Blu-ray, DVD Release: On the Waterfront

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 19, 2013
Price: DVD $39.95, Blu-ray $49.95
Studio: Criterion


On the Waterfront movie scene

Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint star in On the Waterfront.

Marlon Brando (A Streetcar Named Desire) gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in the classic 1954 film drama On the Waterfront.

A masterpiece of urban poetry and a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry’s deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (12 Angry Men’s Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny’s right-hand man, Terry’s brother, Charley (Doctor Zhivago’s Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them.

Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata!) and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg (A Face in the Crowd), On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for awards for best picture, director, actor, supporting actress (North by Northwest’s Eva Marie Saint), and screenplay.

The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD of On The Waterfront include the following features:

· New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
· Alternate presentations of the feature restoration in two additional aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen)
· Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the
Blu-ray edition
· Commentary featuring authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young
· New conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones
· Elia Kazan: Outsider (1982), an hour-long documentary
· New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with scholar
Leo Braudy, critic David Thomson, and others
· New interview with actress Eva Marie Saint
· Interview with director Elia Kazan from 2001
· Contender, a 2001 documentary on the film’s most famous scene
· New interview with longshoreman Thomas Hanley, an actor in the film
· New interview with author James T. Fisher (On the Irish Waterfront) about the real-life people and places behind the film
· Visual essay on Leonard Bernstein’s score
· Trailer
· A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Almereyda and reprints of Kazan’s 1952 ad in the New York Times defending his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, one of the 1948 New York Sun articles by Malcolm Johnson on which the film was based, and a 1953 Commonweal piece by screenwriter Budd Schulberg

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.