Cast: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint

Director: Elia Kazan

Screenplay: Budd Shulberg

Running time: 1 hr 48 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:


Before Marlon Brando started sporting a ‘tasche and looking deadly serious donning the Don suit, he had once been the finest paradigm of the Method acting during the Studio era, and in On The Waterfront, a gritty urban working-class drama, he snagged his first Oscar triumph, which he could have nabbed earlier in his career in his role in A Streetcar Named Desire if not for Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. This win is truly deserved, in a mesmerising, carefully controlled performance, playing the inarticulate Terry Malloy, whose tough, nitty-gritty exterior hides a sympathetic core. After being indirectly linked to a murder of a dockyard worker, he develops a reluctant relationship with the murdered man’s sister played by Saint, and transforms from a hard-knock ex-boxer to a sensitive fighter for social justice. His speech “I could have been a contender...” remains a celebrated moment, but it is really the film’s realism, the portrayal of the dockyard environs in chiaroscuro cinematography consolidates this as a naturalistic period piece, in vein to the Italian Neorealist depiction of The Bicycle Thieves.


VERDICT:

On The Waterfront is an important piece of cinema, with Brando’s career-defining performance, but the film remains only seminal rather than completely, staggeringly powerful.



RATING: B+