Join us for our second foray into ‘Seeing the Gospel in Motion Pictures’ when we watch and discuss the winner of eight Academy Awards in 1955, "On The Waterfront", including Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best Supporting Actress (Eva Marie Saint), Best Director (Elia Kazan) and Best Story and Screenplay (Buzz Schulberg).  We will do this on two successive Tuesdays, August 13 and 20, at 6:30pm, in the Parish Family Center in the rooms on the basement floor directly below the rooms in which we gathered for Casablanca.

1955’s "On the Waterfront", the story about Terry Malloy (Best Actor, Marlon Brando), once rising but now washed up middleweight boxer who sold his career and his soul to the mob which controls and extorts the New York City docks and its workers.  When Terry receives a subpoena to testify against mob boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) about a murder, Terry has a crises of conscience.  Friendly is a hero and father figure to Terry, and Terry’s brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is Friendly’s right-hand man.  His instinct for loyalty to them collides with the guidance and encouragement of a priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), and Terry’s feelings of love for the murdered man’s sister Edie (Best Supporting Actress, Eva Marie Saint).

Legendary director Elia Kazan won the Best Director Oscar; Cobb, Steiger and Malden all received nominations for Best Supporting Actor; and Budd Schulberg wrote his Oscar-winning script based on a series of articles in the New York Sun called ‘Crime on the Waterfront’ by Malcom Johnson, who won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Although this was Schulberg’s inspiration, his screenplay is an original work of drama from his own imagination.

Even if you can’t make the showing/discussion, you can watch the film on your own and consider the following questions:

1. It’s obvious that Terry Malloy undergoes a conversion from mob thug to something more noble.  Are there other characters which undergo conversions?  Who are they and what are the exact nature of their conversions?

2. What do you think are the causes which contribute to Terry’s conversions?  To other characters' conversions?

3. Is Terry’s silence about the murder in any way justified?  What exactly is his legal responsibility?  Does he ever break the law?  What exactly is his moral responsibility?

4. If corruption such as that of Johnny Friendly and his mob is so obviously wrong, then why do so many people tolerate it for so long?

5. Is there religious symbolism and imagery in the movies’ final, climactic scene?