On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film with elements of film noir. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The film is based on Crime on the Waterfront by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in NovemberDecember 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Mobconnected union boss Johnny Friendly Lee J. Cobb gloats about his ironfisted control of the waterfront. The police and the Waterfront Crime Commission know that Friendly is behind a number of murders, but witnesses play D and D deaf and dumb, accepting their subservient position rather than risking the danger and shame of informing.Terry Malloy Marlon Brando is a dockworker whose brother Charley The Gent Rod Steiger is Friendlys righthand man. Some years earlier, Terry had been a promising boxer, until Friendly had Charley instruct him to deliberately lose a fight that he could have won, so that Friendly could win money betting against him. Terry is used to coax Joey Doyle Ben Wagner, a popular dockworker, into an ambush, preventing Joey from testifying against Friendly before the Crime Commission. Terry assumed that Friendlys enforcers were only going to lean on Joey to pressure him into silence, and is surprised when Joey is killed. ........

Source: Wikipedia