“This is my church!”

Posted on 14 July 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Watched a classic tonight, On The Waterfront (1954).

Have you young’uns never seen it?

This is from when movies were movies and you didn’t have constant edits and shots of less than a second.

And if the music sounds like West Side Story, it’s because the same guy wrote both of them.

Just one more scene… one more famous scene….

One moral of the story… avoid the company of bad friends.

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About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Responses to “This is my church!”

  1. Elizabeth D says:
    14 July 2015 at 10:00 PM

    I don’t like gangster movies, and am not really much of a movie person at all, but I saw this within the past year and it was an amazingly great film with some good moral depth and a great priest character.

  2. Dienekes says:
    15 July 2015 at 1:37 AM

    Just saw this same Karl Malden clip over at http://www.m4Carbine.net:
    http://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?171413-Belloc-you-re-on-your-own-with-this-Pope/page4

    “Lock and load” can have multiple meanings.

  3. Bea says:
    15 July 2015 at 3:05 AM

    “I could’ve been a contender”
    Ahhh Memories from long time past.
    The oldies are the goodies.
    They don’t make movies like that anymore; Lots of action, no message.
    We have a library of “oldies” TV has nothing to offer except bad news.

  4. JonPatrick says:
    15 July 2015 at 5:33 AM

    One of my favorites, a lot of Catholic themes in this movie, besides the “this is my church” scene in the ship’s hold,m the whole story of the redemption of the character played by Marlon Brando.

  5. Grumpy Beggar says:
    15 July 2015 at 6:00 AM

    From the OP :
    “. . . from when movies were movies. . . “

    The moral fabric of movies in general would seem to have been a little more wholesome during this era. I believe Father Peyton used to work with a lot of Hollywood actors at that time too.

    So much truth in some of these older classics. The movie The Waterfront itself is said to be based on a number of true stories.

    I think the part I liked most of the exchange between the brothers in the second clip was :

    Charlie : “Sure, that’s great when you’re a kid, but, uh, you’re getting’ on . You’re pushin’ thirty slugger, You know it’s time to think about gettin’ some ambition.”

    Terry : “Oh, I always figured I’d live a little bit longer without it.”

    I remember a pastor of mine once telling me during some counseling back in my youth, that (similar to a washed up boxer) Jesus also would have been considered a failure – according to the standards of contemporary society.

  6. Joseph-Mary says:
    15 July 2015 at 11:58 AM

    Ah, a portrayal of a true and courageous priest!

  7. Kathleen10 says:
    15 July 2015 at 9:47 PM

    Super segment by Karl Malden. I’ve never seen On the Waterfront but have recently become a Brando fan based on a film I saw not too long ago, one with Anna Magnani. Watching Brando now I see what all the fuss was about. Karl Malden was superb so often and Rod Steiger, whom I believe is the actor with Brando in the second clip is always convincing. He was an intimidating character in even the musical “Oklahoma!”.
    Wish me luck, I’m trying to get the teenagers I live with to learn to appreciate classic film. We started with something light I thought they might like, “Close Encounters”, which got generally panned by the group as too “slow”. I’ll try again, but I’m going big with the Ten Commandments.

  8. jbazchicago says:
    15 July 2015 at 10:54 PM

    It is a powerful movie. I saw this right after the movie “Quiz Show” because it was an answer to one of the questions.

    The Karl Malden character (a Maronite Catholic in real life) as a priest did not surprise me. I grew up in Cleveland, and I heard stories about the priests at St. Malachy’s near “the Flats” going down to the docks and dragging his parishioners out of the bars and home to their wives and family. My grandfather remembers “DP’s” coming “off the boat” and as soon as they got to town, would go to the pastor of our Lithuanian parish for a job and place to live.

    As recently as 20 years ago, a teenage parishioner of St. Joan of Arc in the Archdiocese of St. Louis complained to her pastor the legendary Msgr. Walsh that she was denied a summer job at the famed “Ted Drews Frozen Custard Stand” because she was Catholic (Ted Drews was a staunch Lutheran). Msgr. Walsh had a little talk with Ted, and that was the end of quiet the ban on Catholics working there.

    There is so much about the Catholic priesthood in this country people don’t know. Of course that’s before the Council. Since then, priests turned into cannibals, devouring their brethren and other Catholics to boot.

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