Cheap On the Waterfront (DVD) (Marlon Brando, Karl Malden) (Elia Kazan) Price

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Customer Reviews of On the Waterfront

The Contender
I have heard people say that they do not understand why this film was seventh on the A.F.I 100 Greatest American Film Movies list so perhaps I can tell you what I think. When this movie came out the Committee for Un-American Activities had just completed their search of Hollywood for communists. In the 50's this was a big deal and people in the business were blacklisted form working in Holywood as a result. The director of this film, Elia Kazan, and it's producer, Lee Strasburg, both reportly gave names to the committee. This upset many people. After Kazan made On the Waterfront Terry Malloy's struggle became a metaphor for this time in Hollywood. It was a very bold statement at the time.

That being said, this is also a fantastic movie even if taken out of that context. Marlon Brando plays Terry Malloy, a longshoreman, who does a favor for teamster boss Johnny Friendly which leads to a neighborhood friend, Joey Doyle, getting murdered. Joey was going to testify against the union that controls the docks. Terry will soon face a similar dilema when he is approached about testifying. Terry has become interested in Joey's sister(Eva Marie Saint), but his brother(Rod Steiger) works closely for the Union leader. Eventually his struggle will come to a head.

This movie is great I don't really want to reveal too much about the plot. The story is timeless and very compelling. The performance from Brando is one of the greatest of all time(he won best actor). This film has stood the test of time and should be seen by any fan of cinema because it is quite an achievement.

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Greatness Never Flags
When director Elia Kazan unveiled ON THE WATERFRONT in 1954, both critics and the public agreed that this was a special film. This is a rare enough phenomenom and repeated viewings over the decades indicate that this film truly deserves to be labeled with that often overused 'great' tagline. Part of the reason why the audiences of the 50s loved OTW was not just the superlative acting of Marlon Brando as Terry Molloy, Eva Marie Saint as Edie or Rod Steiger as Terry's conflicted brother Charley, but rather the very feel and sound of the Hoboken waterfront were faifthfully recreated to the extent that they formed a tonal subtext. Have you noticed that OTW is not a quiet movie? In nearly every scene, one can hear the raucus shriek of railroad cars and ship clanghorns dolefully reminding us that sound can be used to place the actors both spatially and aurally. Remember the scene when Terry tries to explain to Edie his own role in the murder of her brother? As soon as he opens his mouth, a ship's whistle begins to shriek so his words are drowned out. We may not be able to hear, but the look of Edie's face tells us that she heard.

It is too easy to toss around memorable quotes of which OTW abounds: the "I coulda been a contenda" speech, for example. But this film is not great because of them. Rather, OTW is great because it does what all great movies manage to do: to engage us in the fate of its stars. When Brando is beaten to a pulp by Johnny Friendly's (Lee J. Cobb) thugs and has to stagger to reach the warf to report to work and thus break the stranglehold of the crooked union boss on the workers, we can feel each agonized step that Brando takes. It is only the great movies that allow us to feel pain like that.

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I LOVE THIS FILM
It is unfortunate that it took Brando's death for me to realize the acting genuis he was. In this movie he brought forth such a vulnerability that you wanted to root for him. His acting is brilliant, I can understand why he won an Oscar for this performance. I now know what true acting genius is, it was Brando. Highly recommend this movie.