I queued for twenty minutes in a crowded cinema to get into this film, and was lucky to have even a sidelong seat... yet I was left in the end feeling disappointed.
The only people on the IMDb who fail to worship "On the Waterfront" appear to be those who hate its director - on 'ethical' grounds. Well, I care little enough about Elia Kazan's history or politics, yet all the same somehow I wasn't sufficiently impressed. The film features all the technical skill of Hollywood's Golden Age, supporting actors and establishing shots and, yes, innovative use of music; in many ways I'd rate it 8 out of 10. But the best film ever - the greatest star performance? That I honestly can't see, and I admit that the high expectations hurt my reaction to the result. But thinking back, I find the chief causes of my vague dissatisfaction to be twofold: Marlon Brando, and the too-convenient outcomes of the plot.
Brando I suppose I just don't 'get' - I saw him in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "One-Eyed Jacks", and missed whatever-it-was I was supposed to spot then. Where I'm concerned he holds if anything a sort of physical anti-charisma - the slouch, the mumble - and the acting that supposedly makes his contemporaries look like posturing hams, I simply don't see. And so in my ignorance, not knowing that this was held to be one of the greatest performances of the century, I was left with the impression that Marlon Brando was actually the weak link in this film.
The revelation that the character is thirty years of age comes as a real shock: he's treated and acts throughout as little more than a sulky teenager. The lack of expression may simply be skillful acting to depict the character's stunted emotional growth, but I'm afraid I found it hard to care much what happened to Brando's Terry Malloy, whereas Rod Steiger, with far briefer screen-time, brought brother Charley and his wrenching choice vividly to life. But there's nothing inherently wrong with the role of Terry, and I can't help feeling that it would have been fascinating to see what some other actor might also have made of it.
My other serious problem, unfortunately, was the way that the plot treats our heroes with kid gloves... thus undermining the whole sense of menace on which any "one man against the Mob" plot ultimately relies. Yes, the script is happy enough to bump off a minor character or two in order to emphasise the threat of Friendly's organisation, and yes, Terry does finally get beaten up. But compared to the summary justice administered to Joey Doyle or Dugan for far lighter offences, a punch-up seems pretty easy going - Terry's lucky not to fall victim to another 'accident'.
But the fact remains that up until then, our heroes have got away with open defiance. As far as the Production Code goes, Edie is evidently sacrosanct by virtue of her sex and the priest by virtue of his cloth (despite Dugan's portentous warnings, the worst the Father gets seems to be a rotten tomato). Brando is, one can only assume, preserved by being The Hero.
A highly dramatic assassination attempt amounts to no more than driving a lorry at him in the street, with no attempt to finish the job as he takes the bait and hangs around Charley's body to emote. He walks into his enemies' headquarters with no more protection than a single unaccustomed gun, and no-one even attempts to lay a finger on him... even after his own ally, equally unscathed, knocks him down! The worst repercussion he seems to face, for all the trumpeted bravery of his betrayal, is a petulant "you'll never work in this town again" - and even this is undermined by a convenient unheralded change of heart on the part of the workers who have never previously cared for him: the 'bum' who gets all the cushy jobs and now the traitor who broke the code of the docks, yet losing a fight suddenly makes him some kind of holy hero. I'm left with that feeling of manipulation: things happening or failing to happen because they meet the desired message, not because they further the emotional value of the plot.
Some aspects of the script are very well done, but I found myself with the jarring conviction that I'd just watched a film noir - and a good one, with all the skills and devices of the genre - with a tacked-on happy ending. In a great film, the plot should seem ordained, interlocking, inevitable. Here, I got the impression that the screenplay was more interested in showcasing big scenes for its star, and in an arbitrary moral, however obtained - maybe politics does come into it after all...
In many ways, the film is good; it's worth having seen. But I cannot truthfully say that I would recommend it whole-heartedly to a friend, let alone recommend him to put himself to trouble or expense to see it, as I did. That makes for a rating of 6/10. Without Brando, for my part, it would probably have been a seven.
(Edit: I was fascinated to discover by chance today that the uneasy strain between the basic story set-up and the final outcome is *not* in my imagination alone: it's the direct result of warring visions between writer and director. The character of Terry really has been 'sexed up' to provide Brando with a more significant and sympathetic role, and the apotheosis of the informer is all Kazan's idea - in Schulberg's published version, Terry winds up in an unmarked grave and Father Barry is the most important protagonist... It turns out that the dislocation that jarred me so can be traced with almost clinical exactness to this collision of two quite separate concepts of message and plot: frankly, it explains an awful lot!)
The only people on the IMDb who fail to worship "On the Waterfront" appear to be those who hate its director - on 'ethical' grounds. Well, I care little enough about Elia Kazan's history or politics, yet all the same somehow I wasn't sufficiently impressed. The film features all the technical skill of Hollywood's Golden Age, supporting actors and establishing shots and, yes, innovative use of music; in many ways I'd rate it 8 out of 10. But the best film ever - the greatest star performance? That I honestly can't see, and I admit that the high expectations hurt my reaction to the result. But thinking back, I find the chief causes of my vague dissatisfaction to be twofold: Marlon Brando, and the too-convenient outcomes of the plot.
Brando I suppose I just don't 'get' - I saw him in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "One-Eyed Jacks", and missed whatever-it-was I was supposed to spot then. Where I'm concerned he holds if anything a sort of physical anti-charisma - the slouch, the mumble - and the acting that supposedly makes his contemporaries look like posturing hams, I simply don't see. And so in my ignorance, not knowing that this was held to be one of the greatest performances of the century, I was left with the impression that Marlon Brando was actually the weak link in this film.
The revelation that the character is thirty years of age comes as a real shock: he's treated and acts throughout as little more than a sulky teenager. The lack of expression may simply be skillful acting to depict the character's stunted emotional growth, but I'm afraid I found it hard to care much what happened to Brando's Terry Malloy, whereas Rod Steiger, with far briefer screen-time, brought brother Charley and his wrenching choice vividly to life. But there's nothing inherently wrong with the role of Terry, and I can't help feeling that it would have been fascinating to see what some other actor might also have made of it.
My other serious problem, unfortunately, was the way that the plot treats our heroes with kid gloves... thus undermining the whole sense of menace on which any "one man against the Mob" plot ultimately relies. Yes, the script is happy enough to bump off a minor character or two in order to emphasise the threat of Friendly's organisation, and yes, Terry does finally get beaten up. But compared to the summary justice administered to Joey Doyle or Dugan for far lighter offences, a punch-up seems pretty easy going - Terry's lucky not to fall victim to another 'accident'.
But the fact remains that up until then, our heroes have got away with open defiance. As far as the Production Code goes, Edie is evidently sacrosanct by virtue of her sex and the priest by virtue of his cloth (despite Dugan's portentous warnings, the worst the Father gets seems to be a rotten tomato). Brando is, one can only assume, preserved by being The Hero.
A highly dramatic assassination attempt amounts to no more than driving a lorry at him in the street, with no attempt to finish the job as he takes the bait and hangs around Charley's body to emote. He walks into his enemies' headquarters with no more protection than a single unaccustomed gun, and no-one even attempts to lay a finger on him... even after his own ally, equally unscathed, knocks him down! The worst repercussion he seems to face, for all the trumpeted bravery of his betrayal, is a petulant "you'll never work in this town again" - and even this is undermined by a convenient unheralded change of heart on the part of the workers who have never previously cared for him: the 'bum' who gets all the cushy jobs and now the traitor who broke the code of the docks, yet losing a fight suddenly makes him some kind of holy hero. I'm left with that feeling of manipulation: things happening or failing to happen because they meet the desired message, not because they further the emotional value of the plot.
Some aspects of the script are very well done, but I found myself with the jarring conviction that I'd just watched a film noir - and a good one, with all the skills and devices of the genre - with a tacked-on happy ending. In a great film, the plot should seem ordained, interlocking, inevitable. Here, I got the impression that the screenplay was more interested in showcasing big scenes for its star, and in an arbitrary moral, however obtained - maybe politics does come into it after all...
In many ways, the film is good; it's worth having seen. But I cannot truthfully say that I would recommend it whole-heartedly to a friend, let alone recommend him to put himself to trouble or expense to see it, as I did. That makes for a rating of 6/10. Without Brando, for my part, it would probably have been a seven.
(Edit: I was fascinated to discover by chance today that the uneasy strain between the basic story set-up and the final outcome is *not* in my imagination alone: it's the direct result of warring visions between writer and director. The character of Terry really has been 'sexed up' to provide Brando with a more significant and sympathetic role, and the apotheosis of the informer is all Kazan's idea - in Schulberg's published version, Terry winds up in an unmarked grave and Father Barry is the most important protagonist... It turns out that the dislocation that jarred me so can be traced with almost clinical exactness to this collision of two quite separate concepts of message and plot: frankly, it explains an awful lot!)