Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Ranked Worst To Best
15. On The Waterfront (1954)
With perhaps his best performance, Marlon Brando dominates Elia Kazan's weighty and deeply personal drama about missed opportunity and political betrayal.
On the Waterfront follows Terry Malloy, a former boxer in league with a corrupt union boss who he's forced to turn on. Terry's rage is palpable whenever he's on screen, amplified by the film's fiery script and timeless assessments of greed, grief, and moral corruption.
It may be tough to reconcile the film's relationship to Kazan's involvement with the Communist witch hunt of the 50s, but there's no denying On the Waterfront as a seminal masterpiece that changed the face of modern moviemaking forever. Its enduring power still packs a wallop from the very first frame.