On the Waterfront (1954)

The Oscars 1999: Elia Kazan: Nominated for Benedict Arnold Award

Kazan – the Linda Tripp of the 50s

Don’t Whitewash the Blacklist

ON THE WATERFRONT wins eight Oscars in 1955: best director, best actor, best cinematographer, best picture, best screenplay, best set design, best supporting actress, best editing.

Why mention the Oscars?

Because this film renewed Elia Kazan’s stature in Hollywood. He would go on to direct such films as East of Eden (1955), A Face in the Crowd (1957), Splendor in the Grass (1961), and America, America (1963).

Prior to 1954, Kazan had made such films as Viva Zapata! (1952) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), both with Marlon Brando. Other notable films are Pinky (1949; about race) and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947; about anti-semitism).

Kazan also had a successful career as a stage director in New York, directing such plays as Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and Death of a Salesman on Broadway.

Miller wrote a screenplay “The Hook” (1950) about the docks and union trouble. This was supposed to be for Kazan to film.

Miller and Kazan both had a relationship with Marilyn Monroe.

They claimed to be “like brothers.” Until 1952.

Kazan was close friends with both Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman until he gave testimony (twice) to HUAC.

Kazan testified to HUAC in 1952, the first time under subpoena and the second time voluntarily. Arthur Miller also came before HUAC as a witness (in 1955). The difference is that Kazan willingly gave names (e.g. he gave the name of Clifford Odets and when Odets testified he gave the name of Kazan), and Miller did not. Kazan saved his position in Hollywood and Miller went to jail.

Kazan made Man on a Tightrope in 1953. This was an overtly anti-Communist film about a circus troupe trying to escape Communist domination. This film was something of a public penance by Kazan. But it was not a success. Then along came On the Waterfront.

An Apology for Testifying:

-the film crew consisted of many people connected to the HUAC activities. The cinematographer is Russian immigrant, Boris Kauffman (who also photographed 12 Angry Men). The scriptwriter is Bud Schulberg who was also a HUAC witness. Lee. J. Cobb who plays Johnny Friendly was also a witness.

-the film is often cited as Kazan’s defense for having been a friendly witness.

Instead of Communists, we have the mob, but the principle of remaining D&D (deaf and dumb) or speaking up is similar. The early scene in the Church, when the workers meet, makes the obvious point. Father Barry (Karl Malden) tells the men that they should testify against the union boss because the truth is important for the public to know, and silence just protects the guilty.

The language is important: clearly the men have a discourse of shame. Words such as “canary,” stoolie,” “pigeon,” and “cheese-eater” signify weakness and disloyalty. The code of the docks calls for silence. Deviation is less than manly.

The masculine code of strength, suffering, and acceptance finds a counterpoint in a range of harsh and brutal images: the brick walls, the leafless trees, the iron fire-escapes, the iron fences with their sharp spiky bars, the metal antennae on the rooftops.

Throughout the film, Terry Malloy is referred to as a “bum.” Even Edie (Eva Maria Saint) calls him a “bum.” And finally Terry concludes, “let’s face it,” that he is a bum (“which is what I am”).

Then his brother, Charlie the Gent (Rod Steiger), ends on a hook in a seedy back alley with a couple of bullet holes in his chest. Terry decides, after a confrontation with Father Barry in a bar, to testify against Johnny Friendly.

The result of Terry’s testimony, initially, is his ostracism. Even his young friend with the Golden Warriors jacket thinks Terry has done the wrong thing, and he kills all Terry’s pigeons.

The film contains many visual images that remind us of Christianity and martyrdom. The rooftops show repeatedly pieces of wire and wood and metal in the shape of crosses. The church is a main setting, both inside and outside. Then we have verbal emphasis in much of what Father Barry says, especially his speech about crucifixion.

Clearly, what the men need is a leader, a messiah, someone willing to martyr himself for the greater good. A hero. This guy is, of course, Terry Malloy.

When Terry leaves Edie with his brother’s body and walks down the dark alley carrying a pistol at his side, the visual image reminds us of the lone cowboy setting out for the final duel.

But the Christian overtones of the film, suggest this heroic figure is a saviour. Take two items: the jacket Terry wears at the end and the hook that often rests on his shoulder.

The jacket:

Early in the film, Terry walks Edie home from the Church. She drops a glove and Terry picks it up. As he sits on a swing, he places the glove on his right hand. The gesture is important in that it signifies Terry’s desire to fit inside Edie’s life. (He also uses his hands a lot in the film, a sign of his nervousness and insecurity.) This is the first stage in Terry’s eventual transition from passive member of Johnny Friendly’s entourage to an active resistance fighter against the Friendly mob.

Then when Terry makes the decision to go down to the docks and claim his “rights,” he puts on Joey Doyle’s jacket. The jacket is like a sacred garment, having been worn by Joey and also by Dugan, both of whom have been “crucified” by the mob. When Terry wears it, he assumes the mantle of these martyrs. He accepts suffering as a necessary aspect of leading the men to freedom.

The hook:

The hook is akin to the cross these men must bear. Remember Edie’s father showing his daughter his right arm, two inches longer than his left one because of all the lifting with the hook he has done over the years.

The final walk with jacket and hook:

After the climactic battle between Terry and Johnny Friendly, Terry is beaten and broken. But he walks through the men stumbling and bleeding. I can’t believe that Kazan did not want to make a connection with the most famous martyr. Terry is the one who will lead the people/men to their promised land. Or will he?

The film is not so easily hopeful. The last thing we see before the door to the warehouse comes down to end the film is Johnny Friendly saying he will be back. The sound track here and right to the end of the film is dissonant. Here is an example of the importance of the sound track in a film because it counters the easy assumption that things will now be fine. The music in its dissonance reminds us that indeed Johnny or at least someone like him will re-emerge. The struggle is not over.

Summation:

Terry Malloy is a hero because he testifies. Sometimes the only way to defend liberty and right is to testify. At least this is what the film and Kazan would want us to believe.

The cagey thing here is that the film also suggests that words alone are insufficient. Terry’s testimony is not enough to convince his fellow workers that he is right. Only after he shows a willingness to fight with his fists do they follow him. Men admire action more than words.

And what of Edie Doyle in all this? She is the saintly woman. She tells Father Barry that there are no saints inside the church; they are outside working in the tough world. She is the woman who accompanies the saint. She comes from a Catholic school. She is pure and innocent, everything that Terry has not experienced.

The scene in which Terry confesses his part in Joey Doyle’s death is noteworthy. It takes place near the river with the New York skyline in the background (we can see here, as elsewhere in the film, the Empire State Building). We can barely hear what Terry is saying because of the loud sounds of horns in the background. The sounds are a metaphor for the emotional extremity the two characters feel. The ultimate point to all this is that Edie learns a horrible truth – that Terry set her brother up for death – and yet she is able to forgive him. Love wins out.

Tod Browning and DRACULA

DRACULA (1931), the first of a long series of horror movies made for Universal studios that set the template for horror films until well into the late twentieth century. In the early 1930s, Universal made the big five: DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLFMAN, THE MUMMY, and THE INVISIBLE MAN. These films were later remade by Hammer Films in the U.K. in the 1950s. Also in the 1930s and 1940s, Universal franchised films with these characters and we had such films as THE HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, SON OF DRACULA, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, WOLFMAN IN LONDON, THE INVISIBLE GIRL, THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, THE MUMMY'S TOMB, The MUMMY RETURNS, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY and so on. These films, so familiar in their themes and characters, give us the most familiar creatures for later films: The other famous “monster” who finds his filmic origins around this time is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the 1931 Rouben Mamoulian film was made at Paramount; it is not one of the Universal franchise.

The Vampire
The Human Monster
The Man-beast (lycanthrope)
The Walking Dead (later morphing into the zombie)
The scientist who willfully manipulates his own body (THE FLY films are other examples)

Themes:
1. the vampire, wolfman, and mummy films deal with desire in various facets. First is the desire for immortality. The Mummy lives across the centuries because of a curse or strange rites and because he loves a woman who was sacrificed to the gods; the vampire lives across centuries because of his or her strange craving for blood (“the blood is the life,” Dracula says. He also says, “To be dead, to be really dead, must be glorious.”). Second is the desire for power and control. The vampire has powerful mesmeric ability. The wolfman likes to rip his victims to shreds in a brutal show of power. Third is what I’ll call an algolagniac desire. All of these characters have an eye for women, or one specific woman, or several specific women. The Mummy has lived for centuries with a desire to consummate his love for the woman he died for. The vampire usually targets a specific woman who is the female hero of the story (Mina Harker, for example), and Larry Talbot (the Wolfman) fears he will destroy the woman he loves when he is taken over by the creature. This desire is a form of algolagnia because it brings together sex and pain. We might think of this as a form of sado-masochism, but it is less formal than what we take for sado-masochistic behaviour. The desire to be bitten and to bite (CSI did a program on this), to taste the loved one’s blood is creepy. It is all about pain and desire.
2. The rational and the irrational: this theme usually takes the form of a conflict between modern science and ancient superstition. The most obvious example is FRANKENSTEIN in which the good doctor is a scientist with a will to creation. But we see this also in DRACULA. Our first shot of Van Helsing sees him with test tubes and other scientific paraphernalia. He has just been analyzing Lucy’s blood. In other words, he is a scientific man. But he differs from the other scientific men in the film (Dr. Seward, for example), in that he is willing to countenance the existence of seemingly impossible things, such as a person who can live across centuries by surviving on human blood.
3. Transgression: this is a standard theme of all these films. It is a given that the monster or the person responsible for the monster has transgressed some dictum, some societal convention or some law of nature or some human limitation supposedly placed upon humans by God. “He has dared to know too much!” Often these films end with the entire local village up in arms, carrying torches and picks and forks and such eager to destroy the evil has tainted their community. Transgression can be social and moral transgression such as the scientist’s going too far for personal gain and power. Transgression may be sexual as in the case of DRACULA. Transgression may be “unnatural” in the sense that it defies the known laws of nature. The transgressor challenges and defies the normal working of both nature (the Invisible Man) and morality. He or she refuses to live by the dictates of common society. And when I say “common society” I mean to suggest the class implications in transgression. Often, if not always, the transgressor comes from a well-to-do background. Count Dracula, for example, is refined and well-dressed. We see him going to the symphony right after he has had a snack on a young flower girl. And early in the film, we see the local peasant people fearful of Dracula. Transgression also pervades the form of the story. These are narratives that derive from the Gothic tradition, and the Gothic as a form challenges our sense of “classic realism.” To put this bluntly, the Gothic is a popular form in the sense of a form that supposedly appeals to the baser human instincts: fear, sex, and the attractions of transgressive behaviour. The Gothic tends to be more about individual desire than about the nature of society, although we do have films in this genre that are about society (e.g. THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD). Having made this assertion, I turn now to what appears to be a contradiction.
4. Xenophobia and teratology: very often, the villain of these stories comes from away. In other words, the villain is a foreigner. Dracula is a prime example: the vampire comes from Eastern Europe (Romania/Transylvania – he comes from “across the woods”). He represents a foreign presence in England with his pronounced accent and duplicitous ways. He is a disease; we see him associated with rats and fat bloated insects (spiders and beetles), and even armadillos. The rats are the clue to his association with dirt, waste, pollution, and disease. He is unclean. Despite his elegant clothing, he represents the great unwashed. His presence in England pollutes the pure English stock, turning people such as Lucy (definitely) and Mina (possibly) into his kind – vampires. Interestingly, the film contains another foreigner, the doctor Van Helsing. Van Helsing’s accent indicates that he too comes from away. In the original story, he comes from Holland. This inclusion of a ‘good’ foreigner may complicate the assertion that the vampire story represents an expression of xenophobia, but not completely. Van Helsing also represents something strange and a bit threatening. In the film, both Seward and Harker are shocked to hear what Van Helsing has to say and what he proposes. Ultimately, Van Helsing proves to be correct and he saves the day (and the night, for that matter). And then we might remember that he represents an acceptable foreignness since he does not come from those eastern places that teem with superstition and weak morals and poor politics. In any case, that which is monstrous is that which threatens social cohesion and moral purity.
5. Good vs. Evil: this is what I have been talking about above. And we need to specify what “good” means and what “evil” means. These are not, as they are often taken to be, absolute words. Rather we will define them in context. In the context of DRACULA, evil is that which refuses to die, that which is strange and foreign, that which succumbs to perverse desire, that which pollutes a pure society, that which desires personal and selfish power. We note that Dracula refuses to allow his ‘three wives’ to feed on Renfield, but he takes his pleasure from Renfield. And what of Renfield? How do we make sense of this character, and how do we make sense of this character in the context of good and evil? Of course, we also have the Christian imagery in DRACULA. Dracula sleeps in special ground, soil from his homeland. In England, he sleeps in an old Abbey. He sleeps and rises (resurrects) every night after sundown. He casts no reflection in a mirror. He hates the sign of the cross. He may be killed only by being staked, a reminder of Christ’s death by being placed on a wooden cross. (In Bram Stoker’s novel and in other films, we can find other references to Christian imagery.) The implication is that Dracula is an anti-Christ. He represents the dark drives of humanity rather than the light. His desire is to feed off human beings and to make some of them his minions, rather than to free them. Evil in this sense is form of tyranny.
6. Sanity and insanity: we have seen this before in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Here, the story places much less emphasis on insanity, but insanity remains part of the atmosphere as well as the content of the film. Obviously, we have Dr. Seward’s asylum, and we have the zoophagus patient, Renfield. Renfield is one of the most interesting characters in the film. He is the first person we see when the film opens. He is a point of view character; that is, he focalizes the action of the opening for us. We, like Renfield, are strangers to this place and to notions of the nosferatu and Walpurgis Night (the night of April 30-May 1 when winter rolls over into spring). Renfield is the innocent, just out to accomplish a task of business. What he encounters is too much for his business-like mind. He becomes, through receiving the kiss of Dracula we are lead to believe, a servant of the Count’s and crazy too. When we next see Renfield, after the initial sequence and after the sequence on the Vesta, the boat traveling to England, he is in Seward’s sanitarium and torn between sanity and madness. We can gather that part of his mental instability derives from the inner struggle to resist his master’s commands because he knows that if he assists his master then the lady Mina will be harmed. In other words, Renfield’s sanity depends upon his ability to quell the force of Dracula’s power upon him. From another perspective, Dracula himself represents insanity. Dracula is the unconscious run wild, and when the unconscious runs wild, then we are out of control, wild, mad, insane. Take for instance, the shots of Dracula’s castle in the beginning of the film. The foyer (is that what we call it – perhaps Great Hall is more precise) is enormous. Renfield enters the bottom of the screen and his tiny figure is nearly lost amid the huge room with is pillars, grand staircase, Gothic arches, and humongous spider web. This is a crazy place. We have already seen that doors open by themselves and coaches drive under the direction of a bat. When the Count appears, he passes through the huge spider web without moving it at all. He hears the howling of wolves, and he remarks, “The creatures of the night. What music they make.” This guy is nutty. When asked if he will have a glass fo wine, he replies, “I don't drink….wine.” His eyes are the eyes of a nut case, piercing and bright and staring and intense. All of this is the stuff of the Gothic, but here they are over-sized, outrageous, over-the-top. The exaggeration is a mark of the insanity this place represents.

Setting:
1. Transylvania: the film opens in Eastern Europe. We have a young man from Britain finding himself among strangers and having to deal with strange traditions and beliefs. The scenes we have of the road to the Inn, the Inn itself, the road to the Borgo Pass, and the even more stark road to the Count’s castle communicate the primitive. This is the “old world,” pre-modern. This is a world of superstition and strange rituals. What we see expresses mystery and uncontrollable fate. If Renfield were to stay in Transylvania, he would be lost forever.
2. The Vesta: the ship that brings Renfield and Dracula to England, is a kind of horrific heterotopia. In miniature, it shows what can happen if Dracula is allowed to run free in any given environment. The shadow of the captain dead at the wheel of his ship after it has arrived at Whitby serves to announce the horror of Dracula, and also the unreality of Dracula. His is a shadow world, not a real and sustaining world.
3. London: we next see Dracula walking the foggy streets of London and then attending the symphony. He kills a young girl who is selling flowers. This death illustrates that Dracula destroys innocence. Childhood, virginity, femininity, and nature are nothing to this scourge and pestilent creature from across the water. The same will be true later when Dracula ends the innocence of the other characters in the story, especially Lucy and Mina and Jonathan.
4. The Sanitarium: this place is a combination asylum and gracious home. It seems to represent both home in the sense of a safe haven for the Seward family, and battleground in that here the Doctor and his staff battle the demons of insanity. Here too, Dracula will come. Dracula penetrates the safe place and defiles both Lucy and Mina, and he also encounters Van Helsing.
5. Carfax Abbey: in the crypt of this ruined place, Dracula sleeps. The Gothic arches and ancient stone of the abbey are as close to replicating Dracula’s castle back in Transylvania as anything in England. Carfax stands opposite of the Seward Sanitarium, as Dracula stand opposite to Seward and the other English people. The long and exaggerated stairway, as well as the downward path outside the abbey, make it clear that Dracula is associated not only with the night, but also with the lower depths. To go to his place is to descend. His journey with Mina is into Hell. He can only be stopped from succeeding in his nefarious design by literally pinning him to the earth, nailing him to nature with a wooden nail.

Exaggeration:
The film is interested in exaggeration – in the sets, in the acting, in the costumes, in the cheesy special effects. Exaggeration serves more than one purpose. It indicates, as I say above, the strain on credulity; it indicates madness. It intensifies the strangeness of the action and its horror. It amuses us in its excess. This last point might be put this way: the film is close to parody. Indeed, Bela Lugosi comes close to parodying both himself and his character in his exaggerated gestures and exaggerated patterns of speech. The nearness of parody reminds us that the film does not take itself too seriously. This film was no doubt meant to be scary, but it also alleviates the fright with humour. The obvious humour of the Cockney attendant (“He’s crayyzee.”) and the woman with whom he works has its parallel in Dracula himself with his exaggerations. Even Renfield is horrifically funny. I suspect that the humour I am pointing to here was available to audiences in the 1930s. It is not a matter only of distance through time.

A Note on FREAKS
DRACULA was a successful film. Indeed, it began the long-running cycle of Universal horror films in the 30s and 40s. And so Tod Browning was a success. He had previously made popular and lucrative films with Lon Chaney. Indeed, Lon Chaney was supposed to play Dracula, but he did not live long enough to play the part. Anyhow, Browning was a hot property, and so MGM swiped him up and asked him for another horror hit, a horror movie to outdo DRACULA. They got FREAKS. Lots of stories tell of audience reaction to FREAKS in the fall of 1931, the most gruesome of which is the story of a woman so distraught by this film, that she had a miscarriage in the theatre. This may be a fiction, but the story does indicate just how FREAKS was received. After FREAKS, Browning’s career petered out. He did make a couple of later films of note: MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935) and THE DEVIL DOLL (1936), but that was it. FREAKS was pulled from circulation in 1932 and not seen again until the Cannes Film Festival of 1962, the year of Browning’s death.

In this film, “the disabled body becomes ‘the voyeuristic property of the non-disabled gaze” (Larsen and Haller quoting David Hevey, The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery. London: Routledge, 1992. 72).