18. ON THE WATERFRONT

It's about a fall from grace, and a redemption. It's about the common man as Christ figure. A story that's been told time and time again, but not with these particulars.

Terry Malloy is a nobody. He works at the docks now, but he used to be a boxer. His world is a corrupt one, with mobsters, crooked union reps, longshoremen fighting each other over job chips, just so they can work for the day.

He unwittingly sets up a neighbor to get killed, a neighbor who talked to investigators about graft at the docks. When the investigators ask him about it, he refuses. For one thing, he doesn't want to get killed himself. But beyond survival, Terry is so beaten down by his own life that he just doesn't want to rock the boat, to make waves, to go out on a limb.

Father Barry doesn't have that problem. He knows the mob wouldn't touch a man of the cloth, so he is the modern-day court jester: only he can tell the truth. Through Barry, we as the audience learn how the longshore union works, how it is now controlled by the mob.

Here's where things change. Malloy meets a woman, Edie, who brings his own life into focus. He realizes he's treading water, that he's not living up to his potential, that he's "a bum." He wants to be better for her. And Father Barry continues to be a thorn in the side of the mob, so much so that they set up Duggan, he who was to be his right-hand man, who was to testify against the mob, to get a shipment full of booze dropped on his head at the docks.

So Barry gives a speech over the dead man's body. Watch:



This is where the film's themes come fully into view. It's fighting against greed. It's about the glory of the working man. It's about standing up against corruption. It's about making the unpopular choice. It's about redemption.

And this is when Terry Malloy realizes he has been wrong, and decides to change his ways. He does so first by coming clean: he tells the woman he loves that he unwittingly set her brother up to be murdered (watch how this scene is down without dialogue, the only sound those of foghorns).

And then he meets with his brother Charlie, who plays the part of the devil, who makes him a Faustian bargain: he offers him a job with the mob in exchange for not testifying. Terry is too far along to go for that, so Charlie pulls a gun on his brother. Terry still won't have it: he's a fallen man, and testifying, telling the truth, setting the record straight, coming clean, all those things are his only chance at redeeming himself.

Terry testifies against the mob boss, Johnny Friendly, and then returns to work. Everyone at the docks gets a job chip but him. He and Friendly get in a fight, Terry gets beaten senselessly. But eventually he is spared from death and, to the cheers of his fellow dockworkers and over Friendly's protests, he returns to work. He is changed, a better man, a new man, he is risen and reborn, and now there is honor and glory in that work, and he is a nobody no more.