Amazon.co.uk Review
For all its great dramatic and cinematic qualities, and its fiery social criticism, Elia Kazan's
On the Water Front is one of the most gripping melodramas of political corruption and individual heroism ever made in the United States, a five-star gut-grabber. Shot on location around the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, in the mid-1950s, it tells the fact-based story of a longshoreman (Brando's Terry Malloy) who is blackballed and savagely beaten for informing against the mobsters who have taken over his union and sold it out to the bosses.--
David Chute, Amazon.com The Wild One is the original motorcycle film, starring Marlon Brando as the brooding leader of a biker gang that invades a small town. The film always looked like one of those synthetic Hollywood ideas of subculture life in the 1950s, which means it looks even more artificial today. But it is an actor's piece more than anything, and to that end Brando's performance really is an important one in the context of his revolutionary reinvention of film acting during that decade. The film was directed by Lásló Benedek (Namu, the Killer Whale) and produced by the socially conscious Stanley Kramer.--Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
DVD Description
DVD Special Features:
Interview with Director Eliah Kazan
Contender: Mastering The Method Featurette
Richard Schickel and biographer
Jeff Young Commentary
Filmographies
Video Photo Gallery
Trailer
Static Menus
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles: English, French, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Hindi, Turkish, Danish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian
Dolby Digital
Fullscreen format, 1.33:1
From the Back Cover
Marlon Brando gives one of the screen's most electrifying performances and was named Best Actor at the 1954 Academy Awards for this film. Ex-fighter Terry Malloy (Brando) could have been a contender, but now toils for boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J.Cobb) on the gang-ridden waterfront. Terry is guilt-stricken, however, when he lures a rebellious worker to his death, but it takes the love of Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint), the dead man's sister, to show Terry how low he has fallen. When his crooked brother Charley the Gent (Rod Steiger) is brutally murdered for refusing to kill him, Terry battles to crush Friendly's underworld empire. Directed by Elia Kazan (
A Streetcar Named Desire) and written by Budd Schuberg (
What Makes Sammy Run?), this unforgettable drama about Terry's redemption is among the most acclaimed films of all time.
