On the Waterfront (1954), a riveting drama of labor union corruption on the New York City docks, was directed by Elia Kazan and won eight Academy Awards; it has been a classic of the American cinema for nearly half a century. Reasons for its enduring...

On the Waterfront is an Academy Award-winning American 1954 film about mob violence and corruption among longshoremen, and it has become a standard of its kind. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg; it stars Marlon Brando,...

When it comes to selling a home, real estate agents like nothing better than the sound of a simple word: waterfront.In a business that's all about location, the waterfront has long been considered the most desirable real estate. But have fiercer hurricanes, floods, rising insurance...

Well, the store's quickly turned from a relaxed, cocktail-party-like atmosphere to a free-for-all, with shoppers crowding each other, carts banging into little children and each other, and grumbling overheard about the lack of space and poor traffic design. Nevertheless, people are in a shopping...

The years have been kind to "Citizen Kane," including the last decade. The 1941 Orson Welles classic _ the story of a wealthy young idealist transformed by scandal and vice into a regretful old recluse _ was again rated the best movie ever Wednesday by...

The American Film Institute's original 1998 list of the top-100 American movies:1. "Citizen Kane," 1941.2. "Casablanca," 1942.3. "The Godfather," 1972.4. "Gone With the Wind," 1939.5. "Lawrence of Arabia," 1962.6. "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.7. "The Graduate," 1967.8. "On the Waterfront," 1954.9. "Schindler's List," 1993.10. "Singin'...

The subject matter of On the Waterfront is alienation at the lowest social level…. Terry Malloy, the hero of On the Waterfront, is alienated at the instinctive level of the adolescent and the bum, and the drama, as those who made the film see it, is in his development of consciousness and responsibility, his taking his place as a man. The attempt to create a hero for the mass audience is a challenge and a great big trap. On the Waterfront meets the challenge, falls into the trap. (p. 47)

Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront … is a significant, almost a definitive, example of a type of film which traditionally finds Hollywood at its most expert: the melodrama with a stiffening of serious ideas, the journalistic exposé of crime and corruption. Its subject harks back to the racket-smashing thrillers of the 'thirties; its style—location shooting, conscientious concern with surface realism—belongs to the present decade; its pretensions, the attempt to build au...

A small but obviously dedicated group of realists has forged artistry, anger and some horrible truths into "On the Waterfront," as violent and indelible a film record of man's inhumanity to man as has come to light this year. And, while this explosive indictment of the vultures and the meek prey of the docksides … occasionally is only surface dramatization and an oversimplification of the personalities and evils of our waterfront, it is, nevertheless, an uncommonly powerful, exci...