Finally, it's what you've been waiting 60 years for: my review of On the Waterfront. As a refresher, this is part of my Greatest Movies of All Time? personal challenge, where I made a list of the hundreds of greatest movies made using a combination of American Film Institute lists and Academy Award results. A lot of them, especially the classics, I had never gotten around to seeing and this was my excuse to do so. Plus, there's my OCD and if something comes in a list form, so help me, God, I'm there.
On the Waterfront was ranked No. 3, behind Casablanca and Gone with the Wind.
Basically, the plot follows Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a dockworker on the waterfront run by mobster Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). In a previous life, Malloy had been a prizefighter, but at the urging of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), who also happens to be Friendly's right-hand man, he threw the fight and pretty much threw away his career.
As the movie begins, Malloy is drawing out fellow dockworker Joey Doyle, thinking that Friendly's goons would put a scare in the soon-to-be informant. Instead, they kill him. Malloy's not super happy that he was used as a pawn to kill someone, but such is life on the docks. He soon befriends/dates Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint), who makes it her goal to figure out what happened to her brother, with the help of the local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden). Father Barry tries to get the dockworkers to stand up to Friendly and work with the police, but the one guy he convinces soon has a case of whiskey dropped on his head. Those slippery ropes!
Edie and Father Barry set their sights on Malloy as someone to testify and his conscience starts tormenting him. Which makes Friendly's men, including Charley, torment him.
The movie is an entertaining one regardless of context, but when viewed in the era of organized crime and sketchy unions (the story is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series about a real Mob-run waterfront in New York). The acting is obviously stellar, too, with Brando at his best.
But you don't need me to tell you that. Here are its bonafides, which is what led to its inclusion on the GMoAT? list:
- Won the Academy Award for Best Picture
- Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor
- Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
- Ranked No. 8 in the AFI list of 100 Greatest Movies in 1998 (and No. 19 10 years later)
- Ranked No. 36 in the AFI list of the Most Inspiring Movies
- Had the No. 3 Most Memorable Quote, according to AFI, for Malloy's "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am" speech.
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