On the Waterfront at 70: An undeniable masterpiece – but should we forgive its director Elia Kazan?

The classic Marlon Brando film swept the Oscars in 1955 and is about to be re-released in cinemas to mark its 70th anniversary. But its politics and the actions of its director – who ‘named names’ during the anti-communist witch hunts of the Fifties, and whose legacy remains marred ever since – have made it one of Hollywood’s most divisive movies. Where should we stand on it today, asks Geoffrey Macnab

Do the right thing: Marlon Brando in his Oscar-winning role in Elia Kazan’s ‘On the Waterfront’ (Shutterstock)

Snitch” and “stool pigeon for racist American imperialism” read the placards outside the 1999 Academy Awards, in which filmmaker Elia Kazan – then 89 years old – was due to receive an honorary Oscar. When time came in the night for the award, presenters Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro heaped praise on the man behind On the Waterfront, East of Eden and A Streetcar Named Desire, calling him a “master” and an “angry romantic”, who explored the “suppressed raging discontents of our civilisation”. But when Kazan appeared, large swathes of the audience remained conspicuously seated, their hands by their laps and refusing to applaud.

On the Waterfront is being re-released next month in a 4K restoration to mark its 70th anniversary, but the din over Kazan’s perceived treachery still hasn’t died down. Should he be forgiven for naming eight close friends and former colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the anti-communist witch hunts of the early 1950s? Or should he and his films continue to be interrogated?

“Elia Kazan is a traitor,” Orson Welles said in 1982. “He is the man who sold to McCarthy all of his companions at a time when he could continue to work in New York at [a] high salary. And having sold all of his people to [Senator Joseph] McCarthy, he then made a film called On the Waterfront, which was a celebration of the informer and therefore no question which uses him as an example can be answered by me.”