Sun 9 Jun 2024
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: Two Mid-50s Movies from Columbia.
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[7] Comments
ON THE WATERFRONT. Columbia, 1954. With Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden. Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Elia Kazan.
THE HARDER THEY FALL. Columbia, 1956. With Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, and Jan Sterling. Written by Budd Schulberg. Directed by Mark Robson.
I should not be surprised that two movies from the same studio, with the same writer, should feel so similar, but I watched these back-to-back, and it was like having the same dream twice.
Both films involve corrupt bosses enriching themselves by exploiting simple (and simple-minded) men who make a living by brute strength. In Waterfront it’s longshoremen jumping to the tune of Lee J. Cobb as Union Boss Johnny Friendly; Fall offers Rod Steiger as Nick Benko, Fight Promoter, but they’re both basically the same character: venal, ruthless, and possessed of a sublime indifference to the pain of others.
But the similarities don’t end there — they’re just beginning. Early on in both films, someone who crosses the bosses meets an untimely and violent end. More to the point of the narrative, both feature a protagonist who works for the Boss, uneasy about things he sees going on, but compromised by his position in the organization:
Waterfront’s Terry Malloy (Brando) has a brother (Rod Steiger) in Cobbs’s inner circle; in Fall, Bogart is a well-respected (but out-of-work) sportswriter, helping Steiger (again) build up odds on an oversized Bum, but both men are essentially hiring themselves out as tools to enable the exploitation of others. And in both movies, the drama builds as our heroes begin to ask themselves “What kind of tool am I?”
Sorry about that. But the question never is satisfactorily answered in either film. In both cases, they manufacture dramatic crises to provide a “Movie-Ending” that rings palpably false — in my ears, anyway. Schulberg and Kazan don’t explain how Terry Molloy, shunned for squealing and avoided for safety’s sake one minute, becomes the rallying point for the dock workers after he gets his ass whupped by Cobb’s goons. But the ending of Fall is even worse than that, with Bogart sitting down at his typewriter to do an exposé of “The Boxing Racket.”
I hasten to add that these unsatisfactory (to me) finales come late in the films, too late to spoil a couple of very watchable movies. On the Waterfront is an acknowledged classic, and The Harder They Fall is an underrated gem. Maybe not a spectacular coda to a career like Bogart’s but not bad at all.
I want to say something about the acting. Waterfront was Brando’s sixth film, and by now he was comfortable on the screen, but still visibly hard-working. He’s also surrounded by actors from the same school where he learned his craft, and the interplay between them is like watching a well-oiled machine operating perfectly.
But I find the thesping in Harder more fun to watch. Rod Steiger attacks his part with real method-madness: animated, powerful, and vigorously phony; his performance is fascinating to watch, but obviously a performance.
Bogart, in his seventy-fifth and final film, simply walks across the screen and dominates it effortlessly with the assurance of an established Star. Acting never enters into it; he simply is Bogart. And the clash of the two actors and the two styles brings a riveting intensity to their roles that is no less impressive for having probably been inadvertent.
June 9th, 2024 at 11:16 pm
FALL is the harder of the two films to embrace seriously because, for me at least, Steiger turning it into melodrama rather than drama.
They are both obvious social melodramas, but the performances in WATERFRONTae more naturalistic, if not natural, while HARDER plays as an old fashioned Warners social melodrama.
June 10th, 2024 at 11:05 am
I’ve never liked On the Waterfront.
And still have no idea why other people like it so much.
Waterfront is mainly “an old film liked by people who mainly have no interest in most old films”.
Actual film historians might not be that impressed.
June 10th, 2024 at 11:16 am
In his 1968 film history book The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris denounced Elia Kazan as overrated.
I’ve gone my entire adult life thinking of Kazan as over hyped. Agreeing with Sarris on this.
June 10th, 2024 at 11:46 am
The subject matter and studio control are significantly responsible for his successes and later limitations. Starting with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Gentleman’s Agreement he had a pair of ‘pretty good’ pictures. The first is best not entirely because the family was changed from German to Irish. Both had Dorothy McGuire in principal parts, and that by itself, is significant. Kazan’s later films were heavier. Way too much so for me.
June 10th, 2024 at 12:03 pm
Re: Kazan
It’s impossible for me to be objective about the guy because I’m such a fan of the acting in his films, especially Brando in Streetcar and Waterfront; Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd; and James Dean in East of Eden. These are some of my favorite acting performances ever by anybody.
June 10th, 2024 at 12:05 pm
And of course Vivian Leigh in Streetcar has become a touchstone of sorts.
June 12th, 2024 at 1:40 pm
It may have been his performance in front of the HUAC, rather than any directorial shortcomings, that soured Sarris on Kazan’s films.