A triumph of movies in its realistic depiction of a man alone bucking the system, "On The Waterfront" scores in another department for me. It's a prime example of a film overcoming what the late Roger Ebert liked to call "the idiot plot."
As Mr. E. put it, the idiot plot is where a movie depends on its characters acting like complete dolts in order for it to function. Here, an idiot summons a pal to a roof knowing his bully buddies who want to silence the pal wait there, not figuring that they might, you know, push him off said roof and silence him for keeps.
A priest kicks off a tense meeting by asking who killed the guy, thinking somehow someone will just blurt it out and not figuring a public forum might intimidate them into further silence.
A union boss figures the best way to keep idiot #1 quiet is to kill his brother and hang him on a hook for him to see the night before said idiot is scheduled to give testimony. Oh, and when the guy tells what he knows anyway, the boss blows his top and attacks him in front of the press.
Still, "On The Waterfront" triumphs over such qualms and delivers a solid story, aided by powerhouse performances. Marlon Brando centers everything with an assured turn as Terry Malloy, a former boxer turned goon for Longshoremen's Local 374. Sure, Terry's an idiot, but he has a lot of heart: "I figured the worst they were gonna do was lean on him a little bit. Wow. He wasn't a bad kid, that Joey."
Brando's scenes with Eva Marie Saint as Joey's sister, Edie, retain a kind of raw power, of two people finding each other in a cruel world and making something good amid the carnage. Their scenes together have an intimacy and subtlety that make them stand out more. One critical moment between them, easy to miss, is when during their first extended time together, after she lets him do most of the talking, she quietly reveals she has had her eye on him for a long time, back at school when he was a troublemaker and she was just a mousy kid in braces and braids.
Director Elia Kazan was at the midpoint of his distinguished career, and gets a lot of mileage off of scriptwriter Budd Schulberg's tough-talking script. The scenes around the pier hut where the union boys run their scams are crisp and flavorful, dominated by Lee J. Cobb's nasty Johnny Friendly. "Everything that moves in and out, we take our cut," he boasts.
Here and elsewhere, there is an "on-the-nose" quality to the dialogue, and to the way the film is constructed. It's manipulative the way we see Terry shot in the mesh of his pigeon coop like he's in a web, or how a crossbeam gives an aspect of a crucifix whenever Edie appears. Yet it works. "On The Waterfront" is a kind of passion play for organized labor, arguing successfully that tolerating corruption makes for a sin of omission.
The famous "coulda been a contender" scene with Brando and Rod Steiger as his brother Charlie remains parody-proof, and the socko ending with Terry's big confrontation at the dock remains one of the great moments of cinema. They are rare big scenes that fully earn their acclaim.
I don't love "On The Waterfront." I find it too pushed in places, and not very convincing. But it still holds up well as a testament to what movies can do, and how they can make you feel.
As Mr. E. put it, the idiot plot is where a movie depends on its characters acting like complete dolts in order for it to function. Here, an idiot summons a pal to a roof knowing his bully buddies who want to silence the pal wait there, not figuring that they might, you know, push him off said roof and silence him for keeps.
A priest kicks off a tense meeting by asking who killed the guy, thinking somehow someone will just blurt it out and not figuring a public forum might intimidate them into further silence.
A union boss figures the best way to keep idiot #1 quiet is to kill his brother and hang him on a hook for him to see the night before said idiot is scheduled to give testimony. Oh, and when the guy tells what he knows anyway, the boss blows his top and attacks him in front of the press.
Still, "On The Waterfront" triumphs over such qualms and delivers a solid story, aided by powerhouse performances. Marlon Brando centers everything with an assured turn as Terry Malloy, a former boxer turned goon for Longshoremen's Local 374. Sure, Terry's an idiot, but he has a lot of heart: "I figured the worst they were gonna do was lean on him a little bit. Wow. He wasn't a bad kid, that Joey."
Brando's scenes with Eva Marie Saint as Joey's sister, Edie, retain a kind of raw power, of two people finding each other in a cruel world and making something good amid the carnage. Their scenes together have an intimacy and subtlety that make them stand out more. One critical moment between them, easy to miss, is when during their first extended time together, after she lets him do most of the talking, she quietly reveals she has had her eye on him for a long time, back at school when he was a troublemaker and she was just a mousy kid in braces and braids.
Director Elia Kazan was at the midpoint of his distinguished career, and gets a lot of mileage off of scriptwriter Budd Schulberg's tough-talking script. The scenes around the pier hut where the union boys run their scams are crisp and flavorful, dominated by Lee J. Cobb's nasty Johnny Friendly. "Everything that moves in and out, we take our cut," he boasts.
Here and elsewhere, there is an "on-the-nose" quality to the dialogue, and to the way the film is constructed. It's manipulative the way we see Terry shot in the mesh of his pigeon coop like he's in a web, or how a crossbeam gives an aspect of a crucifix whenever Edie appears. Yet it works. "On The Waterfront" is a kind of passion play for organized labor, arguing successfully that tolerating corruption makes for a sin of omission.
The famous "coulda been a contender" scene with Brando and Rod Steiger as his brother Charlie remains parody-proof, and the socko ending with Terry's big confrontation at the dock remains one of the great moments of cinema. They are rare big scenes that fully earn their acclaim.
I don't love "On The Waterfront." I find it too pushed in places, and not very convincing. But it still holds up well as a testament to what movies can do, and how they can make you feel.