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Mat here.
This week we watched the Marlon Brando classic 'On the Waterfront' (or 'Fronte del Porto' as we have on the Spanish movie poster Danielle found to illustrate the film for this week).
Brando plays Terry, a former boxer turned dockworker. The film throws us into the middle of the action with Terry unwittingly setting his friend up to be murdered by thugs working for local dock boss and gangster Johnny Friendly. Terry wrestles with the tough choice of keeping his mouth shut and maintaining the status quo or breaking ranks and angering both the gangsters and his fellow dockers.
Brando owns this role (for which he won Best Actor), and you really feel for this tough guy trapped in this life and struggling to figure out why he feels so bad and what the right thing to do is.
Here we have another great performance from Karl Malden (whom we last saw in fellow best picture winner Patton) as the drinkin', fightin' & swearin' preacher encouraging the oppressed dockers to stand up against the men controlling the waterfront. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this.
The visual language was very strong with lots of shots using barriers like fences and pigeon cages to separate characters and enforce the idea that the characters are trapped in this life. Danielle felt this was not subtle enough, but it worked for me.
The music deserves singling out for being awful! So intrusive and overblown, emotional moments were blunted by the score's sledgehammer approach. The score was nominated for an Oscar, which baffles me.
On the Waterfront won eight Academy Awards. In addition to Best Picture & Actor, it also was awarded Best Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actress, Set Decoration, Cinematography and Editing.
Danielle gave this 67 and I gave this one 78. This is a fairly large difference in the scores (although not as large as the 30-point gap in Forrest Gump), which I'm attributing to this being the first time I've seen the movie, whereas Danielle had seen it before.
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