On the Waterfront

Marlon Brando Director: Elia Kazan Elia Kazan

Overview

Columbia-TriStar Home Entertainment's DVD release of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is a fine and worthwhile tribute to the film and to its legacy. The picture, offered in its correct full-screen presentation, is the best it has ever looked. The stark black-and-white cinematography is sharp and relatively clean-looking considering its age. The film was a hit-and-run affair getting made (as noted in the commentary) so there are scenes which lack the finesse of a more polished studio production. But the overall picture is excellent and really shines. The film's soundtrack is available in English mono, as well as French. In terms of extras, the film has been given an informative and thoroughly entertaining commentary track with Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel (he is also author of a book on Brando as well as director of a documentary on Kazan called Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey) and Kazan biographer Jeff Young. The track is more of a rambling, anecdote-filled commentary than a scene-by-scene examination of the film, though they do that as well. Occasionally, the two get sidetracked by their conversation (especially when discussing Kazan's involvement in the McCarthy hearings), but there is plenty of information to soak up here and it's a track well worth examining more than once. The disc also includes a nice 12-minute video interview with the director, a 25-minute exclusive featurette which includes lots of telling background info, video stills gallery, the original theatrical trailer (along with two other Columbia releases), and more. The disc is a must for any serious film lover.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/23/2001
UPC:	0043396784093
Original Release:	1954
Rating:	NR
Source:	Sony Pictures
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital, monaural]
Time:	1:47:00
Sales rank:	14,910

Special Features

Digitally mastered audio & video; Full-screen presentation; Audio: English [mono], French; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai; Exclusive featurette; Video photo gallery; Elia Kazan Interview; Audio commentary with film critic/author Richard Schickel and Elia Kazan biographer Jeff Young; Theatrical trailers; Filmographies; Animated menus; Production notes; Scene selections

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Marlon Brando	Terry Malloy
Karl Malden	Father Barry
Lee J. Cobb	Johnny Friendly
Rod Steiger	Charley Malloy
Pat Henning	"Kayo" Dugan
Eva Marie Saint	Edie Doyle
Martin Balsam	Gillette
James Westerfield	Big Mac
Tony Galento	Truck
Leif Erickson	Glover
John Hamilton	"Pop" Doyle
John Heldabrand	Mott
Rudy Bond	Moose
Don Blackman	Luke
Arthur Keegan	Jimmy
Abe Simon	Barney
Barry Macollum	J.P.
Mike O'Dowd	Specs
Fred Gwynne	Slim
Anne Hegira	Mrs. Collins
Rebecca Sands	Police Stenographer
Pat Hingle	Waiter
Nehemiah Persoff	Cab Driver
Tami Mauriello	Tillio

Technical Credits

Budd Schulberg

Elia Kazan	Director
Leonard Bernstein	Score Composer
Richard Day	Art Director
Anna Hill Johnstone	Costumes/Costume Designer
George Justin	Production Manager
Boris Kaufman	Cinematographer
Charles H. Maguire	Asst. Director
Gene Milford	Editor
Fred C. Ryle	Makeup
Budd Schulberg	Screenwriter
James Shields	Sound/Sound Designer
Sam Spiegel	Producer

Scene Index

Side #1 --
0. Scene Selections
1. Start [1:26]
2. Returning Danny Boy [1:34]
3. "Someone Fell off the Roof." [2:57]
4. Johnny Friendly [7:23]
5. Waterfront Commission Mugs [5:01]
6. How Trigger Locals Work [1:40]
7. Designated Stoolie [4:01]
8. Meeting Adjourned [1:59]
9. Getting Acquainted [4:51]
10. The Lowdown on Terry [2:20]
11. Up on the Roof [4:15]
12. A Neighborhood Saloon [5:32]
13. Wedding Party [4:54]
14. Friendly Warning [2:29]
15. Dropping a Sling on Dugan [1:54]
16. A Promise Kept [5:00]
17. Terry & Father Barry [1:29]
18. Telling Edie the Truth [3:50]
19. Talk of Past Favors [:50]
20. "I Coulda Been A Contender." [6:47]
21. At Edie's [5:51]
22. "Charley's in Trouble" [1:58]
23. Waiting for Big John [1:31]
24. Crime Commission Hearing [2:18]
25. A Pigeon for a Pigeon [4:33]
26. "You're a Cheap Mug!" [5:22]
27. Labor vs. Union [6:06]
28. Finishing What He Started [1:44]

Menu

Side #1 --
   Play Movie
   Audio Set-Up
      English
      French/Français
   Special Features
      Commentary with film critic Richard Schickel & Elia Kazan biographer Jeff Young On
      Commentary with film critic Richard Schickel & Elia Kazan biographer Jeff Young Off
      Exclusive Featurette
      Elia Kazan Interview
      Video Photo Gallery
      Filmographies
         Elia Kazan (Director)
         Budd Schulberg (Writer)
         Marlon Brando
         Karl Malden
         Lee J. Cobb
         Rod Steiger
         Eva Marie Saint
      Theatrical Trailers
         On the Waterfront
         Suddenly, Last Summer
         Picnic

Editorial Reviews

A gritty melodrama brimming with brilliant performances and seething with anger and desperation, On the Waterfront made a big splash in 1954, three years after its director Elia Kazan and star Marlon Brando had teamed up to film Tennessee Williams' A Street Car Named Desire. The story focuses on the collision between a corrupt union controlling the New Jersey port and one of its rank-and-file members, a boxer turned stevedore, Terry Malloy (Brando). The film solidified Brando's status as the king of American method acting. His famous "I coulda been a contender" monologue, spoken in the back of a taxi where his character confronts his older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger), is practically revered as a sacred text. The essence of cool, Brando's incomparably masculine style combined a sexy, knowing swagger with wry humor, jazzy timing and an aching vulnerability. The film boasts several other outstanding performances, including Karl Malden's outspoken priest and Lee J. Cobb's nasty union boss, while Leonard Bernstein's magisterial music contributes richly to the film's over-the-top naturalism. Bernstein's work earned an Academy Award nomination, one of 12 for the picture, which cleaned up on Oscar night with eight wins.

Barnes & Noble - Monica McIntyre

Arguably the best movie ever released by Columbia Pictures and among the finest movies ever made in America, On the Waterfront's reputation has only grown across the half-century since its release. Based on a series of articles about corruption on the New York/New Jersey docks, with a story and screenplay by Budd Schulberg (who also wrote a novel, Waterfront, to tell the story without the compromises necessary for the screenplay), the movie -- directed by Elia Kazan -- retains the feel of truth from the first frame to the last, down to the smallest nuances of the supporting players. Longshoreman Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is a washed-up ex-boxer who is a part-time stooge for corrupt union president Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), who also employs Terry's older, college educated brother Charley (Rod Steiger). As a favor to Johnny, Terry lures a fellow dockworker, Joey Doyle, to the roof of his building -- and Joey is thrown off the roof. All of the men who knew him plead "D & D" (deaf-and-dumb) about who killed him or why, but they all know that Joey was going to answer questions before the Waterfront Crime Commission investigating racketeering on the docks, and that it was Johnny Friendly who had him killed. But Terry can't walk away from Joey's death that easily -- he genuinely thought they were just going to lean on him a little, not kill him, and he can't forget that he set Joey up. Terry's conscience bothers him just enough so that when he meets Joey's grieving sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), and sees Father Barry (Karl Malden), the local priest, trying to find out who killed Joey, they stir some long-buried streak of decency in him. At the same time, although he's not the brightest bead on the rosary (and this is a very Catholic movie, in its imagery and sensibilities), Terry slowly becomes aware that he can tie Johnny Friendly directly to the killing. Johnny starts to doubt Terry and his willingness to keep quiet; Terry and Edie are seen together too often, and they are falling in love with each other, albeit very reluctantly -- even Terry's brother Charley can't reach him anymore. When another longshoreman, Kayo Dugan (Pat Henning), agrees to testify and is murdered, Terry is the next in line for the investigators (Leif Erickson, Martin Balsam). Terry turns out not only to have a conscience but some dignity and self-worth. In the renowned taxi-ride scene with his brother (considered possibly the best dramatic scene between two actors in the whole history of movies), he recounts how Charley never looked out for him when Charley and Johnny handled him as a boxer and made him throw his most important fights -- he's not dead, but he's barely a shadow of who and what he might've been. By this time, the middle ground Terry is standing on is shrinking down to a point -- with a piercing edge -- and he (who is worrying only about himself) has to decide which way he's going to jump off. When Charley is murdered, he makes his decision, precipitating an explosion of pent-up fury on the docks that threatens to destroy both Terry and Johnny. The acting in On the Waterfront has the aura of truth, and the decision to shoot on location in northern New Jersey gave the film the immediacy and realism of a documentary. Into that mix goes Leonard Bernstein's music (his only film score), which anticipates elements of West Side Story and, in its editing and mixing into the audio track, imparts a very subtle operatic quality to the otherwise hyper-realistic film. Just check out the interaction of the visuals and the music in the scene depicting the fight at the morning shape-up, especially the build up to the horn flourish at the moment when Terry's friend points out that he's fighting with Joey Doyle's sister. The film is an extraordinary mix of elements both coarse and refined -- harsh realism and art at its most quietly elegant -- in a coherent and compelling whole that still holds up a half century later. On the Waterfront won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder

Nobody in Hollywood except director Elia Kazan wanted to make On the Waterfront and they're still fighting about it over a half-century later. When Kazan first started pitching Budd Schulberg's story about life and death on the New Jersey docks, even 20th Century Fox -- which had allowed him to make fiercely realistic and gritty movies dealing with anti-semitism (Gentleman's Agreement), the threat of a bubonic plague epidemic in New Orleans (Panic In The Streets), and the life of a Mexican revolutionary (Viva Zapata) -- wouldn't go near the story about union corruption. Every studio was fearful of what Hollywood and allied unions might do if word got around that someone was making a movie on that subject. Kazan, however, was lucky enough to find producer Sam Spiegel, who had a contract to make films for Columbia independent of Harry Cohn's veto. Between the two of them and Schulberg, and with Marlon Brando in a role previously earmarked for Frank Sinatra, they came up with a movie that confronted audiences with the brutality and corruption that permeated much of the labor movement in the United States and the fact that people in very high places benefitted from that corruption. More than that, or the savagery of the action, On the Waterfront became a source of unending vexation in Hollywood's political wars. Kazan had been branded an informer for "naming names" of suspected Communists and Communist sympathizers before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and On the Waterfront, with its story of a corrupt union stooge who informs on his former organization, was taken as Kazan's defense of his actions. It became the only cinematically respected anti-Communist film ever to come out of Hollywood. It wasn't perfect by any means -- the ending is too neat and unbelievable -- but it stood as a landmark of realistic, topical filmmaking, carrying a load of personal and ideological messages that are still being fought over a half-century later, as witnessed by the controversy surrounding the presenting of an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement to Kazan in 1998. Bruce Eder

All Movie Guide

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