Tea at Trianon: On the Waterfront (1954)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 9, 2026

On the Waterfront (1954)

On The Waterfront - Hollywood's "Real Contenda"

From Word on Fire:

The film became the definitive work of “actors’ director” Elia Kazan, inspiring countless artists, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who called Kazan “a master of a new kind of psychological and behavioral faith in acting.” Marlon Brando’s powerful, complex, and vulnerable performance as Terry Malloy set the standard for acting in the generations to come, with Kazan concluding, “If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don’t know what it is.”

As On the Waterfront was included in the Vatican’s 1995 Alcuni film importanti list, here are some of the Catholic themes woven throughout the film.

Elia Kazan (1909–2003) was a Greek-American filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, and actor, described by Stanley Kubrick as “without question, the best director we have in America, and capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses.” Kazan started his career in acting and was an early adherent to the new “method acting” school under the direction of Lee Strasberg. From the outset, Kazan had a particular attraction to stories exploring personal and social issues, including racial prejudice, domestic violence, and union corruption: “I don’t move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme.”

He acted in a few films but found acclaim for his directorial work at the helm of classics like Gentlemen’s Agreement, Pinky, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront. Kazan and the young Marlon Brando first worked together on the Broadway adaptation—and subsequent film adaptation—of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, the story of Blanche DuBois who leaves her wealth to live in the working-class apartment of sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley (Marlon Brando).

Brando later wrote:

I have worked with many movie directors. . . . Kazan was the best actors’ director by far of any I’ve worked for . . . the only one who ever really stimulated me, got into a part with me and virtually acted it with me. . . . He was an arch-manipulator of actors’ feelings, and he was extraordinarily talented; perhaps we will never see his like again.

After the success of Streetcar, Kazan and Brando collaborated again on Viva Zapata! before embarking on their most ambitious project to date, On the Waterfront. The film was inspired by the 1948 New York Sun article series “Crime on the Waterfront” by Malcolm Johnson, which outlined corruption on the New Jersey waterfront. (Read more.)