n's film is, to a large degree, representative of the very real violence and corruption that characterized unionized labor on the docks in New York and New Jersey in the late forties and early fifties. Schrecker (2000), in a discussion of McCarthyism and organized labor, makes the point that the unions in the McCarthy era were often characterized as little more that Communist Party fronts; indeed, Wakeman (1988) noted that when On the Waterfront was released, many critics asserted that Kazan would have been more honest if he had made it clear that the dockworkers' union was just that û a front for the Communist Party, and as such prone to violence and other forms of corruption.
However, Malloy's decision to become an informer, working against the union and its bosses, is not so much the result of political conviction as it is of the desire for personal revenge against the mod bosses who are responsible for his brother's murder (Neve, 1995). Lopate (2002) says that the film is notorious as Kazan's apologia for informing on his own former Communist Party comrades and an attempt to justify informing as the act of a patriot. The problem is that Malloy's informing is not political; it is related to exposing criminal activity, and McCarthy's hearings were less about real criminality than about fear of Communism (Lopate, 2002; Schrecker, 2000).
In the second film, Schrader's 1997 Blue Collar, the argument advanced is that corruption in the union movement must be met with the courage of members to inform on their bosses. The theme of informing on union leaders whose behavior is damaging to both union membership and unions themselves is therefore present in both films. Where Kazan set his film on the docks of the East Coast, Schrader's film is geographically focused on the Detroit auto industry û another industry in which union corruption was endemic. Canby (2003) stated that when these two films are compared, some critical differe...