On the
Waterfront (1954)
Starring
Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden
Director
Elia Kazan
Awards
Academy Awards
Actor - Marlon Brando
Art Direction-Set Decoration -
Richard Day
Cinematography - Boris Kaufman
Director - Elia Kazan
Editing - Gene Milford
Best Picture
Supporting Actress - Eva Marie
Saint
Story & Screenplay
Academy Award Nominations
Best Supporting Actor - Lee J. Cobb
Best Supporting Actor - Karl Malden
Best Supporting Actor - Rod Steiger
Plot Synopsis
Terry Malloy, a handsome but inarticulate longshoreman, gets
involved in a labor scandal when a fellow dock worker is murdered. He knows that the
victim was killed by the oppressive labor union for squealing to a commission
investigating misdoings. Terry intends to keep his mouth shut and his job safe. But when
Edie, the dead man's beautiful sister, comes to town, he must choose between his
allegiance to a corrupt union and his loyalty to Edie.
Film Notes
"Marlon Brando's famous "I coulda beena contenda"
speech is such a warhorse by now that a lot of people probably feel they've seen this
picture already, even if they haven't. And many of those who have seen it may have
forgotten how flat-out thrilling it is. For all its great dramatic and cinematic
qualities, and its fiery social criticism, Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is also
one of the most gripping melodramas of political corruption and individual heroism ever
made in the United States, a five-star gut-grabber. Shot on location around the docks of
Hoboken, New Jersey, in the mid-1950s, it tells the fact-based story of a longshoreman
(Brando's Terry Malloy) who is blackballed and savagely beaten for informing against the
mobsters who have taken over his union and sold it out to the bosses. (Karl Malden has a
more conventional stalwart-hero role, as an idealistic priest who nurtures Terry's pangs
of conscience.) Lee J. Cobb, who created the role of Willy Loman in Death of a
Salesman
under Kazan's direction on Broadway, makes a formidable foe as a greedy union
leader." (David Chute, Amazon.com)
Rated: NR