KAZAN

So it's been awhile since my last post. Been a crazy month working and traveled to California and back for a video job. Fortunately, before I left I went to see On The Waterfront at the Film Forum with a good friend. The experience was so awesome that it kept me going during the grueling West coast gig. I've seen the film many times, but never on the big screen. My father used to speak so highly of it when I was a kid and so when I finally reached the right time in my life I began watching films that I remembered my father talking about. On The Waterfront stood out among them, just as he described. Sometimes I wish my father was still around to discuss things with. God damn it that really stinks, but at least I'm able to check the shit out here in NYC.

Everything about that film is intense and so well crafted. Superb script. Superb acting. Superb cinematography. Superb score by Leonard Bernstein and so on. And, of course, Kazan's direction is without a doubt an historical moment in cinema. I won't get into all that McCarthy era crap as I prefer to think about the work, since that is what survives in the end.

In the early 50s there was quite a bit of greatness going on in American cinema...Sunset Boulevard comes to mind as a masterpiece. Billy Wilder was able to work that Hollywood machine and the production value of that film shows it.

On The Waterfront, however, is a gritty portrayal of life on the docks in the mob controlled union. Most of us know the picture so I don't need to go into details. I only need to express my gratitude that the picture exists. The black and white pictures are so fucking slamming to look at. I miss black and white sometimes. Although I love color I feel that black and white often leaves things more open for interpretation and my brain connects with this.

It is undoubtedly a powerful piece with many levels of expression and I think it is even better than Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar is also an amazing movie, but for me On The Waterfront goes down as that all encompassing marriage of human art forms that make for a truly sincere and deeply moving film.