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Summary: A True Marlon Brando Classic
Review: On the Waterfront is a showcase of Marlon Brando's amazing acting ability in its finest .
Rating:
Summary: A True Marlon Brando Classic
Review: On the Waterfront is a showcase of Marlon Brando's amazing acting in its finest .
Rating:
Summary: It is a good movie!!!
Review: I believe this was an interesting movie. I especially liked all the actors in the movie. I strongly recommend that other people definetly buy this movie. It is a smart buy!!!
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Summary: Cheers to Columbia/Tristar For Giving Us Black and White!
Review: On the Waterfront is a bonafide classic masterpiece with superb acting from the entire cast, and shows why Marlon Brando is considered to be one of the greatest actors of all time! With no disrespect intended towards the reviewer who said he hates black and white movies and thinks they should be colorized, they say everyone is entitled to their opinions but I must say that I strongly disagree with him! Being a film buff I think the old black and white classics are works of art and colorizing them is just a really bad idea and colorized movies look awful! Cheers to columbia/Tristar for not colorizing this black and white classic! Black and white is a beautiful art form! Lets all Band together and salute the studios who keep these classic black and white films just the way they are meant to be shown and let them know that we appreciate and respect black and white!
Rating: 
Summary: Hopelessly Antiquated
Review: Another victim of the bewildering practice of forcing older movies to be shown in the useless black and white format; knowing that computers can add vibrant colors to these movies, and that studios fail to take advantage of it, is extremely saddening. There are likely thousands of new viewers (who, like me, can't stand black and white) who will be turned off by this close-minded practice.Let's all band together and tell the studios what we want: classic movies looking as good as possible! And in bright, beautiful colors!
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Summary: To be, or not to be (a rat)
Review:
You don't rat on your friends to the law. That's the primary message here...EXCEPT when they ought to be ratted on, of course.
Elia Kazan directed this movie shortly after he "ratted" on a bunch of communist sympathizers whom he worked with in Hollywood to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Marlon Brando, playing the hero (Terry Malloy), a washed up boxer in the movie, ratted on his boss, Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb. His only excuse for being a rat was that Friendly had his brother and his girlfriend's brother killed, along with a bunch of other folks. One gets the feeling that maybe Kazan was making an apology, in his own way, for tattling on the left-wingers who controlled Hollywood (and still do?). The movie is good entertainment, and it won several oscars, including one for Kazan and one for Brando. In my opinion they were well earned. This is an old one, in black and white, and I've seen it now several times. It is still impressive. Some think it was Brando's best screen performance. Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint also turned in good performances. Probably the least convincing was the part of the priest played by Malden. His dialogue was sacharin, but that is the fault of the script, rather than Malden's. If you like movies with a heavy message, you'll like this one. Joseph (Joe) Pierre
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books
Rating:
Summary: I coulda been a contenda
Review: Marlon Brando's famous speech has passed into common vernacular. Even if you saw this movie 40 yrs ago, see it again and pay tribute to the genius of this iconic actor. He plays Terry Malloy, the lead role in Elia Kazan's dramatic and gripping social commentary on the power of the mob within the longshoremen's union. It's based on fact, which makes it even more gut-wrenching as Brando is savagely beaten for informing against them, creating a mesmerizing movie of political corruption and the power of one individual hero.
Five stars all the way.
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Summary: Political Message of "Waterfront"
Review: "On the Waterfront" is no doubt one of the greatest movies ever made. Few disagree that Terry Malloy is one of the most powerful characters in the history of cinema and that Kazan's directing is flawless. Eva Marie Saint and Lee J. Cobb also deliver great performances. In short, all the acolades and Academy Awards were well deserved. What people often ignore is the movie's morally profound message. I believe "On the Waterfront's" moral depth puts it in a league of its own, a league that not even such greats as "The Godfather" and "Pulp Fiction" belong to. The movie was Elia Kazan's statement that he stood by his decision to inform during the McCarthy Era. Post-Communist Russia has divulged voluminous amounts of once-confidential information from the Communist Era. Few know it, but it has been discovered that Many of the anti-communists involved in the "Red Scare" in fact had something to be afraid of. In fact, the communists were trying to infiltrate Hollywood (a perfectly logical way to spread an ideology) at the time of the HUAC hearings. Some people deny the movie's political implications (one reviewer on this site did). Others dismiss the movie because of them. If you are one of the former, then you are ignorant: Kazan himself was open about the movie's political message. If you are one of the latter, you missed the point of the entire movie--one of the strongest political points made in the history of cinema. If you think "On the Waterfront" is a mere excercise in great directing/acting/photography, think again.
Rating: 
Summary: What I never noticed before...
Review: ...was how much this movie reads like a TV play. So stark is it in its simple, high-key lighting and documentary-style cinematography that it faintly resembles another Rod Steiger character piece he did just a year earlier, the television performance of MARTY. (Both Steiger and newcomer Eva Marie Saint came from live television; the TV anthologies so popular at the time spawned many a future film star, and one can't help but wonder if Elia Kazan himself originally directed plays for television.) And of course, Actors' Studio champ Marlon Brando gives probably his most stunning performance- a tad more subdued and less studied then even the performances in both STREETCAR and GODFATHER, IMHO. The film even has a tremendous music score by Leonard Bernstein. A must-see. And it *does* have class.
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Summary: Brando Invictus
Review: "On the waterfront" was shot literally there, not in a studio, and has the reality and invigorating freshness of a true story of a man winning a victory for him and for mankind. Marlon Brando, the greatest American actor, plays a plain, down beaten boxer, almost innocent, who slowly realises the extend of his abuse by the people he considers his friends, a criminal gang that has been abusing a dock-workers' Union as a cover for its money and power amassing activities. The gang is led by a "self made" ruthless murderer who has already "eliminated" several workers, suspected to "pigeon"( testify) in the criminal proceedings, pending against him, in a Court of justice. Our hero is faced with a series of moral dilemmas, which he would have rather avoided, but eventually he comes to take the big decision to stand up against these powerful enemies and fight for his fellow workers, his friends and relatives --and defend his humanity. Love for the sister of a friend, to whose death he unwittingly becomes instrumental, puts our hero in conflict with his actions. This strong love becomes a humanising factor, a compass in the maize of contradictions of attachments and loyalties in his life. Out of this social jungle, there also emerges a priest, as true shepherd, who tries to uphold the word of worth he preaches to his demoralised and dispersed flock, with his personal guidance and involvement against that evil, mainly their fear and isolation... Our hero goes through a process of self realisation and consciousness, and, as he is a true fighter, he challenges his enemy, beats him and is beaten by his; but the people like him see and take courage from his actions, and the carton-paper tiger of an omnipotent and unshakable criminal order of social arrangements at "the Waterfront" is exposed in the real light, for what it is, and collapses. There is a memorable sequence of tragic height, of the corrupt "Union leader" trying, yet again, to hang on power by his threatening tactics, but the people go past him, in peace. The people are free. So, was it all so easy, to disarrange all this gangster brutality, inhumanity and injustice that terrorised and mesmerised a whole community at "the waterfront", the brutality, inhumanity and injustice that tantalises still, more than ever, our own privy world and humanity, in an age that we are aggressively deluged with all sorts of demoralising news about our humanity's crucifixions, around the globe? Kazan's answer is a great affirmation: Human liberation is possible, as in the story of the film, which is a true story. There is a positive moral, a reinforcement of belief in the great myth of human progress; and in the Fifties this optimism was a tradition in the American cinema. But the great contribution of this classic American film, is the realism with which this is rendered: The realism of the waterfront, of the chorus of people around the protagonists, and of the hero himself; an artistic challenge set by the genius of Kazan and so happily matched by the genius of Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando conveys the ethos of a plain man, who is content to keep the place he was allowed, unquestioningly. His self-abandonment evolves through the conflicts between the people he loves, in a crescendo, until he is confronted with his brother pointing a shotgun at him. We follow his agonising spiritual development; as he is forced to make judgments of right and wrong, and choose his stance, to testify for the crimes, take sides and find the courage to stand up for his choice, finally fight for his humanity and for his freedom to work. Alone at the turn point, he has to carry the weight of his choice all by himself, as his testimony against his criminal "friends" is regarded by his peers as unacceptable collaboration with an extra communal authority; but we feel satisfaction as we see the tide of sympathy turn his way, as the dockland community gathers courage and dignity by his courage, to fight against the tyranny of gangsters. As long as people love freedom, we will be always glad to hear this kind of news! Brando's face in this film is a box- fighter's disfigured face, but no disfigurement can shadow the light of human kindness that shines through, as the invincible Helios. It is a good thing that there was a camera around to memorise this, and we can see it. This actor has achieved the ethos of this role as naturally as if it were his own self. A mythical film, with exemplary interpretations by very talented actors. It is vitally uplifting for the viewer, too-- and I am sorry to have to underline this, as these days this quality is a rarity in the industry...
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