Directed by Elia Kazan
A prizefighter-turned-longshoreman with a conscience goes up against labor leaders to expose corruption, extortion, and murder among the union ranks.
Hatoba, 在江边, Die Faust im Nacken, Fronte del porto, Sur les quais, Há Lodo no Cais, В порту, La ley del silencio, De wrede haven, 码头风云, Storstadshamn, Rıhtımlar Üzerinde, A rakparton, Το Λιμάνι της Αγωνίας, V přístavu, חופי הכרך, 워터프론트, У порту, Na nabrzeżach, Pe chei, Alaston satama, Sindicato de Ladrões, На кея, 波止場, Storbyhavnen, 岸上風雲, Nido de ratas, I storbyens havn, در بارانداز, პორტში, La llei del silenci, 碼頭風雲, กรรมกรท่าเรือ, Ostā, Trên Bến Cảng, На доковима Њујорка
Italy Venice Film Festival 
Denmark15 
JapanG 
USANR Denmark15 
Ireland15 
Norway15 
Germany12 
FinlandK-16 
Belgium14 
Sweden15 
PortugalM/12 
FranceTP 
Spain7 Italy 
Austria 
Hungary18 France 
AustraliaPG 
UKPG 
South Korea15 France 
NetherlandsAL France Australia Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Japan Netherlands Norway Portugal South Korea Spain Sweden UK USA 
me to my reflection in the microwave glass as i heat up vegan mac & cheese at two o’clock in the morning: i could’ve had class. i could’ve been a contender. i could’ve been somebody. instead of a bum. which is what i am.
Very powerful. “And what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville.”
My politics are that it’s okay to rat on your union boss if he is corrupt and murderous, but it’s not okay to rat on your former colleagues to the HUAC when you are already an Academy Award-winning director.
Brando's performance really did live up to my expectations. Not only ahead of its time but also capable of surpassing dramatic performances today. I can feel the rage boiling underneath this film which is why I see it staying with me for awhile. The ending felt much more spiritual than I was expecting. Lot of religious metaphors that I couldn't pick up on my first time around but that I look forward to revisiting. I don't really know how I feel about this film other than what I just said. One film closer to getting through that AFI list, though!
I'm doing my absolute best to not compare Brando's looks to....well I'll let you guys guess.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Edit: so this film is a defense of Kazan's speaking to HUAC and it can go fuck itself
It's hard for me to get behind this film, which I read as a call-to-action to cleanse unions of corrupting influences. Watching a film where a man, played with surprisingly quiet passion by Brando, stands up (eventually) to those corrupting influences in risk of his life, his freedom, or his love, watching this knowing that Kazan, perhaps out of spite, perhaps out of cowardice, perhaps both, named names to HUAC, just left me feeling bitter. Reading it instead as a story about rejecting the union entirely would not, of course, make it any better. This is not an atonement; it's just almost…
extremely funny that bitch-ass Kazan snitched on writers for being communists, which cost them their ability to work, then made this pro-union masterpiece defending himself. And Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a response to him! If they do another season of Feud it should be Miller / Kazan
marlon brando this, marlon brando that, but eva marie saint absolutely kills it in her first film role
marlon brando's eyebrow slit. that's it that's the review.
Sort of sucks that this is so good.
"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."
Elia Kazan's ON THE WATERFRONT is a bonafide classic and it still holds up. A powerful morality tale and a blatant look inside a corrupted mob-infested union that rules over the local dock workers.
An absolute masterwork of cinematography by Boris Kaufman. Marlon Brando gives a performance way ahead of it's time, one of the greatest ever.
Soulquaking transcendence meets Brando’s method-mumbling, and Kazan sets out to show his own self-defense argument that can be interpreted in different ways..... maybe.
So first of all, Kazan’s “choral voice,” where the core of the film perhaps ultimately lands, is an intriguingly explosive form of its own rational moralizing, but but but(3x) I won’t go into that. I’ll focus more on how damn perfectly he neorealizes the entire dock and its collective atmosphere.
The chilling breath sighs the heavy atmosphere in the shadows of the harbor, an atmosphere that not even Irish whiskey can ultimately warm. So what it needs is exposure, a witness, no, an informer, and that seems to be Kazan’s main point, but as I said, I…
“On the Waterfront” is the moment that Elia Kazan stood up and exorcised his demons. But one man’s devils are another man’s martyrs. And Kazan, a man by any other name, might also be what another would call a rat.
Kazan, though, did not see himself as a man, or a rat. He saw his cooperative provision of names before HUAC as the act of a hero. Such is the perception and pathos that he carries into the making of “On the Waterfront.”
Marlon Brando is Kazan’s representative image within the film. Here, he plays a dockworker who witnessed a murder by his fellow longshoreman, and must testify as to their guilt, despite union bosses’ persuasive measures to keep him…
did Marlon Brando ever deliver a single line without mumbling
