ON THE WATERFRONT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 18

ON THE WATERFRONT

(Columbia) N THE WATERFRONT is one of those films that turn up every now and then to shock us into remembering that the cinema has, after all, its great and moving triumphs. This film, which is one of them, might be compared with others like A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, but because its story is simple and is told.in an absolutely straightforward way, it should appeal to many who for one reason or another found those others "difficult." Very briefly, it’s a story of corruption and racketeer control in an | American waterfront union, and of how one man became involved, paused confused in his tracks, and fought back. It also tells a tender but unsentimental love story. There are good reasons for comparing On the Waterfront with A Streetcar Named Desire, for-this new film has two of. Streetcar’s principals -- Marlon Brando and Karl Malden-and, perhaps even more important, the same director, Elia Kazan. As in the earlier film, Mr. Kazan sets his scene with economy-this time it’s the waterfront with ‘the union office, Brando as a watersider named Terry Malloy bawling a message to a | figure at a tenement window, a man pushed from a rooftop, the cigar-chew-ing union bosses inside and outside a bar (terrific scenes, these), the victim’s sister (Eva Marie Saint), and the priest (Karl Malden) among the group around the dead man. In about a minute and a half you’ve gripped the back of the seat in front, and you hang on there till the wharf-shed door drops behind "the last longshoreman off to his job about an hour and a half later. What are the ingredients that make On the Waterfront such as unforgettable picture? I've mentioned Mr. Kazan’s strong and imaginative direction and he keeps right on at that high level all the way through. He has a first-class cameraman in Boris Kaufman, and they’ve both had good material to start with in a story and script by Budd Schulberg with dialogue of remarkable fidelity. The locations also would be hard to better: the waterfront itself, the tenements inside and out, the rooftop, looking out over the city where Terry and a couple of kids take care of the murdered man’s pigeons-all give the film a haunting, real-life quality that suits the subject well. And, of course, there’s the acting. On his past form you wouldn't expect Brando to have much ‘trouble with the tough in his portrayal of the ex-pug watersicer; but leave that right aside and you still have a_ great and extremely moving performance-one wants to quote scene after scene-in his clumsy-tender love affair with the sister of the man he helped to kill. This is the more remarkable since so much of it is seen in close-up. In the difficult part of the girl Eva Marie Saint never falls below the highest standard — we will all look forward to her next film appearance; and as the priest who has carried his religion into the market place Mr. Malden embodies not only a fine, reckless courage but a warmly humorous aggressiveness in accepting the way of

life of his new companions. Among others the best remembered are Rod Steiger as Terry’s big bad brother (he has a hard job in the big scene with Brando), and Lee J. Cobb as the gang leader ("When I was 16 I had to beg for work im the hold"). On the Waterfront has its violent passages-a friend whose views I respect complains that it is too violent-but since its world is one in which men are afraid to complain when their right to life is denied by a gangster it would be surprising if it. were otherwise. My own feeling is that considering its theme and setting the violence is neither excessive nor obtrusive. On the other hand its many moments of tenderness do stay in the mind, and it leaves us moved less by its brutality than ‘by the ever astonishing resources of the human spirit.