The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. On the Waterfront (1954/USA/dir. Elia Kazan) appeared at #21 on my original list.
What it is • Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has it...okay. A former boxer whose potential was short-circuited by his loyalty to his mobbed-up brother Charley (Rod Steiger), Terry now "works" on the New Jersey docks but he's given cushy gigs by the grateful Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), boss of the crooked local. Johnny is grateful because when the film begins Terry is already a snitch and a stooge - but he's a snitch and stooge for the hoodlums who already run the docks, not those who want to clean it up. It's the latter possibility many find unpalatable; they are hard-wired to view informing as transgression only when it hurts the powerful. After his collusion results in the death of a friend (Ben Wagner), a guilty Terry begins to fall for the young man's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint). Both she and the hardbitten Father Barry (Karl Malden) prod Terry to "rat" on his protectors for the good of the workers, even though many of them will turn their back on him for his "betrayal." On the Waterfront is in many ways a small, focused film whose gargantuan reputation looms large over movie history. There are two major reasons for the film's notoriety. The first reason is the acting, particularly Brando's (though Steiger deservedly comes in for high praise too), which culminates and has come to define an era of shifting values in screen performance - tilting toward a kind of stylized authenticity rather than the polished sheen of the studio system's Golden Age: New York Method vs. L.A. star power. The second reason is that Kazan, so respected for his sensitivity in crafting believable performance, is slammed for articulating a generalized "defense of the informant" immediately after he himself identified eight Communists before HUAC. Skeptics duly noted the yawning gap between the powerful villains of the film and the beleagured leftists whom Kazan had actually betrayed. I can remember watching the Academy Awards broadcast in 1999 when a nearly 90-year-old Kazan received a lifetime achievement award and a huge swath of the audience refused to applaud - or even booed. The wound still felt fresh a half-century later.
Why I like it •
