On the Waterfront

After watching On the Waterfront, I realized that it was the first whole movie that I have watched in black and white. I also realized how the technology of the film affects the whole analysis of a film. At first, I couldn't get over how boring I thought the movie was because of word of mouth, and because the movie wasn't in color. The transitions from scene to scene where choppy and I also found the sound effects redundant and dull. I also found it hard to decipher the movie and the older dialect and phrases used in the movie at first. However, as the movie went on, all of this grew on me and made me more interested in the film. As the film went on, I picked up on the characters, and started to understand many differences from modern films that I am used to watching.

This film really didn't have one side or the other for the viewer to take side with. Obviously
 most viewers would side with Terry and root for his success throughout the movie. The story was portrayed very well throughout the film. It started really slow, after the first 10 minutes or so, I asked myself "what in the world is going on right now?" and had to really think about what was happening in the film. I think that the choppy transitions and older dialect had a lot to do with this.

Some questions that remain after the film for me are why didn't Johnny just have Terry killed too, he knew that he was going to get nailed with the murders for the other workers anyways. I also wish that the workers would have just got together and overthrown the union leaders, if they would have just boycotted them for a day, the leaders would have had no money and would have had to change their ways.

Overall, I didn't think that the movie was that bad. Other than having to get used to the technology used to make the film, the storyline was pretty good.

SJP