Film review: On the Waterfront (1954)

Lloyd Cole was the balladeer of the bedsits in my teens, and in his song "Rattlesnakes" he sings "She looks like Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront" and, finally, I can see his point. 

She looks unworldly, which fits her character (Edie Doyle), as the daughter (and sister) of longshoremen who was sent away to Catholic schools to protect her from the life.  She is home for the holidays when her brother is killed, led into a trap by Terry Malloy, a simple ex-prize fighter played, of course, by Marlon Brando.  (In very loose ethnic casting, the Irish Malloy brothers Terry and Charley are played by Brando and Rod Steiger.)  Terry didn't know her brother Joey, with whom he shares a love of pigeons (and he takes over care of Joey's pigeons) would be killed, however.  He thought the people waiting on the roof would just rough Joey up a bit, not throw him off.  (Despite the great naturalism of the acting and the excellent and gritty script, there are occasional bits of fake stagey-ness about this film, and Joey's "body" falling limply is one of them.  The too-good painting of "Joey's Loft" on his pigeon shed is another.) The rest of the film is Terry falling hard for Edie and becoming less comfortable with the actions of the corrupt mob-riddled union he was acting on behalf of and for whom his brother is right hand man to the head honcho, "Johnny Friendly," played in a performance that rivals his 12 Angry Men role for brutishness by Lee J. Cobb. 

Rounding out the powerhouse cast is Karl Malden as the upright priest who is willing to stand up to Cobb's corruption.  (We also see familiar faces like Martin Balsam and Fred Gwynne in small roles, but there are also a lot of actual longshoremen in the cast, along with the odd ex-boxer, like "Two Ton" Galento.)  Cobb ensures that one longshoreman who was going to turn witness to the Feds (against the strict waterfront code of "D & D" or acting deaf and dumb, even when you're the ones getting squeezed by the corrupt union) gets crushed on the job and that, along with his guilty conscience about Joey, pushes Terry towards testifying.  Johnny Friendly gets wind and sends Charley to talk him round or bump him off.  This leads to the most famous scene in the movie, where Steiger and Brando are in a limo heading possibly to a location where Terry will get whacked and Steiger pleads with Brando to back off. 

It is, of course, the "I coulda been a contenduh" speech. 

What's amazing is that, no matter how often it's been parodied, Brando makes it fresh, largely by underplaying it.  It's great acting (on both their parts) but it's not showy acting.  In fact, it would be easy for it to look melodramatic - any speech with the line "a one way ticket to Palookahville" is teetering on the brink of corn - so it is to their credit that you are completely sold, and completely enthralled.  What I didn't realize before watching the film is that [spoiler] this is the moment when Charley's fate is sealed, and he pretty much realizes it, but still lets his brother go.  The next time we see him, it's his corpse, hung on a wall by one of the hooks that all longshoremen carry.  This is the moment Terry finally snaps, and we get to see actual anger from him, and it is all the more impressive for Brando's relative gentleness up to that point.  In fact, the think Brando conveys most in this movie is vulnerability, despite being a very believable ex-boxer (he certainly moves like one).  He has a lot to carry in this film: Terry is clearly a little bit simple, but he has to win over the Catholic college girl Edie, who is so clearly not of his world (and would be out of his league, given Marie Saint's beauty, were it not for Brando's own beauty (behind the make up to make his eyes looked battered from boxing)).  He does so essentially by being a giant puppy.

(There's a lovely early scene with them where they are walking together for the first time and she initially wants to be rid of him, but she drops a glove and he picks it up and unselfconsciously puts it on, and sits on a kid's swing to talk to her.)  The only one who has to do as much is Eva Marie Saint, who is Juliet to his Romeo and also has to make their relationship believable. 

I only know her from North By Northwest (she didn't do that many films - she wasn't the Hollywood type, apparently.  Or, I should say, isn't, because she's still alive at 96) where she seems kind of icy and/or flat.  But come to think of it, so does Kim Novak and so does Grace Kelly, so obviously it's more Hitchcock's direction than the actresses he cast to play his blond archetypes.  She won an Oscar for her performance, which is all-the-more impressive considering the testosterone stew she had to swim in (and the fact that she was the only unknown). 

All-in-all, I'm glad I saw it, and the acting is something else, but the actual film is a bit simplistic, and characters like Cobb's and Malden are rather cardboard-cut-out (however much they elevate them - and the dialog is still great).  If you haven't seen it, listen to Rattlesnakes and then cue it up.