On the Waterfront *****

On the Waterfront is one of the greatest movies ever made and I can't watch it because it makes my skin crawl. Make sense? No? Well, allow me to explain.

I usually can't stand the thought of this movie, but just the other day I was discussing this it with a friend of director Elia Kazan’s and an old movie pro by the name of Robert Jirus. Bob, who believes Kazan could do no wrong, basically dared me to review this fairly, so here I am.

Every critic has biases; just like every person has biases. The difference between me and all the rest is that I admit them. By admitting them, you can separate that opinion from your review. I’ll admit mine now. I don’t like Elia Kazan. I didn’t like him then and I don’t like him now.

I should give you some background here first. Kazan started his career as an jack-of-all-trades with the Group Theatre, the crew that popularized method acting and started the career of John Garfield, Clifford Odets and Lee Strasberg among others.Some members of this group were known for their liberal, even radical, politics and when the Communist scare started after World War II this crew was an easy target. Most of them held tough and protected their friends. Garfield refused to name names and saw his career and his life end as a result (he died of a heart attack in 1952 at 39).

Kazan on the other hand felt the need to protect his flourishing career, so he turned on six people including, Strasberg's wife, Odets and J. Edward Bromberg, who had been dead for a year when Kazan named him (talk about kicking you when you’re down). Kazan's public reasoning was that he couldn't take the guilt of knowing all those Communists were running around. Of course, he could take $500,000 that the studio offered him right after he proved his was a good American by burying his friends.

Now the problem was that the studios and Congress might love him, but ever since the days of Benedict Arnold, turncoats have never been popular with the public. So Benedict Kazan dilema is that he has to find a way to educate (brainwash) the public as to why ruining the lives of your friends is good for America.

Just about this time, Malcolm Johnson of the New York Sun was putting the finishing touches on a magnificent series of articles about the mob's control of the New York docks. Johnson started by looking stevedore Andy Hintz’s murder at the hands of union bosses John Dunn and Andy Sheridan and from there covered decades of corruption on the waterfront from the lowest grunt in the hole up to the Anastasia clan.

Screenwriter Budd Schulberg was inspired by this effort and did some further research on his own before buying the rights of the series from Johnson. Schulberg then finished the first draft of a screenplay and tried to peddle it to the mindless idiots that produce movies in Hollywood. Everyone passed on it. The movie seem dead until red-hot director Elia Kazan decided he wanted to work with Schulberg. Budd tried to push his waterfront script again and Kazan saw potential - potential to rework the story to show why squealing is as good for you as spinach and broccholi.

The final draft of the script is about longshoreman Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a former boxer and brother of union leader Charlie (Rod Steiger), who has a cushy job on the docks, but every once in a while has to help out the gangsters who run his local. One of those favors led to the death of Joey Doyle. This was a bit much for Terry and he begins to have his doubts about his brother and the union head, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). While the union tries to keep Terry in line, a priest (Karl Malden) and Joey’s sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), try and get Terry to join their movement against the union and do the right thing – testify before the commission.

From my earlier tirade, you can guess how it ends. As an aside, a commission was not involved in Johnson’s articles. In the cases mentioned by Johnson and Schulberg, the longshoremen used force and the democratic process to take back their unions.

The movie itself is phenomenal. The acting is top notch from Marlon Brando to Rod Steiger to Lee J. Cobb all the way down to the actual longshoremen playing bit parts. The location photography cannot be grittier or more appropriate. Budd’s screenplay is one of the best you’ll ever see. But here it all comes back to the acting.I hate to single out the obvious scene to point out why this movie is so good, but I want to look at something you might not have noticed. In the famous “contenda” scene, watch Brando’s reactions when his brother pulls out the gun. The standard here would be to look shocked or frightened. Brando just looks depressed and sad, which seems stupid at first, but then it makes perfect sense. What have these thugs done to my brother to make him pull a gun on his own blood? It’s scenes like this that show why early Brando was so good before he became a bloated parody of himself.

There are no scenes or even moments when I roll my eyes in the entire movie. It’s probably the most realistic film I’ve ever seen and a credit to everyone on the staff. And everytime I watch it I see the justification for John Garfield's death. On the Waterfront is a great movie. It is also a momument to Kazan's greed and cowardace. I hope you enjoy it.