by Chris Marshall:
Even after all the amazing accomplishments in Elia Kazan’s
career, I still can’t help but immediately associate him with his 1952 testimony
before the HUAC, in which he outed several of his colleagues as Communists or
Communist sympathizers. It’s not like he even did any real harm; all of the
people he named were already “known” Communists. But it’s the principle of the thing,
and he worked for the enemy.
Many people in Hollywood never forgot or forgave him,
either. When Kazan received his honorary Academy Award in 1999, several actors
refused to stand to applaud him. I do
forgive him (as if that mattered), but it’s hard not to associate that event
with On the Waterfront, which won
Best Picture two years after his Congressional testimony.
Why? Because On the
Waterfront is a story about evil unions, those corrupt bastions of
Communist iniquity. Terry Malloy just wants to live a peaceful life and have a
nice job, but like so many of the longshoremen around him, he gets dragged into
the unsavory world of organized crime. And once you’re in, it’s hard to get
out.
But it’s more than that. Obviously unions have long been
associated with Communist/socialist tendencies—sometimes fairly, sometimes not—but
the main conflict at the end is so reminiscent of what Kazan went through that
it can only be viewed as autobiographical. Both Kazan and the screenwriter,
Budd Schulberg, were friendly witnesses to the HUAC; this isn’t a coincidence.
Terry knows who committed the murder at the beginning of the
film. So does pretty much everybody else, but waterfront code mandates that you
keep your mouth shut if you want to keep your job (and your life). These
monsters need to be brought to justice, though, and Terry realizes that he has
to be the one to testify. It also helps that he’s fallen in love with the dead
man’s sister.
So he testifies, just like Kazan and Schulberg, and he is
blacklisted. Only in the movie, he overcomes these obstacles and overthrows the
tyrannical power structure preventing him from working. All is well for Terry,
except for his dead brother, but them’s the breaks.
Maybe Kazan and Schulberg really felt like they were doing
the right thing. Maybe they were just trying to absolve themselves. But even
though neither of them were dockworkers or contenders for boxing championships,
there’s no doubt that their own lives inspired this movie.
And all these extratextual tidbits aside, it really is a
great film. If nothing else, it helped introduce the world to Marlon Brando,
who was incredibly important to the evolution of the art of acting. As Martin
Scorsese said, “There’s ‘before Brando’ and ‘after Brando.’” His arrival onto
the scene is the demarcation point between the larger-than-life bombastic
performances of the past and the more naturalistic “Method” style that has
dominated the last half century.
You’ve heard his monologue before, too, also one of the most
famous in the annals of cinema. “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.”
I’ve listened to it dozens of times in my life, despite not having seen the
movie until last week. Even without the context of the film, it’s a powerful
scene, simply based on Brando’s performance. It only grows when you understand
the background.
 |
| Malden was still growing into his nose. |
Brando undoubtedly owed much of that performance to Kazan’s
direction; he was known as one of the foremost “actor’s directors” in film
history. He introduced to the screen or propelled into stardom Marlon Brando,
James Dean, Eva Marie Saint, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, Andy Griffith, and
many others. Brando said the world may never again see the likes of Kazan.
On the Waterfront was
Kazan’s second Best Picture winner, following Gentleman’s Agreement, a film that did a lot of good for a lot of
people. He paved the way for so many actors to achieve Hollywood immortality.
He was a great man, beloved in many ways. But he made a mistake 60 years ago,
and although
I don’t blame him, he may forever be remembered for it.
Mark Antony (by way of the bard) said, “The evil that men do
lives after them/The good is oft interred with their bones.” And perhaps it’s
fitting that these words apply so well to Kazan; Marlon Brando played Antony in
the 1953 film version of Julius Caesar.
With Elia, there’s always a connection.
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