On The Waterfront Review

Number 118 on the top 1000 films of all time is the film that earnt Marlon Brando his first oscar: On the Waterfront.

The decade is the 1950's.  The location: New Jersey.  The New Jersey docks are rife with corruption and greed.  And to make matters worse, the labour union leaders are also corrupt and in league with the local mob.  When one longshoreman dies in an apparent suicide, the local priest Father Barry (Karl Madden) calls on the workers to stand against the mob, rather than playing deaf and dumb.  Yet the one man that could do something: Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is perfectly content with staying silent.

What I most enjoyed about this crime drama was how the mob wasn't romanticised.  In mob thrillers like Goodfellas and The Godfather, which earned Brando his second oscar, the Mafia is romanticised.  And it shouldn't be.  In On the Waterfront, they are obviously villains.  Led by Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) they extort the dockworkers and kill anyone who stands in their way.

And then of course you get Marlon Brando who's the best part of this film.  He very much follows the character arc of a reluctant hero.  He begins unwillingly, but gradually becomes more heroic.  Yet he is also an empathetic hero.  We learn that he is bitter, due to an iconic speech, where he claims that he "coulda been a contender." Having once been a promising boxer, he threw a fight and his career, to help his brother win a bet.  Ever since then, his confidence has been shaken and it was great to see it be restored.  By the film's conclusion, he inspires the other dockworkers into action, and the image of them walking away from the screaming Johnny Friendly was a powerful one.

Ultimately, this was a good film.  Brando definitely deserved his oscar and there was a nice range of different characters.  And of course, it carries the important message of standing up to anything.  This film is definitely a contender for one of the greatest for all time.