On the Waterfront is "political," Lindsay Anderson claims [see excerpt above], in a way comparable to The Grapes of Wrath. I would put the whole emphasis differently. Whatever its origins, the film comes to us and should be judged primarily as personal drama. Implications there are, of course—but apparently not the ones Mr. Anderson wants.

There are two sides in the film, one characterised by a thorough-going viciousness, the other given a Christian shading. To which sides does Terry owe loyalty? The question is central to the action, and we get the answer in the last sequence. One value dominates the waterfront: loyalty. It is the moral criterion of docker and thug, a mechanism continually at work….

Politically, the film could perhaps end with Terry's testimony, but as personal drama it demands the final sequences. Isolating them, Lindsay Anderson finds them "implicitly Fascist" and, at the last...