On the Waterfront

Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy permanently altered what screen acting could be - the mumble, the hesitation, the business with Eva Marie Saint's glove that Brando improvised and Elia Kazan kept: an interior performance in a medium that until then had rewarded projection. The taxi scene with Rod Steiger remains the most quoted two minutes in American film. Around it Kazan built a hard story about mob control of the New York docks, scored by Leonard Bernstein in the only music he composed directly for the screen rather than adapting from his own stage work. The film is inseparable from Kazan naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee two years earlier, and critics have long read Terry's decision to inform as its director's self-defense. Eight Oscars.