Movie Info

Marlon Brando's famous "I coulda been a contenda" speech is such a warhorse by now that a lot of people probably feel they've seen this picture alread...(read more...) y, even if they haven't. And many of those who have seen it may have forgotten how flat-out thrilling it is. For all its great dramatic and cinematic qualities (8 Oscars total), and its fiery social criticism, Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront is also one of the most gripping melodramas of political corruption and individual heroism ever made in the United States, a five-star gut-grabber. Budd Schulberg won an Oscar for the story and screenplay. Shot on location around the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, in the mid-1950s, it tells the fact-based story of a longshoreman (Brando's Terry Malloy) who is blackballed and savagely beaten for informing against the mobsters who have taken over his union and sold it out to the bosses. (Karl Malden has a more conventional stalwart-hero role, as an idealistic priest who nurtures Terry's pangs of conscience.) Lee J. Cobb, who created the role of Willy Loman in Death of Salesman under Kazan's direction on Broadway, makes a formidable foe as a greedy union leader. --David Chute

Director: Elia Kazan

MPAA: Unrated

Running Time: 108 min.

Release Date: Jul 28, 1954

Cast: Eva Marie Saint, James Westerfield, Karl Malden, Lee J Cobb, Leif Erickson, Marlon Brando, Martin Balsam, Pat Henning, Rod Steiger