"Story of the Wharf" tells a story about "conscience". In this film adapted from real news reports, we can see the extreme realistic style that has never appeared in American movies before. As Martin Scorsese said in the CC video interview, Kazan's "Dock at the Pier" is to American movies what Robert Rossellini's "Rome, the Unfortified City" is to Italian movies. Compared with the popular "film noir" at the time, the moral speculation contained in the story itself seems to have an additional layer of discussion on group values. "Film Noir" tends to focus on the protagonist's individual moral choice dilemma, while "Dock Wind" radiates individual confusion. The success of the union against the black forces should not be attributed solely to the protagonist’s single-handed effort, but to rely on the collective awakening of the dock workers and joint resistance. Kazan infused the temperament of "film noir" into this film with obvious social criticism. Between the pursuit of dramatic expression and the demand for realism to highlight the truth, Kazan found a perfect fit. The main line of the story of the Dockers overthrowing the dark unions itself constitutes an external contradiction and opposition mode. While using this as the main line, Kazan also awakens the protagonist Terry Malloy’s own moral conscience and the Edy played by Ava. The love story between the two has evolved into the inherent emotional tension of the film, which makes the narrative climax, back and forth.
Marlon Brando's down-and-out boxer Terry, because of his brother Charlie, inadvertently became an accomplice in the murder of the corrupt boss of the union, Johnny. At the beginning of the film, we saw Terry coming out of a group of corrupt unionists. He is young and powerful, in the slightest difference from the sinister and fat gang members. However, after a brief moment of light at the beginning of the film, the scene quickly changed from the opening of the dock to the dark alleys of the workers' accommodation area. In the crime scene at the beginning of the film, the shadows cast by the building guardrails and stairs are cross-edited with the silhouettes of criminals standing on the roof. The angle of the camera is extremely tilted, making people feel chilling. What makes the audience unacceptable is that the young man just acted as an accomplice in the murder. Sadly, he was also deceived. "I thought they just wanted to teach him a lesson." The death of Eddie’s brother made Terry a key witness, and at this moment the film officially entered the part with the theme of "conscience". He will fall in love with Edie and witness the cruelty of the gang. Will he finally awaken and choose to become a "informer"?
Terry repeatedly switched between two identities in the film: "Bigger" and "Informer". When he was serving the gang, they called him "the beggar", and when he chose to testify in court, he was also called the "informer." From this we can see that Terry's life is always dominated by the choices of others. When he was a boxer, he deliberately lost the match because of the interests of the gang. Now because of his brother, he can't tell the truth. In "Story of the Wharf", Kazan used countless framed compositions to show the protagonist's imprisoned life, the iron fence of the wharf, the pigeon cage on the roof, the glass windows of the church, and even the crowds in the bar. The protagonist is controlled and manipulated. He wants to make a choice, but now he can do nothing. It is three people who can help him really get out of the predicament: Edie, his brother Charlie and the pastor.
For Edie, Terry has a sense of atonement, but this old-fashioned plot that transforms the sense of atonement into love is really unconvincing today. But Kazan and Brando, they have the power to turn decay into magic. In the scene where the hero and heroine interacted for the first time, we saw the dockers being played by the gangsters and applauded. They even lost the most basic dignity of being a human being. At this time, Edie, as a weak woman, chose to come forward, allowing Terry to see a kind of courage that he did not possess. In two very crucial scenes: outside the church and in the bar, Terry completed the transformation from atonement to love to self-salvation. If the conversation between Terry outside the church is just a mutual attraction between ordinary men and women, then the conversation in the bar makes us understand that these are two people who are trapped by their conscience but have made the opposite choice. At one point in the film, Edie's pale face and hair are placed somewhere in the upper right corner of the screen, while Terry is in the middle below, as if a guardian angel is hovering above his head. The love between Edie and Terry is portrayed in the film as the result of some kind of moral complementarity. But in the eyes of the audience, it is more like a one-off show of Brando's charm. In the scene outside the church, Terry's entanglement with Edie is a direct manifestation of this sexual charm, and Edie's "love at first sight" with Terry is also largely due to this sexual attraction. Although the digging of "Dock Storm" is far less than that of "A Streetcar Named Desire", which Kazan later collaborated with Brando, when Terry used violence to smash the door of Edie's house, we would find "Desire" in a daze. The shadow of Brando and Vivien in "Street Car".
Terry has the most touching family relationship with his brother Charlie. This is due to Brando's outstanding performance. In the film we did not enter Terry’s family, and we do not know his family background. In the first half of the film, Charlie was a symbol of destruction for Terry. He used Terry's trust in him to make him do something against his conscience. In the second half, Charlie was a symbol of salvation. My two favorite scenes in "The Wharf" are about Charlie. One was in the back seat of the famous taxi (Martin Scorsese directly quoted this paragraph in "Angry Bull") Charlie was ordered by the gang boss to persuade Terry to "turn back to shore" and even drew his pistol. He came to threaten his brother, but this scene was not violent and intense. Kazan turned it into one of the most gentle scenes in the film. We saw the expressions on Charlie and Terry's faces, which were so painful and full of sorrow under the dim street lamp. Brando slowly narrated his stifled dream, "I could have been a boxer." He put his hand on the pistol pointed at him by his brother as if stroking the face of his lover, and then slowly pushed away, "Oh, Charlie! "Who can express his deep pain in a reproachful, loving and sad tone?" (Kazan) This is definitely one of the most moving scenes in film history. The two brothers are mourning their passing. Love. After that, in a brightly lit place, Terry got out of the car, but Charlie stayed in the car, and the taxi turned around the corner and drove into the darkness. In the scene where Terry discovered that Charlie was murdered, a large truck in the distance whizzed towards Terry with dazzling lights. At this time, Edie appeared in the light. Her arrival saved Terry and they hid. After the danger of being run over by the truck, after the truck went away, the alley should have returned to the dark, but a dim light illuminates the front of Terry, where Charlie's body hangs.
The priest is another important role in saving Terry. As the soul savior, when a rebel was deliberately killed in the cabin, Terry heard the priest's very agitating speech. The image of the priest in the movie is more like a leader of the working class. He is the most staunch opponent of the gang forces. At the same time, he is angry at the disunity of the workers, trying to unite the workers against the dark forces with his strength. In a scene in the film, when Terry went to the pastor to confess, the pastor asked him to find another pastor, but when Terry said it was about the death of Brother Eddie, the pastor immediately said, "Child, I think We should talk". The image of this priest has a distinct left-wing color. Although the "Wake Up Whistleblower" in "The Wharf" is the center of the film, we still cannot avoid the theme of class struggle.
"The Wharf" is generally regarded as Kazan's work in defense of himself. Between 1938 and 1975, the U.S. House of Representatives established an investigation committee, the Anti-American Activities Committee, to conduct anti-communist investigations. Shortly before the filming of the film, Kazan had just testified before the committee, accusing several colleagues who were implicated in the Communist Party. "Informer" is a moral burden that Kazan could not remove in his life. In "The Dock Storm", he deliberately used the role of Terry to clarify that he was only temporarily deceived and used by the "gang". In the movie, a union boss said, "You betrayed us, Terry," and Terry replied, "I am standing here now. For so many years, I have been deceiving myself without knowing it." Here, Terry became an "informer" and he was also excluded, but soon he became a symbol of moral awakening. At the end of the film, even though Terry fell in a contest with Johnny, the unity of the workers was exchanged. They finally had the courage to say "no" to the union. Although Kazan tried to defend his whistleblowing behavior in "The Wharf", we still found that his defense was contradictory. The righteous forces in "The Docklands" are the working class, and the evil forces are the bourgeoisie who are greedy for profit. As a representative of the left-wing front, Kazan could not say goodbye to his past so easily. Therefore, "Story of the Dock" is contradictory to Kazan, and we can still see this contradiction in his later works such as "Dream of the Dragon" and "America, America". Much of the power of "Dock Storm" comes from its "aggressiveness." The film was shot on the ground in New York. The winter was extremely cold that year. In the film, we could clearly see the white breath of the characters when they spoke. In the film, a large number of extras were also played by real dockers. Kazan tried to use "truth" to attack "hypocrisy". This was his counterattack in the face of whistleblower accusations. Defending himself is not the main purpose. The most important thing is to expose the "hypocrisy" of critics who criticized him.
In "The Wharf", Terry's theme of "conscience" is also related to the theme of "freedom". If we put aside the famous koan in film history, we will find that there is something more exciting in Terry's body. "Conscience" is only one aspect of the film, while the other "freedom" needs to be discovered by the audience. In the film, Terry repeatedly came to the roof where Eddie’s brother was killed, where a group of pigeons was raised. Terry often sits on the roof in a daze. The pigeon is the only touch of freedom in his trapped life, and the dense barbed wire on the roof seems to remind the audience of the similarities between Terry and the pigeon. You will never forget those touching conversations between Terry and Edie on the top floor, which seem to be about pigeons, but it's okay to replace the pigeons with him. In Marlon Brando’s great acting, Terry’s appearance “changed the performance of American movies forever”. The exaggerated and funny acting style that Hollywood pursued before disappeared in "The Wharf". We saw a certain A more vigorous way of performing. Brando's iconic small movements when facing the camera convey complex emotional information to the audience. In the scene where Terry and Edie were outside the church, Edie accidentally dropped one of his gloves. Terry picked it up and inadvertently put the glove on his hand. When talking about "Far from the Wharf", we have to talk about Brando's performance. In Kazan's movie, we have witnessed the rise of a great superstar.
What attracts audiences is its rough documentary sense; it inherits the tradition of "film noir"; it also lies in Brando's great performance; it also lies in the inherent contradiction of Kazan's choice of "conscience" . Whether it’s guilt or a certain kind of hatred, in short, a kind of magical power prompted Kazan to complete this masterpiece of film history. The classic line of Terry in the movie can not be used to describe Kazan. Conscience, that thing can drive you crazy".
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