of his allegorical play The
Crucible, while suffering the stains and indignities for the rest of his
career of being labeled a traitor, a snitch, a rat. This film has always been viewed as Kazan’s
answer to his critics, as justification for struggling with his own conscience
and cooperating with the committee, doing the right thing, so to speak, as
Brando’s character Terry Malloy does here, yet Kazan remains to this day the
most polarizing and divisive figure from his era, which was quite apparent in the
muted response when he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academy
Awards in 1999 nearly half a century later, with hundreds of protestors
picketing the event. Had there been no
HUAC hearings, leftist John Garfield from Force
of Evil (1948) was the most likely candidate to be given the role of Terry
Malloy, whose blacklisted screenwriter/director Abe Polonsky was quoted as
saying about Kazan, “If I was on a desert island with him, I’d be afraid to
fall asleep because he’d probably eat me for breakfast.” Ah yes, the animus. What has never been in doubt was Kazan’s
unique talent and influence within the industry, given credit for discovering both
Marlon Brando and James Dean who became towering icons in the film history,
while at the same time he was also the nation’s most brilliant theater director,
known for his use of naturalistic Method acting in stage or screen performances,
like A
Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which changed the face of the
industry. In an era that is largely
perceived as safe and conformist, it’s also unusual for a Hollywood studio to
take on a controversial social problem, making what is arguably his best film, where
what’s striking about it is the staggering collective power of the ensemble
performances.
Listed at #8 of
AFI’s list of greatest American movies, AFI's 100 YEARS…100
MOVIES | American Film Institute, one of the 15 films listed in the
category “Values” on the Vatican film list,
and winner of 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director,
Best Actor (Brando, never better, nominated in four consecutive years), Best
Supporting Actress (Eva Marie Saint in her first movie role), Best Screenplay
(Budd Schulberg), Editing, Cinematography (Boris Kaufman), and Art Direction,
with 3 other nominations in the Supporting Actor category and another for music
written by Leonard Bernstein (composed after the shooting was finished), this
film combines an extraordinary degree of talent and is a striking example of
artistry achieved through collaborative efforts. The origins come from an idea by playwright
Arthur Miller who wrote an unproduced screenplay in 1947 entitled The Hook inspired by the true story of Pete Panto,
a young Brooklyn longshoreman who stood up against the corrupt Mafia-connected
union leadership. Fearing his rise in
popularity amongst dissident workers, the union had him killed, dumping his
body in the East River. Shortly afterwards,
journalist Malcolm Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for his 24-article series for
the New York Sun at the end of 1948
entitled “Crime on the Waterfront,” exposing union corruption on the docks of
New York ('An
Underworld Syndicate': Malcolm Johnson's 'On the ...). Miller brought his screenplay to Kazan and
suggested they work jointly on the film, but the director’s testimony before
the committee ended that relationship permanently, leaving Miller incensed, where
their division came to embody the deep divisions that tore the country
apart during the McCarthy era. Kazan contacted screenwriter Budd
Schulberg, son of a Hollywood producer, changing the setting from Red Hook,
Brooklyn to Hoboken, New Jersey, which had been the site of recent assaults,
firebombings, beatings, and mobster activities, all investigated by the New
York State Crime Commission which released their findings that the
longshoreman’s union in control of the ship docks was infested with
mob-infested corruption, so the film’s story was taken straight from the
headlines. Schulberg was disappointed
that Kazan singled out Terry Malloy, a lowly dock worker, as the face of the
film, as his emphasis had been on the collective struggle of the men to get the
mob out of their union, but Kazan clearly identified with Terry’s personal
struggle and the complexities involved in taking a stand, interweaving personal
relationships with family loyalties, as his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), a
crooked union lawyer, is the right hand man to the ruthless union boss, Johnny
Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), where the thrust of the drama is Terry’s confusion and
hesitancy to squeal, as it goes against everything he’s learned on the streets,
but he’s helped along by a hard-nosed Irish-American priest, Father Barry (Karl
Malden), who’s certain that testifying before the Crime Commission is the right
thing to do, where his actions become equated with moral heroism. It’s the presence of the priest that takes
this into morally sanctimonious territory, with an overreach of heavy-handed
religious symbolism that is pounded into our skulls, offering religious
redemption, as if God is sanctioning these acts, turning Terry into a Christ
figure, which is a self-justifying way of rationalizing one’s own uneasy
conscience, but there are some major differences that make this an inept
metaphor, making mobster control over the waterfront analogous to Communist
Party control over the individual. While
the union is run by the mob, a self-serving criminal organization that controls
its interests through theft, bribery, murder, and intimidation, showing little
interest in the workers themselves, but selling them out every step of the way. Testifying against their murderous grip over
people’s lives is the right thing to do, requiring courage, all but
guaranteeing a loss of job and income, but draws no parallel to Kazan’s cowardly
testimony to keep his job, as artists in the film industry were not murderously
corrupt, in fact they were guilty of no crimes whatsoever, even by inference,
and represented no threat. Communism
held no stranglehold over any of them, as most former members joined in the
30’s during the heart of the Great Depression with 50 million unemployed and
the banks closed, and voluntarily left the Party on their own accord, just as
Kazan did, with the Hitler-Stalin pact convincing most who still
lingered. So why all the sudden interest
of the committee? The real crimes are the
actions of ideological right-wing fanatics from a misguided committee who
equated Communists with murderous thugs, abusing their power to score political
points, displaying a vengeful bloodthirstiness in going after innocent
victims, creating a Cold War Hollywood blacklist against its own citizens that
unnecessarily destroyed people’s lives through innuendo and character
assassination, using smear tactics that actually undermine the Constitution
of the United States by depriving artists of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
The film is notable for developing a storyline around a
series of “informers,” (with Kazan, still reeling from the pangs of a guilty
conscience making five consecutive films afterwards about betrayals) taking
viewers right into the heart of the dock workers, all eagerly lined up for work
each morning, dependent upon a foreman to select them for a daily assignment,
where they have to fight amongst themselves for the last available positions,
revealing a cutthroat style of capitalism at work, accentuating the futility of
longshoremen where the privileged lay around and do nothing while those at the
bottom are tasked with the most difficult and dangerous work assignments. As described by Arthur Miller, the hiring process was known as the
“shape up,” where it was estimated that there were half as many jobs as there
were men who lined up for them every morning:
I stood around with longshoreman huddling in doorways in rain and snow
on Columbia Street facing the piers, waiting for the hiring boss, on whose
arrival they surged forward and formed up in a semicircle to attract his
pointing finger and the numbered brass checks that guaranteed a job for the
day.
After distributing the checks to his favorites, who had quietly paid him
off, the boss often found a couple left over and in his generosity tossed them
into the air over the little crowd. In a
frantic scramble, the men would tear at each other’s hands, sometimes getting
into bad fights. Their cattle-like
acceptance of this humiliating process struck me as an outrage, even more
sinister than the procedure itself. It
was though they had lost the mere awareness of hope.
Mob boss Johnny Friendly is a money collector, as he gets a
cut of every piece of the action, with the money rolling in day and night. He has Terry lure a friend and neighbor Joey
Doyle onto the roof, with the mistaken belief the union would talk some sense
into him, maybe even rough him up a little, but instead he’s thrown off the
roof to his death, conveniently preventing his testimony before the Crime
Commission. While his sister Edie (Eva
Marie Saint, studying in a convent to become a nun) is outraged at her
brother’s death, she’s equally furious over the men’s code of silence,
remaining deaf and dumb, pleading for some help from Father Barry, but to no
avail, while Terry is treated like a hero for doing Johnny’s bidding, given the
cushiest work assignments after that.
Father Barry tries to organize a meeting with the dock workers, just a
paltry few show up, urging them to testify about the murder, applying the moral
teachings of Christ to waterfront unionism, but his sermon falls on deaf
ears. Nonetheless the church is raided
by Johnny’s thugs who strong-arm the few that showed up. Terry maneuvers Edie out a back way to avoid
detection and takes a noticeable interest in her welfare, where she’s never met
anyone like him, aimless and without ambition, a former prize fighter from the
streets, raised in a group home with little formal education, unlike his big
brother who is college educated and tasked with responsibilities. Terry has a quieter side where he raises pigeons
on the roof with a panoramic view overlooking the docks down below, where he
can simply sit far away from the noise of the rat race. When he takes Edie out for a beer, the
experience is near surreal, but there’s also a curious connection, as she’s
been taught to rescue souls in distress, and Terry is a deeply conflicted
individual. When another potential
informer is snuffed out in an unfortunate dock accident, Father Barry’s
presence gains greater traction with the workers, suggesting their silence only
serves their oppressors, calling each death a crucifixion, gaining traction in
Terry’s troubled consciousness, ultimately exploring the depths of his own
guilt, revealing to Father Barry how he inadvertently set up Joey Doyle. When he tries to tell Edie, she is aghast in
disbelief, an unforgettable scene with words drowned out by industrial ship
noises, with anguished faces capturing the essence of agony and grief. When Terry receives a subpoena to testify at
an upcoming hearing, the loose cannon is Johnny Friendly, who can’t take
chances with a screwed up kid, sending his brother to take care of the matter
for him. Few scenes are more memorable than
their infamous cab ride, where Charley tries to convince him to take an easy
job somewhere else where he’ll be out of trouble and can line his pockets with
bribe money, but Terry doesn’t fall for it, reminding him of the time when he
had to throw a fight, when he had a shot at the title, when he was better than
the other guy, but the mob bet against him, which sealed his fate and ended his
career. Blaming it on his brother, who
should have been there for him, it’s all just a lost opportunity, expressed as an
irrepressible acknowledgement of failure, “I coulda’ had class. I coulda’
been a contender. I could’ve been
somebody,” I Coulda Been
a Contender - On the Waterfront (6/8 ... - YouTube (2:43), infamously
re-quoted by a washed-up Jake La Motta at the end of Scorsese’s RAGING BULL
(1980), Raging Bull
(12/12) Movie CLIP - I Could've Been a ... - YouTube (2:47), all rushing
headlong into an incendiary finale, filled with a burning intensity and some
high-powered drama. Evocatively
portrayed with shocking realism by Boris Kaufman, a Russian Jewish émigré and younger
brother of famed Russian documentarist Dziga Vertov (whose original name was
Denis Kaufman), the film captures the dingy atmosphere on the docks as well as
the seedy, claustrophobic atmosphere in the cramped working class
neighborhoods, never escaping the soot-covered landscapes that dominate their
lives, becoming one of the most important films of the decade, filled with
tension, innovation, and daring emotional upheaval.
Elia
Kazan's 'On the Waterfront' is an amazing piece of ... Cinephelia
& Beyond
