Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, On the Waterfront is nonetheless one of Hollywood’s most controversial masterpieces. The story of a dockworker breaking the stranglehold that his corrupt union boss has over the waterfront, Kazan’s film has been seen by some critics as a dramatized justification for ‘naming names’, as both Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg had done during the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee witch-hunts.

Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry. A raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and social corruption, the film follows Terry’s deepening moral crisis as he must decide whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny’s right-hand man, Terry’s brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them.

Reviews
"On the Waterfront is strong, tough and cruelly violent, but it is also a film that should make theatre history for 1954. It will strike audiences with special impact because it is based on undisputed fact." – Boston Globe