Humanities 201Wexelblatt
人文科学论文代写 It is obviously about the corruption of the Longshoremen’s Union. Ironically, its filming in Hoboken was facilitated by the very
On The Waterfront (1954) 人文科学论文代写
Directed by Elia Kazan, Screenplay by Budd Schulberg, with Marlon Brando (Terry Malloy), Karl Malden (Father Barry), Lee J. Cobb (Johnny Friendly), Rod Steiger (Charlie Malloy), Eva Marie Saint (Edie Doyle)
You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been
somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charlie.
It’s one of the most famous scenes in American cinema. The Malloy brothers sit in the back seat of a cab. Once bound together in the hope of rising from the slums by cultivating powerful patrons, now they are divided by Terry’s scruples and Charlie’s fear of what his brother’s conscience might cost them. Where does loyalty lie? To family, gang, one’s own values, society? In the end, Terry rises by changing his sense of the world, of what’s right, and especially of himself. Kazan wants us to see Terry rising morally as well as physically. He wants us to approve of his ratting out the corruption on the docks.
The movie depicts conflicting codes of conduct in a tense and violent context, and, because it was shot on location in New Jersey, it feels stark and authentic.
Notice how Kazan carefully uses different locations to represent particular values. There are the values of the rooftops (childhood, romance, gentleness, escape, peace); the values of the Church (moral absolutes, sacrifice, redemption, purity); the values of the Docks (d + d = deaf and dumb, corruption, fear, power). This film is carefully constructed by a director who had made his name in the theater. Notice how details gain moral weight—like the windbreaker that was once Joey’s, then Dugan’s, and finally passes to Terry. We have to ask if that jacket is the mark of a breaker of the code, a sacrificial victim, or the mantle of a redeemer.
The propelling action of the film can be suggested in one sentence: Who killed Joey and what’s to be done about it? Terry Malloy is the hero who does something, whose moral development we witness through the film. Terry progresses from inadvertent complicity with the mob in Joey’s murder, to doubting the system of debt and obligation on the docks, moving finally to open opposition to Johnny Friendly’s empire.
Consider how this gradual conversion comes to pass, who helps and hinders it, and particularly how it is connected to Terry’s estimation of his worth as a human being.
The scene in the cab is a climax, a turning-point, when Terry begins to become something other than a washed-up boxer, “a bum.” It is an epitome of the whole action of the film. Drama is revelation; consider how much gets revealed in this simple but unforgettable scene.
Kazan likes to deploy symbols, like Joey’s jacket. Another is the pigeons, Terry’s birds. In slang terms, what is a “pigeon” exactly? The pigeons are used to suggest predatory social and economic stratification: “There are hawks in the city. On top of the big hotels. They swoop into parks and attack pigeons.” Who are the hawks and the pigeons? The birds were originally Joey’s but, like the jacket, become Terry’s—his responsibility.
After Terry testifies, the pigeons are killed by the Golden Warriors, the gang Terry himself started. How has he broken the “code” of the gang and what is that code? Is it the same as that of the docks? Pigeons are also, like doves, symbols of peace. In Catholic iconography the Holy Spirit is depicted as a pigeon or dove. Notice how Terry’s story is given a religious dimension, even apart from the somewhat obvious way Father Barry imposes it. Does Terry’s freedom lie inside the cage or out? Notice how the whole up-and-down imagery of the film turns the rooftop into a “holy place,” one of communion and romance—above the sin, confusion, and fear below—with antennas as crosses.
Though Kazan wasn’t particularly devout, the religious imagery of his film is obvious, perhaps even overdone with Father Barry’s speeches. 人文科学论文代写
Terry’s injured hand suggests a stigmata; Father Barry rises with Dugan from the hold and Terry’s lifting Charlie from the hook deliberately echo famous paintings of the Descent from the Cross. Terry’s rising at the end after his beating is depicted as a resurrection (“You’re on your feet”… “I’m not a bum”), summing up all the Heaven-Earth-Hell imagery of Kazan’s blocking and the depiction of Terry as savior. Notice how the director uses lots of low-angle shots which make us look up visually and morally: to the redemption of Terry, the docks, the union, the city, the country.
The film also has distinct elements of classical tragedy. The workers form a tragic chorus; the pigeons, Joey, Dugan, and Charlie are all tragic sacrifices; Terry is the hero, though one who rises rather than falls. One of Kazan’s purposes in the film is to show that a common working man is capable of achieving tragic dignity, an objective he shared, interestingly, with the Arthur Miller of Death of a Salesman, the premiere of which Kazan directed.
The musical score by Leonard Bernstein is justly celebrated.
Notice how it differs from more conventional movie music and how it heightens visual details. It is “high-brow” symphonic music. Bernstein deploys lyricism for romance and dissonance for violence. His next project was West Side Story.
The film also has popular culture elements of melodrama, even cowboy movies with their “goodies” and “baddies.” Edie as a civilizing, domesticating force resembles the Western’s schoolmarm, Father Barry is the Preacher, the thugs are like the gang of outlaws, and Terry’s the gunslinger with a conscience (the good/bad boy) who stands alone and establishes law and order in the end. Like such heroes, he is torn between the lure of a code of anti-civilization and loyalty (the Golden Warriors, d+d) and the appeal of civilized values of greater moral worth and social utility. The melodramatic Western is the American myth, but notice how this film, while benefiting from these familiar elements, rises above mere melodrama in both depth and complexity.
The film has a meta-ethical argument as well. There is a historical and personal significance to this film, which dates from the McCarthy period, and makes it controversial to this day. 人文科学论文代写
It is obviously about the corruption of the Longshoremen’s Union. Ironically, its filming in Hoboken was facilitated by the very mobsters who controlled the union. But the story of a rat with honor is also the self-justification of its director and writer. Like many movie and theater people, both had been Communists in the 1930s. During the notorious anti-communist campaign of Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, Kazan and Schulberg testified and gave the Committee names of former colleagues who were subsequently blacklisted.
This led to Kazan’s break with many former friends, especially the playwright Arthur Miller, who didn’t testify and wrote his version of the experience in The Crucible, where the anti-communist persecution is depicted literally as a witch-hunt. Many of those who testified later recanted, justifying themselves by arguing they had only done so to save their careers. Kazan never apologized. He testified with conviction and defiance, rejecting the collectivist ideals of earlier days in favor of the kind of moral individualism he depicts in Terry.
Symbolically, then, the corrupt union represents the Communists and Terry’s testimony is a stand-in for Kazan’s and Schulberg’s.
Kazan insisted that he was right, even taking out an ad in the NY Times to explain himself. Critics of the McCarthyist persecution have found the film pernicious, just because it is so good and convincing. After testifying, Kazan was never entirely accepted by his peers though his work, and especially this film, have had a deep influence on American film history.
Toward the end of his life Kazan was given a long-deferred Academy Award. He was escorted on stage by Martin Scorcese and Robert DeNiro, two masters of screen realism whose work was inspired by his; it was thought that their presence would prevent any demonstrations, rather the way that Johnny Friendly’s two bodyguards, Truck and Tillio, did for him. But Kazan didn’t need them. He knew that his political essay on moral individualism would speak for and outlive him.
Finally, how can we use On the Waterfront to answer these fundamental questions:
- What is a moral problem? What makes a problem moral rather than, say, political?
- What is a moral agent (i.e., someone acting in a moral context)?
- What are the criteria of moral responsibility?
- What are the distinctions between moral absolutism and moral relativism?
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