Year: 1954
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Pat Henning, John F. Hamilton, James Westerfield, Abe Simon, Leif Erickson, Martin Balsam, Rudy Bond, Ben Wagner
Director: Elia Kazan
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actor (Cobb, Malden, Steiger), Best Supporting Actress (Saint), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration - Black & White, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Dramatic or Comedic Score
It's sorta hard to believe that last night was the first time I ever sat down and watched this movie. I'd hardly even seen any clips; just stills.
This was 1954's big Oscar film; it was nominated for a whopping 12 Oscars (still an impressive number today) and won eight of them; again, still impressive. If A Streetcar Named Desire was Brando's signature role, this was the role that solidified his screen presence and made sure we knew it was no fluke. Of course...Brando was literally nominated for a Best Actor Oscar every year between this one and Streetcar. Has any other actor this age (he was 30 when he won for this) ever had that happen? I'm not really asking; the answer is "no". Whenever I hear of a new actor being called "the next Brando" my first thought is "has he racked up four Best Actor nominations by age 30? No? Then he's not." In fact, most actors age 30 are considered, at best, nearly ready for their first nomination, rather than already having been nominated three times, with one of their losses considered an unforgivable snub. While Brando is a powerhouse in this (when wasn't he, back when he was at the top of his game?), this award was probably just as much for Streetcar as it was for the actual performance.
Brando plays Terry Malloy, a former prizefighter, now a shiftless, thug-like dock worker in Hoboken, New Jersey, who does small-time work for the local Union boss, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), who has mob ties and pretty much owns the docks. Terry's brother, Charlie "The Gent", is Johnny's right-hand man, and it's primarily through Charlie that Terry knows and works for Johnny. The police are watching Johnny, and one of the dock workers may have been talking to them. At the start of the film, Terry is sent to lure the "rat" onto the roof of his building, where Johnny's men are waiting for him. One body in the street later, and Terry realizes he just assisted in a murder. He thought they were just gonna lean on him, get him to shut his yap. He never thought he'd be participating in this sort of thing.
Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) is the younger sister of the murdered man, Joey, and wants to find out who killed her brother and see justice done, while their dad, "Pop" (John F. Hamilton), knows how things work on the docks and just laments that Joey didn't know how to keep his mouth shut. Local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden), is inspired by Edie's fearless declaration that an uprising against waterfront corruption is needed, and he decides to lead that uprising in the name of God. He can tell that Terry's conscience is bothering him, but Terry, who tries to live by the axiom "do it to him before he can do it to you", tells the priest that "conscience can drive you nuts" and resolves that however he feels about it, he's no rat. But then he meets and begins to fall for Edie, and realizes that good people are getting hurt for seemingly no reason.
This is the movie where Brando's famous "I coulda been a contendah!" speech comes from, and it's kind of a shame that today, that's nearly all people know it for. I didn't even know the context; I thought he was whining to his girl about how his life turned out. As it is, it's a pivotal moment for him and his brother, and their relationship, as by this point Charlie has been told by Johnny to either convince Terry not to talk or to kill him. Charlie's almost to the point of working himself up to do it, but unfortunately, after first offering him a "job" where the kickbacks would mean he never has to work, then threatening to shoot him. Charlie then reminds Terry that Johnny was there for him with a job when he washed out of his fighting career due to a poor manager, to which Terry responds: "It wasn't him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, "Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson." You remember that? "This ain't your night"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money."
He spells it out; had it not been for those events, "I coulda had class. I coulda been a contendah. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am." It's rare when a famous quote gets remembered exactly as its said. I was prepared for the speech to be different than I always heard it, kinda like "Elementary, my dear Watson", or "Beam me up, Scotty" or "Luke, I am your father". But nope, it's exactly like the way we've always heard it.
There's a lot more to this movie than just that scene, but as it's the moment that really kicks off the final act, I can understand why it got so famous. I won't tell you where it leads, for the most part, but I will say that one of the images from this movie that will stay with me for the rest of my life - Terry and Edie running for their lives down a narrow alleyway pursued by a giant truck - comes after it.
Like I said earlier, Brando's win for this film is thought in some ways to be a make-up Oscar, as he was expected to win for Streetcar three years earlier, but lost to Humphrey Bogart, who was getting his make-up Oscar for not winning for Casablanca. Having now seen it, I gotta say that it was earned. I still think Bogart was brilliant in The Caine Mutiny but he didn't truly own the film like Brando does here. Terry gets under our skin; he's so ordinary that it's very possible to feel like you're one bad career move away from being him, and you wonder if you were in his shoes, what would you do? We'd like to think we'll stand up against the bad guy like Terry, but I think most of us would be more like the other dock workers; feeling like it's just not worth it. Brando takes us through the wringer; you feel every inch of his agonizing over the cardinal rule of "you never rat" versus looking the other way and allowing good people to get hurt.
This movie really is an acting tour-de-force, and like I said in the launch post for this category and this year, is one of only five movies to score three acting nods in one category; in this case three Best Supporting Actor nominations for the frightening mob boss Johnny Friendly, crusading priest Father Barry, and the big bro, Charlie the Gent, who can never figure out a way to both be a loyal mobster and a loving brother at the same time. Usually triple-crowns like this means they cancel each other out, and so it happened here, but did they deserve it? Did they all lose just because they were from the same film?
The truth is, I don't know which of the three performances I would pick to be a winner. Not because none of them stand out, but because they're all just that good! I would take points away from Malden for his character being so saintly, but then, he only rises to the occasion because Edie makes him see how long he's been hiding. He's also based on a real guy, and apparently Malden toned it down to make him seem less unrealistically heroic. Lee J. Cobb probably has the least to work with, playing an unrepentant bad guy whose every action is pretty predictable, but he plays it to the hilt, and dominates all his scenes. Steiger's role takes a while to go somewhere, but when it does, he makes you want to cry, particularly in the scene where he decides to let Terry go, knowing what it will mean for him personally.
So, in total, I guess I can't really say that any of them aren't winners, and since there can only be one, I guess their triple-threat is their award.
Eva Marie Saint makes her film debut here, and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and she really does a great job here, as the personification of Terry's conscience. Or really, just conscience at all, since her declarations are also what inspire Father Barry to stop hiding in his church. I've been hearing most of my life about how she was the female lead, and should have been nominated for Best Actress, but was shunted to supporting because no one had ever heard of her, and she was more likely to be nominated here; a gamble that worked considering she won. But having seen it, I think she was nominated in the right category. This isn't her story; it's Terry's from the word go. She wouldn't have even factored in had Terry been sent to set up someone else, or if he hadn't been involved in her brother's death. She deserved her win (at least as far as I know so far), but she wasn't in the wrong category.
I would be remiss if I didn't talk about this film's connection with Kazan's naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. I'm not going to talk about whether he was right or wrong; getting political is not the purpose of this blog, but apparently one of Kazan's motivations for making it was to show that "ratting" is a good thing when you're outing bad people. Apparently there were protests when he won, but he must have at least gotten his message across pretty well, because, again, this movie won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. And they're all deserved, as far as I know so far.
Next post is the ranking of the performances and my pick for the winner vs. the Academy's pick.
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