This classic story of Mob informers was based on a number of true stories and filmed on location in and around the docks of New York and New Jersey. Mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) rules the waterfront with an iron fist. The police know that he's been responsible for a number of murders, but witnesses play deaf and dumb ("plead D & D"). Washed-up boxer Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has had an errand-boy job because of the influence of his brother Charley, a crooked union lawyer (Rod Steiger). Witnessing one of Friendly's rub-outs, Terry is willing to keep his mouth shut until he meets the dead dockworker's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint). "Waterfront priest" Father Barry (Karl Malden) tells Terry that Edie's brother was killed because he was going to testify against boss Friendly before the crime commission. Because he could have intervened, but didn't, Terry feels somewhat responsible for the death. When Father Barry receives a beating from Friendly's goons, Terry is persuaded to cooperate with the commission. Featuring Brando's famous "I coulda been a contendah" speech, On the Waterfront has often been seen as an allegory of "naming names" against suspected Communists during the anti-Communist investigations of the 1950s. Director Elia Kazan famously informed on suspected Communists before a government committee -- unlike many of his colleagues, some of whom went to prison for refusing to "name names" and many more of whom were blacklisted from working in the film industry for many years to come -- and Budd Schulberg's screenplay has often been read as an elaborate defense of the informer's position. On the Waterfront won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor for Brando, and Best Supporting Actress for Saint.
Disc one: ; New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD master audio; Audio commentary by authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young; New conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones; Elia Kazan: an outsider (1982), an hour-long documentary; New documentary on the making of the film, featuing interviews with scholar Leo Braudy, critic David Thomson, and others; New interview with Eva Marie Saint; Interview with director Elia Kazan from 2001; Contender: mastering the method, a 2001 documentary of the film's most famous scene; New interview with longshoreman Thomas Hanley, an actor in the film; New interview with author James T. Fisher about the real-life people and places behind the film; Visual essay on Leonard Bernstein's score; Visual essay on the aspect ratio; Trailer; ; Disc two:; Alternate presentations of the restoration in two additional aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen); ; Plus: ; A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda, Kazan's 1952 defense of his House Un-American Activities Committee testimony, one of the 1948 Malcolm Johnson articles that inspired the film, and a 1953 piece by screenwriter Budd Schulberg
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