The Best Motion Picture Oscar race of 1954 was the kind of arts contest worthy of awe. Aside from Elia Kazan's eventual winner, On the Waterfront, there were picture of the year nods for The Caine Mutiny, The Country Girl, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Three Coins in the Fountain. All five were received with critical high marks and all five were recognized as distinctive entertainments with wide numbers of fans. Regardless of these facts it's also remarkable that Alfred Hitchcock's expose about scopophilia, Rear Window, failed to win a nomination though it's now considered one of the great pictures of the 1950s. No doubt history would have welcomed it into the fold of the year's best work but let it not be said that Kazan's movie didn't deserve every one of its honors.

The recipient of no less than eight Academy Awards from 12 nominations, four Golden Globes from an equal number of nominations and an inductee into the National Film Registry in 1989, On the Waterfront is that kind of picture we might call a classic. It's at once the summation of its moment, both technically and artistically, while also being riven with themes that resonate years later with audiences not involved with its topical concerns. Then there is the highly personal nature of Kazan's movie with its emphasis on naming names and living up to one's conscience following his participation with the House on Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) in its investigation of communism in the United States.

Certain members of the movie community have long considered Kazan one of the worst sell-outs of his generation for kowtowing to HUAC in the early '50s. The point was given due emphasis during his recent receipt of an honorary Oscar where half the attending crowd offered a standing ovation with the other half sitting on their hands in disgust. Symbolizing this difference nearly 50 years before hand, his Best Motion Picture responds to the crisis in conscience with a healthy mix of terrific drama, penetrating performances and an uneasy explanation for his questionable behavior.

As such, and because Kazan wasn't subjected to the ruination often associated with being targeted by HUAC's hearings and blacklists, his view of crossing the line from being informed to being an informant is tinged with heroism. Throughout On the Waterfront the point is implied with the drama's moral sense of right and wrong, the Catholic guilt imposed on its characters and the manifest quality of being on the right hand of God when selling out one's former friends and business associates.

No matter how just he may have felt at the time, Kazan was surely aware of how damaging his participation with HUAC was to other members of the arts community not nearly so well regarded as he was. Clearly conflicted about his influence on the times he made use of various articles by Malcolm Johnson who detailed the struggle for unionism along the New York City waterfront and created a grand apology as exaltation for his actions. On the Waterfront is that offering and re-definition of fair play developed even at the expense of long established social pacts and the rights of ritual secrecy.

Opening one night in lower Manhattan, former boxer Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) calls on another longshoreman named Joey Doyle trying to persuade him from testifying to a city crime commission against the waterfront union to which they both belong. Soon afterwards Terry unwittingly discovers that the union boss, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), used him to set up Joey's murder since he's long ago been written off as a simpleton. Faced with the choice of following the corrupt path of union complicity laid out by his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger), Friendly's right hand man, or else sticking to his conscience and confessing what he knows, Terry's troubles begin in earnest.

To do right and inform on his social circle or not is his problem, very much like an earlier time when he was asked to throw away a fight for Friendly that simultaneously limited his future to being a day laborer. Adding to his guilt, Terry quickly falls for Joey's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), a college student home on her Thanksgiving break, although he conceals his involvement in Joey's death to earn her trust and encourage her affection.

Meanwhile the fiery local clergy, an Irishmen named Father Barry (Karl Malden), begins working on Terry because he sees his purpose as being closely involved with the longshoremen's struggle against Friendly's union for an honest day's work. Then balancing the Father's spiritual direction with Charlie's opportunism, the union boss's absolute self-righteousness, Edie's demand for justice and his own small ambition to live in comfort, Terry's world comes crashing down around him.

He eventually resolves to cross the line meant to keep waterfront secrets on the piers and leans towards a full court confession subsequent to a subpoena he's been handed. In so doing he becomes a marked man. He loses Charlie to Friendly's murderous minions and ends up the bane of his friends and co-workers as he testifies about waterfront activities and union corruption.

Calling the next day for his fair day's work Terry is passed over by the pier's overseer and is forced to confront his former employer. He and Friendly go to fisticuffs with the fate of the union waiting on their respective actions. Par for the course Friendly beats Terry terribly with several of his lieutenants but then his fallen foe does the unlikeliest thing by rising up from his injuries under Father Barry's encouragement. Stumbling onto the pier Terry requests his fair day's work as the other longshoremen fall in behind him, ending Friendly's control and influence over their lives on the way to a better tomorrow.

Not quite subtle with its autobiographical elements and allegorical relationship to the early '50s Red Scares and Cold War politics, On the Waterfront is nonetheless a moving drama about the triumph of the working classes organizing themselves for mutual benefit. Without exception its performances are first rate, with Oscar recognition falling on Brando and Marie Saint, and it's in no small measure due to Budd Schulberg's script turned into a screened entertainment under Kazan's direction. The dialogue is crisp and highly conscious of the class divisions at the center of the plot while the cinematography, design and editing all work out a realistic portrait of lower Manhattan's ports and adjoining community.

Budgeted for $910,000 the movie was a commercial hit grossing some $9.6 million domestically in its initial release. Critics nearly ran out of superlatives in praise of its artistry, including Leonard Bernstein's fine score, and audiences similarly appraised the film quite highly as indicated by its brisk box office sales. The result of a seasoned Hollywood producer like Sam Spiegel putting a sought after theatrical director turned moviemaker like Kazan in the helm, the production employed recognized New York stage and movie actors and technicians, all of them concentrated on humanizing the trials of a stool pigeon that turned into one of the great films in Hollywood history.

Among its more memorable sequences is the exchange between Terry and Charlie in the back of taxicab where the brothers reveal their mutual feelings of betrayal and disappointment. It's a spirited piece of acting for both performers with the scene made complete by its acknowledgement of misplaced loyalties that now reluctantly sees the brothers on opposite ends of a life and death struggle. Never more poetic than when backed into a corner, Terry talks of being a boxing contender and how Charlie should have been looking out for him rather than upholding a sucker's bet to keep him down. Without a good explanation, Charlie merely hands his brother a gun and lets him out of the taxi knowing his own fate is sealed under the pressures of Friendly's organization.

Also outstanding and memorable long after the movie ends are the agglomeration of character ticks and physical mannerisms affected by Brando while rendering Terry Malloy. Everywhere uncomfortable with his clothing, speech, beliefs and environment, the longshoreman is animal magnetism personified within one brawny man. From scene to scene he slips into moments of clarity after a lifetime spent considering himself a dolt and becomes a deeply sympathetic man drawing on a rich reservoir of empathy when inspired to act selflessly.

It's this idea of doing what's right and necessary despite personal costs that spins the entire picture around one of Brando's remarkable performance. Without overstating the facts, his Terry Malloy is one of the strongest male roles ever written for the cinema. If someone without Brando's encyclopedic abilities had enacted the part, however, many of the nuances he brings to the role, from his revealing gestures and brooding glances to the slump of incomprehension, would have been missed. That these aspects of a singular screen character are present make the film a canny confession of personal guilt on the part of Kazan along with being an incredible portrait of the will to unionization that swept virtually all professions after World War II.

More generally On the Waterfront is one hell of a movie. From its first few seconds through an idealized finale, its dramatic tension is constantly played against the coming into his own of Terry Malloy, an everyman hero. Aside from giving us a clinic in the magnificence of film as an art form, Kazan's movie also teaches us the value of individuals standing up to the pressures of conformity. That this resistance is somehow tainted by the director's participation with HUAC retroactively taints Terry's actions with cowardice. Yet this reading would overemphasize Kazan's involvement and minimize the film's overall impact.

See On the Waterfront. See it again if it's been awhile since your last screening. The worst you'll do is flirt with excellence but the best you can hope for is the discovery of art's highest expression at the movies.