Cinema

Vintage film
On The Waterfront
Sun 5 May, 14:15
A massively controversial film upon its initial release,
Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s drama about union
corruption on the New York docks won eight Academy
Awards, but was also condemned as an apology for the
director and writer’s mutual decision to testify before the
House of Un-American Activities. However, with the
benefit of hindsight, On the Waterfront is simply one of
the great Hollywood films. This is one of those rare
works in which absolutely everything comes together.
There’s Kazan’s amazingly atmospheric direction;
Schulberg’s poetic, slang-laden script; Boris Kaufman’s
remarkable cinematography; and Richard Day’s art
direction which pulls off the difficult trick of merging a
realist docudrama aesthetic with noirish melodrama and
more than a hint of religious allegory. Then there are the
flawless, method-inspired performances of Marlon
Brando, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, Lee J Cobb, and
Eva Marie Saint, which changed the face of American
screen acting. Essential viewing.
Dir: Elia Kazan
USA 1954 / 1h48m / Digital / PG
22 26 www.dca.org.uk
Scarecrow
Sat 18 May, 13:00
Scarecrow, Jerry Schatzberg's poignant road movie, is
one of those eccentric and risky gems that Hollywood
seemed to make a habit of producing in the late 1960s
and early 70s. However, it has undeservedly fallen into
cultish obscurity. Indeed, no film with such an
impressive pedigree deserves to be so little known. It
stars two of Hollywood's finest actors, Al Pacino and
Gene Hackman, as a pair of lonely drifters who form an
unlikely friendship and both are on peak form (this is
Hackman’s own favourite performance). Sadly, the
American public did not take to this highly unusual film,
which is more interested in character than plot, and
which is by turns comic and tragic, dream-like and
realistic, poetic and violent. But it was rightly hailed as
a masterpiece on the continent, where it went on to win
the Palme d'Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.
Dir: Jerry Schatzberg
USA 1973 / 1h50m / Digital / 18