"On the Waterfront"

This movie opened up very strange it seemed to me.  I didn't quite understand what was going on until after a few minutes into the movie.  The opening music let us know that something intense was happening although it just took awhile to figure out what that something was.  This movie seemed to have a lot of different things happening throughout.  First we start with the mob and then move onto a relationship being developed and then having to make a choice of whether to do the right thing or the easy thing.

I agree with the article written by Phillip Lopate with all the Christian symbolism that is shown throughout the movie.  I didn't pay much attention to it at first but after reading this article I remembered each of those different scenes.  I do agree that I think they overdid that a little and made it look like this should be a stab at the Christian faith with how it is portrayed.  It is weird how a movie about the corruption of unions can turn into something that drags down the Christian faith.

According to our textbook I think that the main idea of this movie is about moral implications.  Terry is constantly having to decide what he should do throughout the movie.  He has to first decide whether he wants to help with the killing of Joey or whether to stay out of it.  His decision to contribute leads to him getting more involved with the mob and gradually getting to the stage that he was in at the end of the movie.  I liked how in the movie they said how the love of a buck is more important than the love of man.  This comes through so true throughout the movie as different scenes of where the people are constantly only looking out for themselves. 

After Terry makes his choice to give his testimony on the mob, he is treated like an outcast from the rest of the people.  First his birds are killed and then they wouldn't let him work with the others.  And yet Terry still knew what he did was the right thing to do and by calling out Johnny Friendly he proved to the others that their is no reason to be afraid of him and that by standing up for yourself he loses his power with each follower you can get against him.

This film also could fall under the social problems category as it identifies a major problem with the corruption of unions and how they needed to be dealt with.  The movie showed how by letting someone have absolute power over everyone else it leads to fear of that person.  The people are not going to want to stand up against a person of such power and the situation will never get resolved.

This movie kept my interest during most of it until towards the middle.  It started to get redundant and kept dealing with the same thing over and over.  I did like the black and white though.  Normally I'm not a fan of it but I think they did the lighting in the right way that made it look great.  I still don't quite understand the whole pigeon emphasis so I don't know if I missed it or it just didn't really say.  I'm thinking it's just because of at the end how they compared Terry to a pigeon so that they would have something to make an emotional scene out of it being as Terry cared for the pigeons so much.

I liked how in the article by Sue Brower how she talks about Braudy seeing both Johnny Friendly and Father Barry as both fathers trying to win over Terry.  This is very evident as they both try to tell Terry what he should do throughout the film. Eventually it is Father Barry that wins over Terry and he takes a turn for the better.  He  has learned that doing what is right is not always the easy thing to do.
Well those are my thoughts about "On the Waterfront" hopefully you enjoyed it!