Birthday On the Waterfront
On June 22, 1954 in Japan (why?) the premiere of the film Elia Kazan "On the Waterfront" took place. And only a month later, the film premiered in the United States.
The plot of the film is based on a series of articles by Pulitzer Prize winner Malcolm Johnson on exposing corrupt union officials. The hero of these articles, longshoreman-turned-whistleblower Anthony DeVincenzo, has actually lost his fight. In the film, on the contrary, the hero named Terry Malloy wins. Apparently, otherwise the American audience would not understand and would not accept the film. And so - with a happy ending traditional for American cinema - the film received 11 Oscar nominations, of which it won 8. In addition, the film won 4 Golden Globes. And this film achieved another victory: shortly after its premiere, the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Unions) expelled the East Coast Longshoremen's Union from its membership, because it was still controlled by the mafia.
However, the film was successful not only in America but also in Europe - at the Venice Film Festival Elia Kazan received the Silver Lion for directing. Along with Federico Fellini, who received the Silver Lion for the film "La Strada", Kenji Mizoguchi for the film "Sansho dayu (Sansho the Bailiff)" and Akira Kurosawa for the film "Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai)". The film was also awarded the Danish Bodil Prize for Best American Film of the Year. In the UK, the film was nominated for a BAFTA award, but lost to the French film "Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear)" by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
American film critics literally burst into praise of the film "On the Waterfront". Perhaps such a defiantly enthusiastic and unanimous attitude of both members of the Academy of Film Academy and film critics to the film was a kind of retribution to Elia Kazan for his over-patriotic act. Probably, it is necessary to remind readers of some details from the background to the creation of this film.
Elia Kazan saw Frank Sinatra in the title role, and a contract was even signed with this actor-singer. However, the producer of the picture, Sam Spiegel, for commercial reasons, really wanted Marlon Brando to play the leading role. Brando was at the peak of wild popularity at that moment, mainly due to his role in the film "A Streetcar Named Desire", and his only name on the poster would attract millions of viewers and, especially, female spectators.
Secretly from Kazan and Sinatra, Spiegel sent Marlon Brando a screenplay of the film with a proposal for the main role. But initially Brando did not even read it. The fact is that shortly before this, Elia Kazan spoke to the Commission of the House of Representatives to investigate anti-American activities, the creation of which was initiated by Senator Joseph McCarthy (according to rumors suffering from alcoholism). And in his speech, Kazan “finked” many of his colleagues, i.e., snitched on who of them is a member of the Communist Party. Because of this, many figures of American cinema were subjected to various persecutions, and some representatives of the creative intelligentsia, who were not affected by the persecution, including Marlon Brando, refused to cooperate with Kazan.
Spiegel managed to persuade Brando to star in this film, playing, as is often done, on acting ambitions. Marlon was simply slipped a film with a screen test recording, where an excerpt of the role of Terry Malloy was played by Paul Newman, who was considered Brando's competitor. And then Brando accepted the offer. True, a very preferential regime of work was created for him. In particular, he was allowed to leave the set as early as 16:00. The fact is that shortly before the start of filming, the actor’s mother died, and he had to visit a psychotherapist in order to recover from a nervous shock. And Sinatra sued Spiegel. But in the end, Spiegel, and Kazan, and Brando received an Oscar each.
But Grace Kelly could not be persuaded. Kazan offered her the role of Edie Doyle, the protagonist's girlfriend. But Grace Kelly, who was super popular at that time, starred in five films at that time, including two films by Alfred Hitchcock ("Rear Window" and "Dial M for murder") and George Seaton's film "The Country Girl". The role in the latter brought Kelly an Academy Award for Best Leading Actress, but the role of Edie Doyle brought her actress, Eva Marie Saint, an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Roger Ebert, who assigned the film a maximum of 4 stars and included it in his list of "Great Movies", in his review, as it were, explains these ratings by the fact that in this film, as if, between the lines, Kazan was trying to prove that communism is evil, that this evil must be confronted everywhere. And thus, Kazan tried to make excuses for his speech in Congress. Honestly, I, unlike Ebert, did not find any attacks on communism in this film. Perhaps it's all about the translation, since it is known that Elia Kazan originally asked Arthur Miller to write the script for the film. He initially agreed, but when the FBI and the bosses of the film company explained to him that the mafiosi in this film should be members of the Communist Party, he refused.
The following figures speak about the evaluation of Elia Kazan's film "On the Waterfront" by moviegoers. With a budget of 902 thousand dollars, the film grossed 9.5 million dollars at the box office, i.e., paid off more than 10 times. The film was not shown in the USSR. The modern moviegoer, despite the fact that the film is more than six decades old, appreciated the film no less highly than the viewer of the 50s of the last century. Over 72% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film a rating of 8 to 10.
Based on the success rates listed above, "On the Waterfront" received a FilmGourmand rating of 10,159, placing it at number 34 in the Golden Thousand.
