Re-released in a new 4K digital restoration to mark its seventieth anniversary, Elia Kazan’s film, memorably described by Orson Welles as “a celebration of the informer” – a field in which Kazan had some personal experience – was his third and final collaboration with Marlon Brando, and saw each win an Oscar. Brando is dockworker Terry Malloy, an ex-boxer-turned-longshoreman given an easy ride by virtue of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) being the right-hand man of labour union and mob boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). When he is unwittingly involved in the murder of a colleague Friendly feared was about to testify against him, Terry decides to take a stand by taking the stand. Featuring one of Brando’s most famous monologues in which he bemoans his failure to become a contender, On the Waterfront remains a key work of American cinema.

Notes by Kevin Coyne