This films stars a young Marlon Brando.. I think it's fascinating that he won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role twice, both movies being about the mob in some form. He won in 1955 for On the Waterfront, which is about his struggles to get out from under and stand up to his union bosses on the waterfront where he worked. It's never explicitly said that they are the Irish mob, but I think it's pretty obvious that they are a faction of the mob in Brooklyn (I think). In 1973 he won the award for being the patriarch of the Italian mob family in The Godfather. Two different mob stories, one Irish and one Italian. I wrote about The Godfather in another blog post, where I made my feelings pretty clear that I thought the movie was "meh". I'm going to go right out and say it that I thought this movie was better than The Godfather. Do I think it was Oscar-worthy? I can't say that I think it was, but I also didn't see the other nominees. Parts of this movie are too dramatic for my taste but I think that is a product of the time it was made and what Hollywood was like then. Additionally it's been something I have been finding in a few of the other films I've been watching for this project.
The plot in itself is a pretty solid plot, beginning with Terry Malloy (Brando) taking part in luring a young man who apparently "couldn't keep his mouth shut" into going to the roof where someone in the mob boss Johnny Friendly's crew pushed him off the roof to his death. Terry feels very uncomfortable about this because he didn't know (or think) that they would actually kill him. Oh, how naive he was. It then shows how terrible it is down at the docks (on the waterfront) for these longshoremen since Johnny Friendly is running their union. Some men try to fight back with the help and guidance of a local priest, but then Friendly's men just pick them off one-by-one. It gets to feel like there's no way out of this.
A love interest pops up for Terry in the form of the deceased man's sister. AWKWARD. The romance I had a bit of a problem with come the ending because they were wham-bam in love within a few short days, if weeks. Not believable to me. What was believable is that she'd be attracted to him, because I was shocked at how attractive a young Marlon Brando is in this film. Having only seen him in The Godfather, it was unexpected.
The ending was the too dramatic bit of this movie, but I guess it made sense? I don't know. I don't want to give anything away, really. On the whole, I think I'd recommend it.
3.5/5 stars