On the Waterfront
written by Budd Schulberg '36Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career in this masterpiece, which won an Oscar for screenwriter Budd Schulberg '36.
Dartmouth Film Society 75th
Winner of eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay), Elia Kazan's blistering account of racketeering on the New Jersey waterfront was hailed as a milestone in screen realism and a bona fide American art film. A brooding Marlon Brando plays Terry Malloy, an ex-boxer who "coulda been a contender" but has ended up as a low-level henchman of a corrupt union boss (Lee J. Cobb). Tormented by the extortion and violence he witnesses, and inspired by a young woman (Eva Marie Saint) whose brother was murdered at the hands of union goons, Terry turns on his masters. The famous taxicab scene between Terry and his crooked brother (Rod Steiger) is now cinema legend.
Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg '36, the film was an instant sensation. With echoes of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, with which Schulberg and Kazan cooperated, this story of social corruption, individual failure and redemption is one of cinema's all-time greats.
D: Elia Kazan, US, 1954, 1h48m
Budd Schulberg '36 was born Seymour Wilson Schulberg on March 27, 1914 in New York City, but grew up in Hollywood. While at Dartmouth he was involved with the Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine and was a member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. After graduation he returned to Hollywood and went to work as a reader in the Selznick Pictures story department. In 1941 Schulberg sold his first novel What Makes Sammy Run? to Random House. The novel was an instant critical success, but incited the wrath of the Hollywood elite, as its ruthless protagonist was an amalgamation of the powerful men Schulberg had encountered in Hollywood. Upon the publication of the book, Sam Goldwyn fired Schulberg and Louis B. Mayer remarked that he should be deported from Hollywood. During World War II, Schulberg served in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), working with John Ford's documentary film unit. He was among the first American servicemen to enter liberated Nazi concentration camps where his unit, which had been involved in gathering visual evidence against war criminals for the Nuremberg trials, documented the atrocities they found. A sports writer with a special interest in boxing, Schulberg published The Harder They Fall in 1947. In 1950 he published The Disenchanted, often described as a thinly disguised portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald, with whom he briefly worked on the script for Winter Carnival. Identified as a communist, Schulberg appeared before the House-Un-American Activities Committee where he testified against his friends and colleagues and identified individuals as known communists. In 1954 he wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando. The movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards and Schulberg won for Best Screenplay. Among his other works are A Face in the Crowd (1957), his autobiography Moving Pictures: The Story of a Hollywood Prince (2003) and Some Faces in the Crowd (2007). Budd Schulberg died on August 5, 2009.
Dartmouth Film Society 75th
Dartmouth Film Society 75th
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