On "On the Waterfront" at 70. Kazan, Brando, and the Method

Spoilers Below

Dockworker Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has unknowingly set up fellow dockworker Joey Doyle to be murdered for testifying against the mob that runs the dock. As he looks towards where Joey has fallen off the roof of his apartment, Terry lets out a weathered 'pooof" of air. It's this moment, so unaffected and real  that stood out to me when I first saw the On the Waterfront as a teenager in the 2000s (geez I'm old) Brando's performance is perhaps my favourite performance of all time. I'd go so  far to say this is *the* Brando performance. Yes, The Godfather is probably his most iconic performance- and maybe the most iconic film performance of all time- but On the Waterfront is Brando in his prime.. While he had done A Streetcar Named Desire on stage and screen, played The Wild One and even challenged himself by doing Shakespeare, Terry Malloy is Brando's most complete and well-rounded performance up to this point- masculine but sensitive, a beautiful bum with the prospect of redemption. The film is also director Elia Kazan's masterpiece. If A Streetcar Named Desire is a little-intentionally so- boxed in cinematically, then On the Waterfront feels more lived in and vivid as a cinematic experience, fuller, more completer. 

Brando and Kazan only did three movies together, (Streetcar, Viva Zapata! and On the Waterfront), as well as the original Streetcar on Broadway and the play Truckline Cafe (which only ran for 10 performances) but they brought forward a new kind of psychological realism on stage and screen. Before she was a critic Pauline Kael tells a story of coming in late to see Truckline Cafe (this was 1946). On stage she sees a man who she believes is having a seizure. It wasn't until the man she was with grabbed her arm and said "Watch this guy," that she realized he was an actor. Of course, it was Brando

A lot is talked about these days concerning "Method Acting," and it's become synonymous with male actors being assholes, and of course the "Try acting" story about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman has been repeated so often that's it lost any real meaning. It's unfortunate that it has such a bad reputation because its an important piece screen and stage acting history. I think the problem is  people think method acting is something that it's not. I don't method acting was about staying in character or building a log cabin, or not wearing a wool coat because it's a period piece. My understanding of method is it was about finding a more psychologically real approach to acting. Instead of just performing an emotion, you draw from your own experiences, even painful ones to feel what the character is feeling. While it's associated strongly with American actors you have to travel back in time to Russia to find it origins. Konstantin Stanislavski called it "the system," rather than the method and then it was co-opted by American acting teachers like Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. Brando never called himself a "method actor," disliking Strasberg's methods. Brando said it was Adler and Kazan who taught him everything about acting. 

Kazan actually started as an actor, moving to New York after studying drama at Yale and becoming part of the Group Theatre, which included the aforementioned Strasberg,  and which specialized in lesser known plays that delt with social issues, which Kazan would continue to explore as a stage and film director. In 1947 he founded the Actors Studio, a non-profit organization of which Strasberg became the director, who of course introduced "the method," and amongst his students were Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Karl Malden, Mildred Dunnock, Patricia Deal and Eli Wallach. 

While Kazan was never a teacher or practitioner of the method, he did use actors who practiced the method or something akin to it, actors like Brando and Malden, who co-starred in Truckline Cafe and then in the stage and film versions of Streetcar, as well as On the Waterfront. Kazan also worked with the always underrated Clift in the equally underrated Wild River. Clift often gets overshadowed by Brando, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe when it comes to 50s icons but I think he deserves as much credit as Brando for bringing a new kind of raw naturalism to the screen. His performance in A Place in the Sun is tremendous in how it creates a genuinely complex character who's neither hero or villain. He's also wonderful in his first film The Search, directed Fred Zinnemann, who also directed Brand in his first film role a couple of years later, The Men. In The Search, Clift plays an American soldier in Post WWII Germany who's attempting to reunite a boy with his mother, both of whom were in Auschwitz before being separated. Clift's chemistry with young actor Ivan Jandi (who won an Juvenile Oscar) provide the film with much humour and warmth, and it's definitely a movie worth seeking out.

 

Kazan also introduced James Dean to the world in East of Eden, based on the John Steinbeck novel, though condensed considerably by Kazan and Steinbeck, who had co-wrote Viva Zapata! together as well. The condensation of the generation spanning story of the Trask family, only focusing on the last section, centers the story on Cal Trask (Dean) and his fraught relationship with father Adam (Raymond Massey.) This was the only film of his Dean was alive to see, dying shortly before Rebel Without a Cause was released. Dean received criticism at the time for mimicking the acting style of Clift and Brando. It's true that Dean did emulate Brando and Clift, but I think the moodiness and mystery, as well as self-amusement belongs solely to Dean himself. 

Kazan never worked with Monroe but it's an intriguing what-if? Monroe studied the method under Adler and wanted to be more respected as an actress. Her last role in The Misfits, as long as Bus Stop years earlier, show a dramatic potential that could've flourished if Monroe had lived. 

Coming back to Brando, it's unfortunate that he got so lazy and pissed away his talent, because he obviously had a gift and charisma thar not everyone has. I'd argue Clift, Dean and Monroe had it but all died prematurely. Brando used to care so much about acting that he asked Kazan what the difference between Terry and his Streetcar character, Stanley Kowalski. This shows that Brando wanted to separate the two performances. I think it's easy for an actor sometimes to repeat themselves, but I don't Brando does in Waterfront, I think Terry is a different man than Stanley. Kazan wrote Brando a letter where he talked about the differences between the two men. He felt Terry was a more complex character than Stanley, which I agree. Kazan didn't feel there was a divide in Stanley, that he was more confident than Terry, lacking the the loneliness that pervades Terry. Kazan sums up Terry's journey throughout the film as  "A bum becomes a man." I think Stanley is a reprehensible animal in Streetcar whereas Terry feels more sympathetic and more well drawn.

Kazan's use of method actors or actors akin to method actors correlates with his tendency towards social realism. While casting a big star like Brando in the role of a dockworker amongst actual dockworkers would seem counterintuitive but Brando feels less like a movie star trying to be a everyday worker than a truly embodied kind of performance. Doing it now, you would Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pit or Bradley Cooper trying real hard to appear natural. In general they fight really hard against their movie star image and I think Brando is one of the few who did it naturally. Don't get me wrong, I think the aforementioned actors have been great in certain roles and I'll go to bat for those performances. I still think Leo should've won for Wolf of Wall Street or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

 

Brando almost wasn't in the film due to his dislike of Kazan testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, giving up names of communists to Joseph McCarthy. While it allowed him to still work it did and does give him a black mark to this day. When he received his Honorary Oscar in 1999, you had people like Nick Nolte and Ed Harris refusing to even clap.  Years before, Orson Welles called Kazan a "traitor" though also called him a fine director. I think Welles was kind of blowhard. That, and calling him a traitor seems to ignore how ruthless, cutthroat and remorseless a place Hollywood. I don't mean to condone Kazan's actions but let's not romanticize Hollywood as a completely rosy place. 

Malden, who was a Academy board member, was the proponent of the Honorary Oscar. His speech in front of the board supposedly drew applause and Charlton Heston also supported the decision, saying political differences shouldn't deny him of the honor, noting that Kazan was denied lifetime achievement honors because of his testimony, and the film is often seen as Kazan's defense of his actions.

The film is  unambiguously on the side of Terry informing. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and his goons are thugs, bullies and murderers. When Terry's brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is killed because he failed to convince Terry not to testify, as well as not killing him, it's like yeah, fuck those guys.  Now, I don't think this film works as an defense on Kazan's part of his own actions- the people he testified against weren't murderers or any kind of villains. In real life, it was Joseph McCarthy who was the real villain. When it comes to Kazan, I think his actions are complicated than his critics believe.

 I don't straight up condone but Kazan did but I feel he believed he was doing the right thing. I agree with Malden who felt the blame needed to be placed on politics. I think we should hate  McCarthy more than Kazan.  

Budd Schulberg, who won an Oscar for the film's screenplay, was also a "friendly witness" for HUAC. His screenplay I think is one of the most perfectly constructed. The way the film sets up Terry's past as a prizefighter and finally pays it off in the famous taxi scene (which I'll talk about later.), as well as its handling of a diverse ensemble of characters all while still keeping it a character study of the Terry character. 

When Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro (who starred in Kazan's The Last Tycoon) presented Kazan with the Honorary Oscar Scorsese described Kazan as "This poetic realist," which I think may be the best description of Kazan as a filmmaker outside the oft used "Actor's director" used for directors of his kin. Kazan's films exist in a place where a new kind of psychological realism meets something more stylized and sometimes theatrical. The famous cab scene where Terry essentially tells Charley that he ruined his life, that if we wasn't asked to throw a fight years earlier he could've been a "contender." This scene walks a fine line between realism and melodrama, expertly (by the actors and Kazan) never losing the audience. It takes place in this enclosed place compared to the more lived in locations of the previous scenes, this taxi cab where the blinds are drawn in the back and we never see the driver until the end. It almost feels like a play, where everything is driven strictly by the actors and the dialogue. When we finally see the sinister driver, who we know is going to kill Charlie, it's a startlingly change of perspective. And you have to wonder, what was this guy thinking about when these two brothers were having this soul baring conversation? 

Compare the closed-off theatricality of the taxi scene with the docudrama scenes on the waterfront,. showing the workaday life and environment of the dockworkers. Then you have the noirish scenes

like when Charley is found dead and Terry and Evie (Joey's sister) are chased by a car. I mean, that shot of the goons on the roof at the beginning is straight something from a crime film. And Terry is a noirish character, a man haunted by his past, a guy who exists in a morally grey area. Terry ultimately has a more triumphant and redemptive ending than most noir characters - unlike most noir characters who are doomed by the femme fatale, Terry is saved by the angelic Evie, played by Eva Marie Saint in her film debut, which won her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar alongside Brando's Best Actor win. I feel bad for not mentioning her character earlier because she's so significant and is a big impetus for Terry's interna conflict. When she says "No wonder they call you a bum," so disgusted by Terry not wanting to help, it hurts us as much as Terry. 

Karl Malden's priest character Father Barry is also crucial to Terry's decision to testify because after Charley's murder Terry to strike out violently but Barry- who is right- tells him it's better to fight Friendly in court. Barry's character is also another instance of realism and theatricality blending and blurring in this film. Barry's sermons are probably the weakest part of this film and kind of drags it down.

On the Waterfront's denouement may strike some as too Hollywood, and it provides a bitter irony when contrasted with Kazan's reputation- which unlike Terry, is not that of a hero. Kazan never asked for forgiveness, maybe because he didn't feel he needed. Kazan did say in interviews that he probably would've done the same thing even if he had thought about it again. Despite Kazan's testimony, On the Waterfront won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kazan. It's one of the best Best Picture winners, though Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window is my favourite that year. I understand it's hard for people to separate their feelings about Kazan from the film, largely because it's so reflective of his beliefs on testifying. People use the expression "Separate the art from the artist" but I think it's so much difficult and complicated than that. Like I said, the film reflects Kazan's belief that he was right to testify, and I don't think the film works on that level, for I reasons I laid out earlier. I still appreciate the film for Brando's performance and for the story in its context. It remains a reminder of Kazan and Brando's immense talent and importance to cinema, as complicated as it is regarding Kazan.  

     

Death, Taxes, and Franchise Longevity: "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection" as Franchise Extensions and Parallel Versions of "Alien" and "Aliens"

Spoilers for the Alien series below

When Charlton Heston blew up the planet of the apes at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it was thought by Heston- who came up with the idea- that this would prevent any more sequels being made. But, this didn't stop 20th Century Fox from making Escape From The Planet of the Apes shortly after. James Bond is dead but we'll see a new Bond...sometime in the future. Avengers: Endgame felt like, well, the endgame of the MCU. The thing is, a franchise will always find a way to extend its life, even when it probably should end (though I guess there were several loose ends at the end of Endgame).  The question is, how do you continue on a story after it's logical end point. "Rebooting" is always the easy option but there was a time where you didn't really wipe the slate clean- you just continued on with new characters or a new actor as Batman or Bond. When it comes to clear-cut endings, James Cameron's Aliens gives Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) a pretty neat ending-

having overcome the trauma from the original Ridley Scott Alien, and gaining a surrogate daughter and possible love interest. But of course, a third film had to be made. After having difficulty nailing down a story, and even without a finished script, Alien 3 was made, helmed by first time director David Fincher. Alien 3 gives an even more definitive end to Ripley's story- having her commit suicide but, again, a sequel had to be made, and Ripley was brought back as a clone for Alien Resurrection, this time directed by French auteur Jean Pierre Jeunet. Neither Alien 3 or Resurrection are beloved as the first two films but in this piece I want to talk about how they operate, not only as franchise extensions, but also largely as parallel versions of the first two films. 

If Aliens is one of the quintessential Hollywood blockbusters, incredibly audience friendly- filled with one liners and an almost Spielbergian sentiment, then Alien 3 is perhaps the bleakest, nihilistic and audience-unfriendly film of any franchise. It essentially tells its audience "Hey, remember that cute little girl and the cool Colonial marine you loved so much from Aliens? Yeah they're dead, and our supporting cast is now of group of ex-convicts guilty of rape, murder and child molestation. And, oh yeah, Ripley has an alien growing inside of her and wants to kill herself." I've heard Alien 3 compared to a Michael Haeneke film and yeah, the tone of the film does feel like you're watching a depressing European art-house film rather than the 3rd film in a popular film franchise. But that's what I kind of love and appreciate about it. I can't think of another franchise installment that gut punches its audience the way this one does (though I understand many had the same experience with The Last Jedi).

It's pitiless and remorseless, in stark contrast to the sentiment of Aliens.

If Cameron makes very audience friendly films with a certain kind of sentiment, than Fincher often really puts the audience through it, not really giving them easy joy or comfort. I can't really see Cameron ever doing anything as bleak as the ending of Seven. This isn't a judgement call on Cameron as a filmmaker, just an observation. What I love about the original 4 movie cycle is that each film stands out as distinct vision. Aliens could've been the template for all the Alien sequels afterwards, similar to how Terminator 2 became the basis for pretty much every Terminator sequel afterwards. Alien 3, on the other hand, feels increasingly radical as a sequel as the years pass since it stops the story of Aliens in its natural path, saying we're not going to Earth or continuing on the family story of Ripley, Hicks and Newt.  We're not doing a bigger scale film but something small, intimate and sad. 

Alien 3 takes a back to basics approach, limiting itself to one alien, and removing guns from the equation. As with the original, the characters have to get creative in how they'll kill the xenomorph. As franchises go on, there's usually a tendency to keep going bigger with the set-pieces and more of what people liked before. However Alien 3 is pretty minimalist as far as sequels go, surprisingly somber and understated. The setting- a former prison colony now overseen as a lead factory by its former inmates who've found religion- also gets back to the original's gothic atmosphere. Star Wars' lived in universe aesthetic influenced Scott when making Alien and its present in Alien 3,  filtered through Fincher's 90s grunge aesthetic. This is perhaps the most visually striking film in the franchise, Alex Thomson's cinematography creating something beautiful out such a bleak setting.

 

The horror of the original Alien was largely based in its theme of sexual assault and death through childbirth. Many have remarked in the past how it subverts the image of sexual assault by having a man raped instead of a woman. . In Alien 3, the fear of sexual assault is placed back on the female character, but this time with the threat of sexual assault coming from the former inmates. If Alien didn't make a big deal of Ripley's gender (I believe Ripley was originally written to be a man) this film positions her as the lone female, the first and only time in the series, with the threat of male violence against her a constant undercurrent. There is an attempted rape by some of the prisoners on Ripley, who's saved by Dillon (Charles S. Dutton). The irony is clear- this is the man who straight out told Ripley he was a "murderer and a rapist of women." Dillon is a man looking for some kind of redemption and he and Ripley become unlikely allies. 

One of the criticisms of the film is its hard to care about killing these men who are guilty of such heinous crimes, which I get. Outside of Ripley, the character we're allowed to feel the most warmth towards is Clemens (Charles Dance), the medical doctor who was once a former prisoner. He there because he got drunk and prescribed an incorrect dose of painkillers on survivors of a fuel plant boiler explosion. Ripley and Clemens become intimate- the only time we actually see a romantic interaction in the four films- but Clemens is killed off pretty early, Psycho-style, leaving the audience with pretty much just the inmates. Again, I actually kind of appreciate how the film doesn't make it easy for the audience. We're not given them easily identifiable or straight out likable characters but I'd argue the film is asking the audience if they're willing to sympathize or at least get on board with these characters. I find something compelling about Ripley and these inmates having to team together to fight the alien. This is essentially a story about people who have either lost everything (Ripley) or had nothing to begin with (Dillon) having to work together against a common enemy. Dillon sums it up pretty well when he tells the inmates that they're all going to die, you just have to decide how you're going to do it. This may sum up the whole franchise- when facing certain death how are you going to do it? 

Returning to the theme of sexual assault, the ultimate irony comes when Ripley realizes she's already been sexually assaulted by a facehugger, with a xenomorph growing within her. In Alien, Ripley fought for her own survival, and in Aliens, for her surrogate daughter. Here, Ripley is fighting the right to end her own life.  largely to stop the alien from getting in to the hands of the Weyland-Yutani corporation who want to use it as a weapon. In his video essay on the film for his "The Unloved" series, Scout Tofoya remarks how rare it is to see a mainstream Hollywood emphasize with a woman's desire to have an abortion. Ripley does ultimately succeed in killing herself.  This  may not be the happy ending people were left with at the end of Aliens, is a sort of final triumph for this character, going out on her own terms.

And for a while, Alien 3 was the conclusion of the story. Of course, the ending didn't stick, with Alien Resurrection coming several years later. Just as Alien 3 parallels Alien, with its gothic setting and bleak tone, Resurrection attempts to ape Aliens' more humorous, fun action movie vibe. We have multiple xenomorphs, the return of guns to the equation and the broader characterizations.  The film's director, Jeunet, is probably best known to people as the director of Amelie though he hadn't directed it at this time, though he had directed The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. Jeunet is the franchise's most off-beat and out of left field choice, with Resurrection being is the strangest, ickiest, and tonally conflicted of the four films. Screenwriter Joss Whedon has expressed his dissatisfaction with the film, saying it was directed wrong, acted wrong, and cast wrong. Unlike Aliens, which I think balanced its tone pretty well, Resurrection can't completely decide what kind of film it needs to wants to be. It wants to be, I think, a fun action movie in the vein of Aliens, but's it almost too grotesque and weird, and not really as exciting as Cameron's film.  

 

We almost had a deeper connection to Aliens with Whedon's original idea of cloning Newt, making her the lead of the film. 20th Century Fox however didn't want a story without Weaver. I feel Newt had potential as the lead of the franchise, if they had cast a strong actress in the role (Carrie Henn quit acting after Aliens, her only film). The idea of cloning Ripley was actually a joke producer David Giler made to Weaver when Alien 3 premiered. Resurrection definitely feels like the textbook definition of a franchise jumping the shark, or maybe we should say xenomorph, in an attempt to extend its life cycle, though the film does do funny and bold things with the idea of Ripley being a clone, though she's not just a clone, she's an alien human hybrid. In interviews Whedon said he thought Weaver wouldn't want to play Ripley in such a weird way but he was surprised she told him to push things further. Like in Aliens, Ripley is a mother figure, having been the bearer of the xenomorph embryo, a queen which gives birth to a human/xenomorph baby- yeah, it's very weird. Ripley was attempting to save her surrogate daughter before whereas now as he she has to kill her literal offspring. 

Another parallel with Aliens, and something I think is integral to Ripley's story, is the continuation of the "Rip Van Winkle" thing with Ripley waking up years in the future. Ripley was in cryosleep for 57 years between the first two movies, now it's 200 years in the future. Ripley becomes more and more of an isolated character as the sequels go on- with the Resurrection positioning her as not even being completely human or even the same Ellen Ripley. When we arrive on Earth at the film's end, the android Call (Winona Ryder) asks what's next, to which Ripley replies that she's a stranger there herself. While I get why killing Newt off is seen as an unforgivable sin by many, I think Ripley works better as a loner, a ultimately a tragic figure. Sure, a big part of me wonders what alternate universe version of Alien 3 looks like but I love that the Alien 3 we got makes you feel the pain of triumph snatched away, that sickening irony. Each sequel does undo the victory of the previous film's ending, though I guess that's just the horror genre- it doesn't matter how many times you kill Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, they'll be back for the sequel. I think it's best to look a the Alien quadrilogy as variations on a theme, with each director approaching their film as a stand alone film rather than as a Marvel-esque serialized piece of storytelling.

I never know how to end these things so I'll hand it over to you. What are your thoughts on the two latter Alien sequels. Are you a fan or do yo find them huge disappointments. Comment and let me know.