Elia Kazan

gigatos | January 26, 2022

Summary

Elia Kazan (September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American theater and film director, producer, screenwriter, and writer whose career spanned the 1930s and 1970s.

Kazan achieved his first major success on Broadway, where he became a champion of a new school of acting based on Stanislavsky”s system. From 1935 Kazan began staging plays at the famous experimental theater The Group Theater, and in 1947 he became one of the founders and leading director of the Actors” Studio, one of the most prestigious theater companies of its time. In 1947, Kazan”s special success came with two plays, All My Sons (1947) by Arthur Miller, which brought Kazan his first Tony Award for Best Director, and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947-1949) by Tennessee Williams. Kazan subsequently won Tony Awards for directing “Death of a Salesman” (1949-1950), based on Miller”s play, and “J. B.” (1958-1959) by Archibald MacLeish, and Tony nominations for “Cat on a Hot Roof” (1955-1956) by Williams, “Darkness at the Top of the Stairs” (1957-1959) by William Inge and “The Sweet-Haired Bird of Youth” (1959-1960) by Williams.

Since 1945 Kazan began working in Hollywood as a director. He won Academy Awards for directing The Gentleman”s Agreement (1947) and At the Port (1954), as well as Oscar nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), “East of Heaven” (1955) and “America, America” (1963, which also earned him nominations as best screenwriter and as producer for best film). Kazan”s other most important films include “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945), “Panic in the Streets” (1950), “Viva, Zapata!” (1952), Dolly (1956), Face in the Crowd (1957) and Splendor in the Grass (1961). As a director, Kazan achieved recognition by directing pictures on acute social and moral themes that were based on strong dramaturgy, as well as through his ability to get his actors to play outstandingly. A total of 21 actors have been nominated for Oscar awards for playing in films directed by Kazan. Kazan has made such young and previously obscure actors as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty famous, with actresses Vivien Leigh, Eva Marie Saint, Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood all playing some of their best roles in his films.

Along with two Oscars for directing, Kazan has also won an Academy Award for Distinguished Cinematography, four Golden Globes for directing and various prestigious awards at many prestigious international film festivals including the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals.

Kazan”s life and career were marred by a controversial act when, in 1952, he named eight of his former theater colleagues who had been members of the Communist Party USA with him in the early 1930s during a session of the U.S. Congressional Commission on Un-American Activities. This led to their inclusion on a Hollywood blacklist and a de facto ban from working in Hollywood for nearly two decades, while Kazan”s own career skyrocketed after his testimony. Afterwards Kazan repeatedly tried to explain and justify his act, but many recognized filmmakers never accepted his explanation.

Elia Kazan (born Elias Kazancioglu) was born on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey). He was one of four sons in a family of Anatolian Greeks. His father emigrated to New York City, where he became a rug merchant, checking the rest of his family out shortly before the outbreak of World War I. At the time of his arrival in the United States, Kazan was four years old. The family originally settled in New York City, in the Greek neighborhood of Harlem, and when he was eight years old, the family moved to suburban New Rochelle.

After graduating from high school, where Kazan studied “without much distinction,” he enrolled at Williams Private College in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. To pay for his studies, he worked part-time as a waiter and dishwasher. In college, Kazan earned the nickname “Gadge” (short for “Gadget”), which Kazan himself said he was given because he was “a small, compact and eccentric … helpful, handy and always accommodating little type.” This nickname, which he hated, remained with Kazan throughout his life. As Kazan himself said, he made himself that way “to find common ground with people, to be accepted, to become invisible. Later, John Steinbeck, who wrote the screenplay for the movie “Viva, Zapata!”, said to him: “What a nickname! Useful to everyone but himself!” Kazan attributed much to his Anatolian background, especially what he called in his autobiography “a desire to ingratiate himself and an ability to pretend.” He had the same “Anatolian smile” that he “disliked so much in his father, a smile that concealed resentment.”

In college, Kazan was an outsider. As film historian David Thompson writes, “In college and later at the School of Drama, Kazan was always a resentful outsider, an angry, intrusive intruder, He had no friends, and was seething with anger at being ignored by pretty white elite girls-until he touched them with his outsider energy. He often moonlighted as a bartender at elite college parties where he couldn”t get in as a member of the closed student community. As Kazan said, “At such college parties my obsessive attraction to other people”s women was born, and my need to take them for myself.” He later admitted that he had been “a manic seducer of women all his life.

Despite his later achievements, throughout his life Kazan continued to consider himself an outsider. As he said in a 1995 interview: “Many critics call me an outsider, and I suppose I am, because I am a foreigner, an immigrant. I mean, I wasn”t part of society. I rebelled against it. And even when I succeeded, I remained an outsider. Because that is my nature.

In his senior year of college, he saw the film “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein. Sergei Eisenstein, after which he decided to take up acting seriously. After graduating with excellent grades from Williams College, Kazan enrolled at Yale University”s School of Drama, after which he joined the Group Theatre in New York in 1933.

Also read, biographies – Nikos Kazantzakis

Theater career in the 1930s and 1960s

In 1932, after two years at Yale University”s School of Drama, Kazan joined The Group Theater in New York as an actor and assistant assistant director. He first appeared on the Broadway stage in A Doll (1932) and then played the role of an orderly in Sidney Kingsley”s medical drama Men in White (1933-1934), which also featured Joseph Edward Bromberg, Paula Strasberg, Lewis Leverett, Clifford Odets, Tony Kreiber, Art Smith, Phoebe Brand and her husband Morris Karnowski, all of whom Kazan would call communists 19 years later.

In 1934, like many young people in the arts who saw the devastation of the Great Depression and aspired to some promising future, Kazan joined the Communist Party with his wife Molly Day Thatcher. But, according to David Thomson of The Guardian, “Kazan was not made an obedient member of the party. He had willful tastes. In particular, he loved the work of Orson Welles. Eventually a party official, ”the man from Detroit,” arrived at Kazan”s cell meeting and told him off to the others. A vote was taken on Kazan”s membership in the party, and he was unanimously expelled. He became an outsider; even in the zealous 1930s he hated secrecy and paranoia and could not stand the suppression of individuality.”

In the 1930s Kazan and Odets were firm friends. After becoming a playwright, Odets achieved “enormous success with his powerful one-act play” Waiting for Lefty (1935). In this play, Kazan excelled in the meaningful role of an angry cab driver who incited his colleagues to strike and then turned to the audience and urged them to chant with him: “Strike!” Harold Clurman, co-founder of The Group Theater, recalled in his book The Fervent Years (1945): “Elia made a terrific impression. Everyone was sure that we took him straight from the cab specifically for this role.” In the second half of the 1930s Kazan played in the plays Odets “Paradise Lost” (1935) and “Golden Boy” (1937), the musical “Johnny Johnson” (1937) to the music of Kurt Weill, as well as in the play Irwin Shaw “Nice People” (1939).

By the late 1930s Kazan had also found himself as a stage director. In 1935 Kazan directed his first play, The Young Go First (1935), followed by Casey Jones (1938) and Thunder Rock (1939), based on plays by Robert Ardrey. In 1937 Kazan turned to film for the first time, making his first film with cameraman Ralph Steiner, a 20-minute independent documentary, The People of Cumberland (1937).

In 1940, Kazan attracted the attention of Hollywood by his performance in Odets” play Night Music (1940), and between 1940 and 1941 he played in two gangster films directed by Anatole Litvack, Conquer the City (1940) and Blues in the Night (1941). According to Thomson, “he was good in both, but he never considered himself more than a villain or a character actor.” As Dick Vosburgh wrote in The Independent, in the summer of 1940 Kazan “played a pleasant gangster in the Warner Bros. movie Conquering the City. Unexpectedly shot by a fellow gangster, he dies uttering: “Oh my God, there”s no way I was expecting that!” and it was one of the most memorable moments of the film.” As Vosburg further reports, according to Hollywood legend, studio head Jack Warner offered Kazan a multi-year acting contract while advising him to change his name to Paul Cézanne. When the young actor pointed out that there was already one Paul Cézanne, Warner allegedly replied, “Boy, you make a couple of hit pictures and people will forget all about that guy!” After playing a clarinetist at the same studio in Blues at Night (1941), Cézanne decided to concentrate on directing. In his 1988 autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, he wrote: “I decided that summer that I would never be an actor again, and I never was again.

Kazan returned to his theater, quickly “seizing creative power in what turned out to be a critical moment. During the Great Depression era, The Group Theater was considered the most significant experimental theater of its time. It relied on Stanislavsky”s system, “where the actor internally experiences the emotion he must embody on stage, relating the character”s feelings to his own experience.” But Kazan didn”t stop there. Earlier, when he worked as an assistant director at Theatre Guild, he saw a different approach to theatrical acting embodied by actor Osgood Perkins. Kazan wrote, “There”s no emotion there, only skill. In every aspect of technical equipment, he was peerless.” From that moment on, Kazan began to seek to combine both methods in his work – psychological and professional, or technical: “I believed that I could take the type of art exemplified by Perkins – outwardly pure action, controlled and controlled at every minute and every turn with gestures restrained but convincing – and combine it with the type of acting that Group was building – intense and truly emotional, rooted in the subconscious, and therefore often unexpected and shocking in its revelation. I wanted to try to bring these two opposing and often conflicting traditions together.” As Mervyn Rothstein writes in the New York Times, “By combining these two techniques, Kazan became known as an acting director–for many in the arts, he was the best acting director of all time. Many critics said the acting he later achieved from Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Carl Molden, James Dean, Julie Harris, Carroll Baker, Ali Wallach and Natalie Wood, among many others, was the best of their careers.”

In 1942 Kazan received rave reviews for his production of the popular comedy Cafe Corona (1942), which was his first major success as a theater director. The comedy The Skin of Our Teeth (1942-1943), based on Thornton Wilder”s play, soon followed, with a “dream cast” including Tallulah Bankhead, Fredric March and Montgomery Clift. The play was a major hit with 359 performances. The play itself won the Pulitzer Prize, and Kazan won the New York Drama Critics Society Award for his production. This production was a breakthrough for Kazan. It was followed by such hit productions as Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash”s musical One Touch of Venus (1943-1945, 567 performances) with Mary Martin and the anti-fascist comedy Jacobowski and the Colonel (1944-1945, 417 performances).

In the end Kazan came to the conclusion that Group Theater was wrong to assume that theater is a collective art. He said, “To be successful, you have to express the vision, conviction, and persistent presence of one person. That person must have a passion for clarity–with a screenwriter, he sharpens the main theme of the script, and then analyzes each line for motivation and dramatic tension.”

In 1947 Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis founded the Actors Studio as a special platform where actors could grow in their profession and develop the psychological knowledge required in the plays that dominated Broadway in the 1940s and 1950s. Later, Lee Strasberg also joined the Actors Studio, becoming its permanent director from 1951 until his death in 1982. The activities of the Actors” Studio, which practiced acting according to a method close to Stanislavsky”s system, proved extremely influential for its commitment to the inner truth that the actor must reveal. Indeed, it was this method that transformed the actor from a professional interpreter into a creative genius. Moreover, according to Thomson, this method with its personal expression worked even better on the screen than on the stage. The acting studio became a kind of spiritual home for theater people, and the actors loved Kazan”s approach to directing.

During this period Kazan”s collaboration with such playwrights as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams began, making Kazan one of the most powerful figures on Broadway. In 1947, Kazan”s special success came with the production of two plays, All My Sons (1947) by Arthur Miller and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947-1949) by Tennessee Williams. All My Sons, which ran for 328 performances, was Kazan”s first collaboration with Miller. The production of this play, which told of “the evils created by speculation in war,” was, in Rothstein”s words, executed “irresistibly.” The play won two Tony Awards, Miller as playwriter and Kazan as director.

In 1947, Kazan”s Broadway collaboration with Tennessee Williams began. Their first collaboration was the production of the play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947-1949, 855 performances), for which the playwright won the Pulitzer Prize. As Rothstein notes, “the superb staging of this play about the downcast Southern aristocrat Blanche DuBois and her sister”s abusive husband Stanley Kowalski, made Kazan an outstanding Broadway director, and the character of Kowalski made a great new star out of the 23-year-old Brando.” As Thomson noted, “The production is important for its physical energy of acting, its psychologically rich demeanor in the incarnation of Branlo, whom Kazan chose to play Kowalski. And the particular American style of acting that Kazan developed under the strong influence of Stanislavsky.” Theater critic John Chapman of The New York Daily News called the play “one of those unforgettable works where everything is right and nothing is wrong.” With the exception of Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche DuBois on Broadway, the entire New York cast of “A Streetcar Named “Chewing” replicated their roles in the film incarnation of the 1951 play. The play won two Tony Awards, for best drama (Williams) and best dramatic actress (Tandy)

During this period Kazan found himself at a fork in the road – on the one hand, he had already begun working in Hollywood, on the other, he was still drawn to his theatrical roots in the East. According to Thomson, Kazan “was intrigued by the possibilities that cinema offered in terms of creating reality through wind, air and choice of location, as well as in terms of drama and in terms of showing good acting. As a director he was becoming more visual, more cinematic and–as some have said–a more Hollywood man, which he himself liked to despise.”

Nevertheless, Kazan decided not to give up the stage. He continued his collaboration with Miller with The Death of a Salesman (1949-1950, 742 performances), which one critic called “a fascinating and devastating theatrical explosion that only the nerves of the modern theatergoer can endure.” Mervyn Rothstein in the New York Times called the play “another theatrical milestone” by Kazan, “a crushing indictment of the American way of life starring Lee Jay Cobb as the average American salesman, Willie Loman.” Miller won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for the play, for best play and best author; Kazan won a Tony for directing, and the play also won best supporting actor (Arthur Kennedy), best drama producer and best artistic director.

The 1950s were marked by a series of successful new productions of Kazan on Broadway. These included his first Broadway productions of Camino Real (1953), based on a play by Williams, and Tea and Sympathy (1953-1955), based on a play by Robert Anderson. The play was performed 712 times and won a Tony Award for Actor John Kerr and Theatre World Awards for Actors Anthony Perkins and Mary Fickett. Kazan”s next major success was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955-1956, 694 performances), based on a play by Williams, whose text under Kazan”s control was subjected to substantial revision. For this play, in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama, Williams was also awarded a Tony nomination. Other Tony nominees were Kazan for directing, Barbara Bel Geddes for best actress, and Joe Milziner for best set design.

After a brief hiatus from literary and film work, Kazan returned to New York in 1964 as director and artistic director (with Robert Whitehead) of the new Vivian Beaumont Theater, then under construction at Lincoln Center. While the new theater was under construction, Kazan directed five productions, including two based on Arthur Miller”s dramas After the Sinfall (1964-1965) and It Happened in Vichy (1964-1965) at the ANTA Theater

Also read, biographies – Fra Angelico

Film career 1945-1952

As Rothstein writes, “after reaching the top in the theater, Kazan began to achieve recognition as a film director as well. Kazan”s first feature film was the melodrama The Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), based on the 1943 bestselling novel by Betty Smith.

This touching story recounts the cares and tribulations of life for the Irish Nolan family living in an apartment building in Brooklyn in 1912. The family consists of the father (James Dean), a handsome and kind but irresponsible alcoholic, the hard-working and responsible mother Cathy (Dorothy McGuire) and two children, 13-year-old Francie (Peggy Ann Garner) and 12-year-old Neely. The story is told on behalf of the bright and sober-minded Francie, who, loving her father and striving for knowledge. Her mother”s free-spirited and somewhat extravagant sister, Aunt Cissy (Joan Blondell), also takes an active part in family life. As film critic Dick Vosburgh wrote in the Independent, when 20th Century Fox producer Louis D. Leighton suggested that Kazan direct a film version of the novel, studio chief producer Darryl F. Zanuck replied, “I”m naturally suspicious of deep thinkers in movies. They sometimes think so deeply that they miss the target.” The film, however, proved Zanuck wrong. The film was directed with great feeling, and James Dean and Peggy Ann Garner won Oscars for their acting. The film was also nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay.This was followed by the Western soap opera Sea of Grass (1947), which was about a St. Louis socialite, Lutie Cameron (Katharine Hepburn), who marries a large New Mexico cattle rancher, Colonel Jim Brewton (Spencer Tracy). The colonel wages a bitter battle against the new settlers who occupy his land. Initially, Luthie supports her husband, but is soon repulsed by the colonel”s intolerance and cruelty, and she leaves him. Settling in Denver, she begins an affair with attorney Bryce Chamberlain (Melvin Douglas), who defends settler rights. Some time after the birth of her son, however, she returns to the colonel, but without proper parental attention her son (Robert Walker) grows up to be a criminal who is eventually killed by a police squad.

Initially Kazan liked the story so much that he specifically asked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios to let him direct a picture based on it. Later in an interview, Kazan said that what attracted him to the work was “the scale of a classic American story” and “the sense that when there is historical change, something wonderful is lost. Kazan wanted to make a large-scale on-location film with relatively obscure “rough-skinned” actors, but ended up having to work in a studio pavilion with the stars of the first magnitude. As Kazan later said, if “I knew that a film about grass, expanse and sky” would be shot in the pavilion, and “if I was strong and confident enough, if I defended my own dignity, I would have refused. But I was taught not to stop and look for the best possible solution. The final version of the script didn”t like Kazan at all, but there was little he could do, as his influence in Hollywood was limited at the time. According to film historian Jeremy Arnold, Kazan tried his best, but as he had anticipated, the work was chaotic and uncomfortable. The main problems were the production schedule set by the studio and the serious conflicts between the director and the two stars. Tracy suffered from alcohol problems, which are constantly underplayed, but Hepburn, to keep her partner from a complete breakdown, admired his game in every scene, which did not allow Kazan to translate his vision of acting in the picture. As a result, according to Arnold, “not only was it the most atypical film for Kazan, but also the weakest film of the stellar Tracy-Hapburn duo.” Contemporary critic Dennis Schwartz called the picture “a disappointing studio epic Western” that “despite its lavish budget and competent production, is annoyingly slow and brooding, long and dull, and also lacks action for a Western… Too much seems phony in this old-fashioned farmyard feud, including the unnatural choice of urban comedy stars to play leading roles in the Western. They bring unnecessary stilted theatricality to the picture and look strained.

The next time Zanuck and Kazan joined forces was on the much more successful Boomerang! (1947), which was based on a real murder case and was filmed in a small town similar to where it happened. The film begins with the shocking murder of an elderly minister during an evening stroll down the main street of a small town in Connecticut. Soon police apprehend a local vagrant (Arthur Kennedy) on suspicion of murder, after which prosecutor Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) steps in to secure a conviction. At first, supported by the local authorities and the public, Henry successfully leads the case to a guilty verdict, but then he has doubts about the guilt of the accused, as all the conclusions of the investigation are built on circumstantial evidence. Even despite the defendant”s confession, Harvey feels that he is innocent. He conducts his own investigation, and after deep reflection, despite intense pressure on him, he drops the charges.

Most critics and reviewers gave the film positive reviews. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times, while noting some deviation in the script from factual material, praised the artistic merits of the picture, writing that “the style of presentation has developed into a drama of rare clarity and power” and, in his opinion, “as a melodrama with humanistic and social overtones, it has no artistic shortcomings.” Variety magazine called the film “a compelling real-life melodrama told in semi-documentary style,” and James Agee at The Nation wrote that Boomerang! boasts “the most flawless acting I”ve seen in a single film.” Contemporary film critic Paul Tatara floors that the film “remains a thrilling picture that hits harder and moves faster than most films of that era.” The picture was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay and at the Cannes Film Festival for best film, and Kazan won awards as director from the National Board of Critics and the New York Film Critics Society. Kazan himself regarded the film as a breakthrough for him in cinema.

His next picture, the social drama The Gentleman”s Agreement (1947) Kazan again directed at Twentieth Century Fox. The film tells the story of journalist Phil Green (Gregory Peck), who, after moving to New York, is commissioned by magazine editor John Minifee (Albert Dekker) to write an article about anti-Semitism. To delve deeper into the subject, Greene, who is not Jewish, decides to live for six months pretending to be Jewish.

He meets the publisher”s niece, teacher Kathy Lacy (Dorothy McGuire), and begins to date her. Cathy approves of Phil”s stance on anti-Semitism, but interprets it less categorically. Phil encounters several instances of discrimination against Jews when a secretary (June Havoc) is refused employment because of her Jewish name, and his Jewish friend Dave Goldman (John Garfield) recounts how an anti-Semitic soldier attacked him in the army. Because of his ethnicity, Dave is unable to find suitable housing for his family. Next, Phil encounters anti-Semitism among doctors, and as a Jew is denied accommodations at an expensive suburban hotel, and his son is mocked at school. Many of Jane”s friends, Kathy”s sister, do not come to the party after learning that a Jew will be there, and Kathy refuses to rent her vacant cottage to Dave because the neighbors would not want that, leading to a break in the engagement with Phil. After Phil”s article comes out, which receives high praise in the newsroom, Cathy agrees to rent her cottage to Dave, after which Phil reconciles with her.

The film is based on the 1947 bestselling novel of the same name by Laura Z. Hobson. As film historian David Sterrit notes, the subject matter was risky for the time, and many warned Zanuck not to make this film, but to his credit and Kazan”s credit, they would not listen to that advice, and “ran that wall on Twentieth Century Fox.” Nevertheless, some critics felt it was wrong to focus on a character who only temporarily suffers from anti-Semitism. As liberal author Ring Lardner wrote, “The moral of the film is never be mean to a Jew because he may turn out to be a gentile.” Others faulted the film for its overly moralistic character. Robert L. Hatch, in particular, wrote in The New Republic that it was “more of a treatise than a play, which suffers from the inherent flaws of a truth-seeking work.” He noted, however, that the story “goes far beyond demonstrating blatant harassment of Jews and describing the dirty tricks of closed quarters and select customers. Sane people oppose such examples of abnormal behavior, but The Gentleman”s Agreement also affects these sane people themselves, driving them into a corner where a code of acceptable behavior can no longer cover them and they will have to make their position clear.”

On the other hand, Bosley Krauser in The New York Times praised the picture, writing that “the wretched callousness of anti-Semitism has been exposed in the film with as much candor and even more dramatic force than in the novel from which it is set. Every moment of the prejudice described in the book was superbly illustrated and more expressively demonstrated in the film, not only extending but intensifying the scope of moral outrage.” Noting the good and brave act of the producer at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios in making the film so poignant, Krauser went on to write, “The excellent actors, the brilliant direction of Elia Kazan and the straightforwardness of the screenwriter in naming specific names gave the film realism and authenticity. The film will help open the eyes of millions of people across the country to this ugly and disturbing problem.” Krauser noted, however, that the film addresses only a limited spectrum of Americans “of the highest social and professional level,” and examines only the petty manifestations of anti-Semitism in the bourgeoisie, “without delving into the diabolical morality from which anti-Semitism stems.” As Sterrit notes, because of its brave, clever, and engaging content, The Gentleman”s Agreement has garnered a crop of high honors. In particular, Zanuck picked up an Academy Award for Best Picture, Kazan won Best Director, and Celeste Holm was honored for her supporting role. The film received a total of eight Oscar nominations, including nominations for actors Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire. The film also won four Golden Globes, including Best Picture and Best Director (Kazan). Kazan also won the National Board of Critics Award, the New York Society of Film Critics and was nominated for the Grand International Award at the Venice Film Festival. According to Thomson, the Oscars for Best Film and Best Director are “very generous awards today for a project about anti-Semitism that seems stilted and high-minded in its sense of its own audacity and novelty. It”s not a very good or quick film – at that point Kazan was still a much better stage director, much more attuned to the pulse of live theater.” Nevertheless, according to Sterrit, the film is among the best “films on pressing social problems” that Hollywood has made since the end of World War II, and, moreover, “is still seen as an intelligent, sharp and gripping drama. And although times have changed since 1947, the subject matter it so boldly addresses remains relevant today.”

Another poignant social film, Pinky (1949), soon followed, which Rothstein says was “one of the first films on the subject of racism and mixed marriages. The film is about a light-skinned African-American woman, Patricia “Pinky” Johnson Jeanne Crane). She grew up and trained as a nurse in the Northern United States before returning to her grandmother Daisy (Ethel Waters) in a small southern town. In Boston, Pinky has a white fiancé, Dr. Thomas Adams, to whom she wants to return. Faced with police injustice toward blacks and the harassment of white men, Pinky decides to leave. However, Daisy convinces her to go as a nurse to Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore), a sickly white woman who lives in a ramshackle mansion next door. Miss Em turns out to be a tough but fair woman. She convinces Pinkie not to try to pass herself off as white, but to live her natural life without regard for prejudice. Pinky tells Tom, who has come to visit her, that she is black, but he is not embarrassed. He offers to go back to the North with him and live as a white woman, but Pinkie wants to continue her work in her hometown. Before she dies, Miss Em makes a will, leaving Pinky her house and land in the belief that she will put them to good use. Despite demands from Miss Em”s relatives and entreaties to revoke the will, Pinkie, touched by Miss Em”s faith in her, decides not to return to the North until the inheritance issue is settled. Eventually Pinkie wins the trial, after which, using the house and land she inherited, Pinkie establishes Miss Em”s Clinic and Nursery for the Negro community, which she runs with Daisy.

The film is based on Sid Ricketts Sumner”s novel Quality (1946), which was first published in Ladies Home Journal. John Ford was appointed as the first director of the picture, but after a week of work, Zanuck was dissatisfied with the footage and the formulaic images of the black characters. He replaced Ford with Kazan, who not long before had achieved great success with the anti-Semitic The Gentleman”s Agreement. When Kazan took over as director, he discarded all of Ford”s footage as unsuitable, but left the script and cast unchanged, although he immediately realized that Jean Crane with her beauty, intense face and passivity was not suitable for the title role. However, he found a way out with Crane, presenting these qualities as the tension of her character. Contrary to the wishes of Kazan, who wanted to shoot in a southern town, the studio decided to shoot most of the picture in the pavilion. As Kazan later said, “Naturally there was no dirt, sweat and water, there was nothing. That”s why I don”t really like Pinky.” After the film”s release, Philip Dunn wrote in the New York Times that the film broke “a long-standing taboo on films about racial or religious prejudice,” Variety magazine, however, considered the film”s subject matter insufficiently sharp, writing that it put “entertainment above reasoning.” In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Krauser wrote, in part, “Zanuck and Twentieth Century-Fox Studios have addressed the problem of racism in its most famous place, the Deep South,” creating “a lively, revealing and emotionally rich picture.” The picture “presents some aspects of racial discrimination in the South quite frankly…For all its merits, however, this demonstration of the social problem has certain flaws and omissions with which it is difficult to agree. The authors” view of both blacks and whites is largely limited to types that do not fit today”s realities. No truly constructive reflection on the relationship between blacks and whites is offered. A vivid exposé of some atrocities and injustices is all that the picture offers. But it does present them with feeling and concern. And for that we can be wholly grateful to the film and its makers. “Although contemporary critic Thomson called the picture “a banal attempt to tell the story of racism,” Dick Vosburgh considered the film “a serious attack on racial prejudice, which was another success for Zanuck and Kazan, though marred by an escapist ending.” Although it did not win an Oscar like The Gentleman”s Agreement, it nevertheless earned Oscar nominations for three of its female leads–Jeanne Crane as best actress and Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters as best supporting actresses.

This picture was followed by Twentieth Century-Fox”s noir thriller Panic in the Streets (1950). Based on Edna and Edward Enkhalt”s story “Quarantine, Some Like It Colder,” the film tells of the efforts of a U.S. Health Service Corps officer (Richard Widmark) and a city police captain (Paul Douglas) to prevent a pneumonic plague epidemic in New Orleans. Within a day or two, they must identify carriers of the deadly disease before it spreads en masse. The infected turn out to be three bandits who killed a man who had just arrived illegally from overseas. Sensing that they are being hunted, the criminals hide from the authorities in every way, but eventually they are neutralized.

Upon its release, the film received mostly positive reviews. Variety magazine, for example, called it “an exceptional chase melodrama,” highlighting its “tight script and staging.” Although the film “is about the successful attempts to capture a couple of germ-carrying criminals to prevent the spread of the plague and panic in the big city,” nevertheless “the plague is somewhere a side topic compared to the theme of cops and gangsters.” The magazine also notes that “there is a lot of lively action, good human emotion and some unusual moments in the film.” Later critics also praised the picture. TimeOut magazine called it “an excellent thriller, much less loaded with significance than most of Kazan”s films.” The magazine reviewer noted that the film “strikingly blends the film noir genre and the method of psychological acting” practiced by Actors Studio in New York, especially when “the panic quest is gaining momentum.” Film critic Michael Atkinson believes that this film surpasses the vast majority of standard noirs “because of its maturity of mind, its perfected realism, and its rejection of Hollywood”s easy answers and simple solutions.” Atkinson writes that “the film represents something substantially more than just another noir, or even a ”problem” film… Although at its core it is a police procedural-with an epidemiological MacGuffin at its center-it is also the smartest, most compelling, most fascinating and detailed portrait of American life ever made in the pre-Hollywood New Wave era.” The critic notes that in this “tense thriller, Kazan”s acute attention to the energy of persecution and the complexity of bureaucratic procedures is only the framework of the film. What”s truly gripping, however, are the human characters and the sense of chaos.” According to Atkinson, “nothing in Kazan”s remarkable filmography – not even In the Harbor (1954) four years later – achieves the subtlety, the variety of textures and the unpredictable rhythms of Panic… Famous for his production of superb acting, yet rarely praised for his visual acumen, in this picture Kazan presented these components in reverse order: by filming this crime story at an extremely fast pace, he led the extensive cast in a way of realism that no one had ever known before in 1950…Kazan paints a seething portrait of the city, using numerous on location shots and filling every corner of the film with authentic urban affairs and concerns.” Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum called the film “the best and most forgotten of Kazan”s early films.” Edna and Edward Enkhalta won Oscars for best story for the film, and Kazan won the International Award and a nomination for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film was named one of the top ten films of the year by the U.S. National Council of Critics.

In 1947 Kazan staged Tennessee Williams” play A Streetcar Named Desire on the Broadway stage, which ran for two years to great success with audiences and critics alike. Warner Bros. invited Kazan to work on the film based on this play as director, “who relied on essentially the same principles as he did on the play. The main roles were also played by actors from the Broadway play, with the exception of Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche Debois.” According to Thomson, the studio decided to replace Tandy with Vivien Leigh, who was seen as an actress with great commercial potential. Lee played the role of Blanche in the London production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which was carried out by her husband Laurence Olivier. As film historian James Steffen writes, while working on the film Kazan encountered certain problems both with the actors, primarily with Vivien Leigh, and with censorship. In particular, “Lee was constantly in dispute with Kazan over the interpretation of her role, as well as with the other actors who were working under Stanislavsky”s system. In addition, at this point, Lee”s relationship with her husband had begun to fall apart, and “the role of Blanche only reinforced her then manic-depressive state.” From the film on the demand of censorship, was removed from the reference to homosexuality dead husband Blanche, and the final play, where Stella stayed with her husband, was changed to a scene where she leaves him. The rest of the play is pretty much unchanged.

The film tells the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), an under-aged but still quite attractive woman who, left destitute, visits her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), who lives with her husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) in a poor industrial neighborhood of New Orleans. Blanche, with the mentality and manners of a noble lady, immediately irritates the rough proletarian and realist Stanley, who sees Blanche”s hypocrisy and does not accept her “cultural” manners, lies, fantasies, pretense and arrogance. For her part, Blanche, in conversation with her sister, speaks of Stanley as “a subhuman, a crude and primitive animal. When, amongst Stanley”s friends, Blanche meets her betrothed and the wedding is approaching, Stanley discovers the truth about her past. It turns out that Blanche has been fired from her job because of a torrid affair with her 17-year-old student, and she is not taken seriously in her native town because of her prostitution and constant flirtations with men. Stanley tells both Stella and her fiancé, who then declares that he “isn”t going to jump in a shark tank.” After taking the laboring Stella to the hospital, Stanley returns home, where he rapes Blanche, after which she loses her mind. Shortly after the baby is born, Stanley calls in psychiatrists to place Blanche in a psychiatric hospital. Blanche at first assumes that her rich suitor has come for her. Eventually realizing that this is not the case, she tries to resist, but seeing that she has no other choice, leaves with the doctors. Stella screams that she will never go back to Stanley, takes the baby and runs off to a neighbor”s house. Stanley can be heard shouting behind the scenes, “Stella! Hey, Stella…!”

According to film historian Roger Ebert, “upon its release, the film caused a storm of controversy. It was called immoral, decadent, vulgar and sinful, despite significant changes made at the request of the censors. As noted by film historian Scott McGee, “although the film shocked many viewers, it was very successful at the box office. But its chief achievement was that it opened the door to the fact that the Production Code Administration began to give the go-ahead to sharper and more impressive pictures.” The film brought in more than $4 million at the box office, which was quite significant for 1951, and was also loved in the professional community. Film critic Bosley Krauser in the New York Times, in particular, noted that “from Williams” play A Streetcar Named Desire, which took most of the dramatic prizes during its Broadway run, director Elia Kazan and a simply superb cast created a film that pulses with passion and poignancy.” As the critic goes on to write, “Through the unforgettable performance of the great Englishwoman Vivien Leigh in the heartbreaking role of the degraded Southern belle and through the mesmerizing atmosphere that Kazan has created through the power of the screen, this picture is as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than the play. The inner torment is rarely conveyed on screen with such sensuality and clarity. The story is choreographed by Kazan with such exuberant energy that the screen simply pulses with angry violence before abruptly descending into a debilitating and painful silence. The oozing hateful confrontations between the lost lady and the gruff man have been filmed with such skillful use of close-ups that one really feels the heat emanating from them. By staging the light and mise-en-scene, combined with brilliant music and an acting text of genuine poetic richness, Kazan evoked heartache and despair.” To summarize, Krauser observes that “no words can do justice to the content and artistic level of this film. You have to see it to appreciate it. We urge you to do so.” Influential film critic Pauline Kael was delighted with Lee”s “rare” acting that “evokes pity and horror,” further stating that both Lee and Brando “gave off two of the greatest acting performances in cinema.” Film critic Roger Ebert expressed the opinion that “no other performance has had a greater impact on the style of acting in modern cinema than Brando”s work as Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams” gruff, bad-smelling, sexually charged hero.” The critic also notes that “in addition to the stunning power of Brando”s performance, the film was also one of the greatest ensemble pieces in cinema.” According to James Steffen, “the film is considered a landmark for cinema today in terms of its ensemble acting, Kazan”s staging, and the impressive work of the production designer.”

The Hollywood Reporter suggested that A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place in the Sun (1951) would “go toe-to-toe (in the awards race)… because of the pessimism of the stories and because both stories are made so realistically. In the end, “A Streetcar Named Desire” received twelve Oscar nominations (“A Place in the Sun” received nine). Vivien Leigh won the Oscar for Best Actress and Kim Hunter and Carl Malden won Best Supporting Actor. This was the first time a film had won three Oscars for acting. The film also won Oscars for art direction and for set design. Marlon Brando was awarded only a nomination, losing to Humphrey Bogart. “A Streetcar Named Desire” was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but lost to “An American in Paris” (1951). Kazan received a nomination for best director, and there were also nominations for best music, best screenplay, best camerawork, best sound recording and best costume design. Bogart didn”t expect to win an Oscar because he thought, like many others in Hollywood, that the award would go to Brando. The folks at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were also surprised that their film, An American in Paris, beat out the two favorites to win the Oscar. After the results were announced, the studio published a blurb in the professional press in which the studio”s symbol Leo looked slightly embarrassed and caught off guard, saying, “Honestly, I was just standing ”under the sun” waiting for the ”streetcar. Kazan also won a special jury prize and a Golden Lion nomination at the Venice Film Festival, a New York Film Critics Society Award, and a nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award.

Kazan”s next picture was the historical drama based on a script by John Seinbeck, “Viva, Zapata!” (1952), which he directed at Twentieth Century-Fox under the direction of producer Darryl Zanuck. The film is about the life and work of Emiliano Zapata, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. The film begins in 1909, when a delegation of Indians from the state of Morelos, which includes Zapata (Marlon Brando), arrives in Mexico City to meet with President Porfirio Diaz. The president refuses to return the land taken from them. Upon their return home, the peasants try to regain control of the land, which leads to a clash with government troops. As the leader of the peasant resistance, Zapata is wanted and forced to hide in the mountains, where he joins forces with his brother Eufemio (Anthony Queen). Soon Zapata, whose authority among the peasants is growing, stands with the influential opposition political leader Francisco Madero, who calls Zapata his general in the south and Pancho Villa his general in the north. After the overthrow of Diaz, power in the country passes to Madero. Zapata becomes enraged when Madero wants to pay him back for his support with a rich estate, while putting off the issue of restoring Indian land rights. One of Huerta”s high-ranking generals convinces Madero to kill Zapata, who is too powerful and influential. When Huerta makes an unsuccessful attempt on Zapata”s life, he takes up arms again, confronting the general. Huerta arrests and then kills Madera, taking over the reins of the country. After the defeat of Huerta, Villa and Zapata meet with other revolutionary leaders in Mexico City, deciding to appoint Zapata as the new president. After hearing from the peasants that Eufemio has become a despot, illegally taking land and wives, Zapata resigns and returns home to deal with Eufemio, who is soon killed by the husband of one of the women he has seduced. Tired of politics, Zapata returns to his army, but the new President Carranza, who sees Zapata as a serious threat, decides to destroy him. Zapata is lured into a trap and killed, displaying his mutilated body in a nearby village. However, the people refuse to believe in the chief”s death and continue to hope for his return.

As film scholar David Sterrick notes, although Kazan claimed that the idea to make a film about Zapata came to him during a casual conversation with Steinbeck, in fact he had begun working on the subject in the late 1940s for a Mexican film, which, however, was never put into production. Twentieth Century Fox decided to take on the Zapata film with Darryl Zanuck as producer, who assembled a first-rate production team that included Kazan, actors Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn and “literary superstar” John Steinbeck.

According to Sterrit, the studio feared problems with the Production Code Administration, which did not recommend the production of films about revolutionary figures, especially those of Mexico, because it might cause outbursts of anger if historical events were misrepresented. As Thomson notes, “It was a kind of Hollywood radicalism – the rebel is a romantic hero and his opponents are dishonest people. In addition, the atmosphere in Hollywood at the time was “sensitive because of the anti-Communist witch-hunt that had begun,” and so it was risky enough to take on a film about “a popular rebel as a brave hero.” Although the studio received approval from the Production Code Administration, there were problems with the Mexican government. In the end, the studio had to go to the trouble of shooting several scenes in different versions, one for Mexico and one for the rest of the world. In particular, scenes where Zapata personally executes one of his old comrades and where his fiancée squats like a peasant woman to wash her laundry were removed from the Mexican version, as were scenes showing that Zapata could not read or write.

According to Kazan, what attracted him most to the story was that Zapata was given enormous power and then walked away from it when he felt it was corrupting him. As Kazan said, he and Steinbeck, as former Communists, wanted to use Zapata”s life to “show metaphorically what happened to the Communists in the Soviet Union–how their leaders became reactionary and repressive instead of advanced and progressive.” For the sake of greater authenticity, Kazan sought to ensure that there were no “familiar faces” in the film, and even Brando at the time had only starred in one released film, Men (1950) by Fred Zinnemann, while Quinn was attracted to him because he was a Mexican whose father had participated in the revolution. The film was filmed in the United States near the Mexican border, and Kazan sought to make the film as authentic as possible, often relying on images from famous documentary photographs of the Revolution. However, as Brando later said, Kazan did not make the actors speak with a Mexican accent, and everyone spoke “standard English, which was unnatural.

Kazan said he was pleased with the speed and energy of the picture: “Steinbeck thought that we should introduce more narrative moments, but I did not like it. The merit of the picture is that I laid out so much in very rapid, colorful strokes.” As Bosley Krauser wrote in the New York Times, Twentieth Century-Fox Studios has created “a very strong memoir of Zapata” and “the liveliest maelstrom of unrest in a long time,” where “the Mexican rebel leader, played by Marlon Brando, is remembered as a man of wild passion who is devoted to the poor and the oppressed.” According to Krauser, there are, of course, questions as to whether “Zapata was such a selfless soul, devoted to his home as is presented in the film. But it is certainly a passionate portrait of him that pulses with rare liveliness, and a masterful picture of a nation in revolutionary anguish by director Elia Kazan.” As the critic notes, “Kazan is eloquent with his camera work, and all of his individual shots, as well as their sequences describing the brutal slaughter of hungry peasants in ripe cornfields, ambushes, mutinous fighting, murder, and even crowds in the dusty streets, are full of a special style and meaning.” Contemporary critic David Thomson concluded that “the film succeeded. Brando was completely captivated by the work, and the picture had a sense of heat and dust, of passion and myth, something that Kazan strove so hard for.” According to Sterrit, “the film remains one of the most popular and respected historical dramas to this day.”

The film was nominated for five Oscars, winning one for Anthony Quinn as best supporting actor. John Steinbeck for best screenwriter and Marlon Brando for best actor in a leading role were also nominated. Kazan was nominated for the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the Directors Guild of America Award.

Also read, history – War of the Austrian Succession

Cooperation with the Commission of Inquiry into Un-American Activities

According to Rothstein, in the 1930s there was a secret Communist cell in The Group Theater, of which Kazan was a member for almost two years. When the Communist Party of the United States instructed him to take over the entire theater, Kazan refused to participate. At a special meeting, he was denounced as a “brigadier” serving his superiors and demanded to repent and submit to Party authority. Instead, Kazan left the party. He later wrote that the experience taught him “everything he needed to know about how the Communist Party USA works.

In 1947, the U.S. Congressional Commission of Inquiry on Un-American Activities began its work, “for which Kazan was a very obvious target. When he was first called as a witness before the Commission in early 1952, Kazan refused to give the names of film personalities he knew who were members of the Communist Party. However, the Hollywood moguls persuaded him that if he did not want to ruin his career, he should change his position. After this, Kazan returned and voluntarily gave the names of the people who were members of the party. Kazan told the Commission that he had joined a Communist Party cell made up of Group Theatre members in the summer of 1934 and left it 18 months later, frustrated with being “told how to think, speak and act.” Playwright Clifford Odets, actress Phoebe Brand, and Paula Miller, actress and wife of Lee Strasberg, were among the eight people Kazan named as communists. Kazan justified himself by saying that all the names he named were already known to the Commission, but some estimates suggest that at least half were not known. Wanting to justify himself, Kazan wrote a detailed article, which he published at his own expense in the New York Times. In this article he deplored his 19-month membership in the Communist Party in the early 1930s, and urged others to follow his example and name names. (In his autobiography, Kazan claimed that his first wife had actually written the article.) People in the know were particularly shocked by the fact that Kazan named Phoebe Brand and Tony Kreiber as Communists, even though he was the one who persuaded them to join the party. When Kreiber was asked about his relationship with Kazan at the 1955 Commission meeting, he replied, “Are you talking about Kazan, who signed a $500,000 contract the day after he gave the Commission names?”

In the years that followed, Kazan repeatedly tried to publicly explain and justify his action. In his memoirs, Kazan wrote that he consulted with Arthur Miller about how to proceed. As Kazan recalled, “I said that I had hated Communists for years and I did not think it right to give up my career to defend them. Was I sacrificing for something I believed in?” His decision, according to Rothstein, “cost him many friends.

Later Kazan also gave the following explanation: “You can hate the Communists, but you must not attack them or give them away, because if you do so, you are attacking the right to hold an unpopular viewpoint. I have good reason to believe that the party should be dragged out of its many places of hiding into the light in order to get to the bottom of what it is. But I would never say anything like that, because it would be considered ”harassment of the Reds. On another occasion, Kazan said that “friends asked me why I didn”t choose the decent alternative of telling everything about myself, but not naming the others in the group. But that wouldn”t have been what I wanted. I guess former Communists are especially intransigent toward the party. I believed that this Commission, which everyone around me cursed – and I had a lot against them – had the right purpose. I wanted to uncover the secret.” He also said it was “a horrible, immoral thing, but I did it out of my own convictions” and went on to say, “What I did was right. But was it right?” According to CBS Television, while Kazan was far from the only one to give the Commission names, many members of the creative community refused to do so, for which they were blacklisted for many years and could not get jobs. Kazan”s decision made him the target of intense and sustained criticism throughout his life. Many years later, Kazan said he felt no guilt for what some saw as betrayal: “There is a normal sadness when you hurt people, but I”d rather hurt them a little than hurt myself a lot.”

As Thomson notes, after Kazan”s speech there was “a moment of disengagement – many people, never to speak to Kazan again – seeing his gaining career, they thought of those others who had been destroyed. They saw the dirt in his self-justification and predicted his moral catastrophe.” His friendship with Miller was never the same. Miller later wrote in his diary about a side of his friend he had not previously seen: “He would have sacrificed me, too. According to Thomson, Kazan was haunted by his decision decades later. On the other hand, in part he “enjoyed the loneliness he had provided for himself and drew strength from the melodrama of mutual recriminations. And yet he wounded himself, just like a tragic hero.” On the positive side, however, the whole affair “made him certainly more profound as an artist and as a filmmaker. Somehow the split led him to look deeper into human nature.”

In 1954, Kazan”s film At the Docks was released, which “many saw as Kazan”s justification for his decision to cooperate with congressional red-hunters. The film”s hero, played by Brando, breaks the conspiracy of silence about the situation on the docks and bravely points out a union boss mired in corruption and murder in a televised hearing. Playwright and film critic Murray Horwitz even called the film “an homage to the snitch.” According to Kazan, the enormous success of “In Porto” put an end to his fears that his career was in jeopardy: “Suddenly no one else was interested in my political views, or that I was controversial or complicated. After ”In Porto,” I could do whatever I wanted. That”s what Hollywood is like.”

Once again, the issue of Kazan”s deed attracted widespread public attention in January 1999, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the 89-year-old Kazan would receive an honorary Oscar. According to Dick Vosburgh, “It was an award for lifetime achievement–and yet his life was forever tainted when, on April 10, 1952, he voluntarily pointed out eleven old friends and colleagues to the Congressional Commission as communists.” Forty-seven years after the Academy”s decision was announced, there was a flurry of protests. Rod Steiger was against the award, even though he received an Oscar nomination for his role in Kazan”s In the Harbor. Filmmaker Jules Dassin, who was blacklisted in the 1950s, published a paid article in The Hollywood Reporter stating his opposition to the Academy”s decision. Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation, who also disagreed, suggested: “Give Kazan an Oscar, but put the names of the people he named on the back of it.” On the other side, Kim Hunter once said: “I just couldn”t believe it when I heard that Gadge had joined the witch hunters. He was a top director on Broadway, where there are no blacklists – he could have just stayed in New York, waiting for the reign of terror to end. It didn”t make sense!” Although Hunter herself had been blacklisted for 16 years, she nevertheless felt that an Oscar would have been a just reward for Kazan. According to her, “Gadge deserved the Oscar despite his testimony. Everyone did what they had to do in this crazy, angry and miserable period.”

Also read, biographies – Edward Smith (sea captain)

Film career in 1953-1962

As David Thomson wrote, Kazan”s films after his testimony “looked as if they had been made by a new man.” In his autobiography Kazan claimed, “The only really good and original films I made were after my testimony.” However, according to Dick Wosberg, “this can hardly be said of the anti-communist film Man on a Rope (1953). This picture is set in 1952 in Czechoslovakia. The famous clown Karel Černik (Frederik March) runs the family Circus Černik, which the Communist government has made state-run. This leads to constant staffing, organizational, and economic problems that prevent Czernik from keeping the circus running at the proper level. In addition, his work is constantly interfered with by the secret police and the propaganda ministry, which insists that he include anti-Western themes in his program. Karel is also haunted by problems on the personal front as well – he disapproves of his daughter”s (Terry Moore) relationship with a new artist whom he considers a suspicious personality and faces disrespect from his second wife (Gloria Graham). While performing near the Bavarian border, Karel decides to cross the border and flee with the circus to the West. When Karel proceeds to carry out his plan, one of his closest assistants, who, as it turns out, has become a secret government agent, first protests and then fatally wounds Karel. Nevertheless, with the help of circus tricks, the troupe manages to cross the border. After losing two more comrades, the circus ends up in Bavaria. Karel”s deed earns back the respect of his widow. In accordance with Karel”s dying wish, she instructs the troupe to begin their performance before the people gathered in the square.

The film”s script is based on Neil Peterson”s 1952 novella, which was based on the true story of the Brambach Circus in East Germany in 1950. As film historian Jill Blake notes, “Kazan took on the production of this film at Twentieth Century Fox in an attempt to repair his shattered reputation after his association with Communists was revealed and his subsequent testimony to the Un-American Activities Commission, where he named Communist Party members and other left-leaning colleagues in Hollywood.” As Kazan wrote in his autobiography, after seeing Circus Brambach perform, he knew he had to make the movie Man on a Rope to prove that he was not afraid to criticize the Communist Party, of which he had once briefly been a member.

The entire cast of the Brambach Circus was involved in the film, performing all the numbers. The filming itself took place on location in Bavaria, and the production was done in Munich. Kazan”s production team was composed almost entirely of Germans, and it was the first film by a major American company with an all-German crew. The film received favorable reviews from critics. In particular, film critic Anthony Weiler in the New York Times gave the picture a positive review, calling it “not only a gripping melodrama, but also a vivid critique of the limitations of the way of life in our difficult times.” However, the film was not a box-office success, bringing the studio a loss. In his autobiography, Kazan claimed that the studio management had significantly cut his directorial version, turning the film into an ordinary soap melodrama. Kazan was enraged and upset by the reception of the film and claimed that the film further tarnished his reputation among those who considered him a traitor because of his testimony. Very quickly, however, according to Blake, Kazan proved once again that he was a director of the highest caliber with In the Harbor and East of Eden. For this film, Kazan was awarded the Berlin Senate Special Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Modern film critics were quite critical of the picture. Dennis Schwartz, in particular, called it “inexpressive, although plausible,” noting that “it is probably Kazan”s weakest film. Today, according to Thomson, the film is “little known.

In 1954, Wosberg writes, Kazan worked with screenwriter Budd Schulberg (who gave the Commission of Inquiry on Un-American Activities the names of 15 people) on a “magnificent film,” At the Port (1954), which “managed to make a hero out of an informant.”

The film tells the story of former boxer turned dockworker Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), who, fulfilling the request of Mafia union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee Jay Cobb), unwittingly becomes embroiled in the murder of his friend and colleague Joey Doyle, who threatened to report Friendly to the New York State Crime Commission. Edie, the murdered man”s sister (Eva Marie Saint), accuses the parish priest, Father Barry (Carl Molden), of not helping people escape the clutches of the mob. Concerned by Edie”s words, Terry visits his older brother, Charlie (Rod Steiger), who works for Friendly as a lawyer and accountant. At the meeting, Friendly assures Terry that Joey”s death was necessary to keep power at the dock, and then orders the dock manager to put Terry to his best work the next day. On the morning of the dock, Eddie Glover of the Crime Commission approaches Terry, but Terry refuses to discuss Joey”s case. Meanwhile, Father Barry invites the dockworkers to a meeting at the church, where he calls for an end to gang control of the port, but the dockworkers are wary of supporting the priest for fear of Friendly. In the end, Friendly”s men disrupt the meeting by throwing rocks through the church windows. After the meeting, Terry and Edie visibly grow closer. Glover hands Terry a summons to a Crime Commission hearing. When Terry asks Edie not to ask him who killed Joey, she accuses Terry of still working for the mob. After one of the workers testifies to the Commission, Friendly”s men use a crane to kill him right at the port in front of the other workers. Thereafter, Barry”s outraged father speaks again to the dockworkers. When Friendly”s men begin provocations against Barry”s father, Terry massacres one of them, displeasing Friendly and Charlie. Terry asks Barry”s father for advice, as he does not want to testify so as not to go against Charlie”s brother. Barry”s father urges Terry to follow his conscience and be honest with Edie. Terry tells Edie about her role in Joey”s murder, after which she runs away. Glover finds Terry, offering him a chance to testify. Upon learning of this, Friendly orders Charlie to deal with his brother. When Charlie threatens him with a gun during a conversation with Terry, Terry rebukes his older brother for dragging him into the mob. Charlie changes his position and, after giving Terry the gun, promises to stop Friendly. Terry reconciles with Edie, after which a truck tries to run them down in the street. Nearby on a fence, they see Charlie”s body hanging from a meat hook. Terry vows to avenge Friendly for his brother, but Barry”s father convinces him that it would be better to destroy Friendly through the trial, so Terry throws the gun away. The next day at the hearing, Terry testifies about Friendly”s involvement in Joey”s death, enraging the bandit, who shouts that Terry will no longer work at the port. At home, Terry encounters hostility from his neighbors, after which Edie advises him to leave, but he decides to stay. The next morning at the port, everyone gets a job except Terry. Meanwhile, Friendly, who is about to be indicted, vows violent revenge on Terry. Terry summons Friendly for a talk, stating that he is proud of what he has done. A violent fight ensues, during which Friendly”s men nearly beat Terry to death. Barry”s father appears, accompanied by Edie. Seeing them, the movers refuse to obey Friendly”s orders and push him into the water. Barry”s father helps a battered Terry up, after which he leads the dockworkers back to work.

As film historian Glenn Erickson has written, “the film is iconic for America” and “exceptional by all accounts. It has “a tough and uncompromising camerawork on the cold New York docks that brings to American screens a stark realism never before seen in on-location noirs… The film is a masterful combination of theatricality and post-noir documentaryism. It creates a fully convincing New York environment. We feel the chill of the realistic daytime street footage, and the violent nighttime chases use expressionist noir techniques.” In addition, “as in almost all of Kazan”s films, the acting, staging and script are at a very high level.” And finally, “this is one of Marlon Brando”s best films.” That said, as Erickson notes, “outwardly, the film is similar to similar gangster exposé thrillers that presented nationally known crime investigations in dramatic form.” That said, “Kazan has never taken such a heavy-handed approach to history, either before or since this film. The Terry Malloy saga looks like a confused artistic response to Kazan”s fierce critics. And while the film often rises to the level of high drama, morally it is no more sophisticated than the average Republic Studios Western.”

As Erickson goes on to write, “It is a controversial film, doomed to generate debate over its political position. Its acclaimed director would often later argue that the story of the anti-Mafia informant was an expression of his own experience with the Anti-American Activities Commission during the Hollywood hunt for Communists. However, according to the critic, “the film”s appeal is marred by a political aspect. Some admirers and apologists for Kazan call him an outsider, a loner who had to go his own way. And the film seems designed to surround his actions with a halo of romance. But was this prolonged allegory necessary?” As Erickson suggests, in fact, “Kazan turned out to be the kind of ambitious careerist who views the professional world as a relentless battleground of tough winners and soft losers.” As Erickson goes on to point out, “In this film Kazan identifies himself as a noble snitch, but Terry Malloy”s case of justified snitching has nothing to do with Kazan”s situation at the Commission. Terry denounces corrupt gangsters and murderers who exploit workers like himself. He chooses to side with the workers and protect their interests. In contrast, Kazan denounces his colleagues, the screenwriters and other filmmakers, who had no opportunity to defend themselves when their colleagues threw them to the wolves.” As Thomson noted, “Kazan”s enemies hated the film because it was an excuse for snitching. They also saw the pseudo-politics of the story itself, as well as its anti-union stance, as confirmation of the fact that the director had finally sold out.” And yet, according to the critic, “it is an outstanding melodrama, close to the best James Cagney work of its time, with much acting of such caliber that it has been learned by heart by generations to come.” According to Thomson, probably “only a wounded man could make such a picture, or one that felt his wound sharper than others. Perhaps that is what it means to be an artist.” Danny Peary in Guide for the Film Fanatic wrote that the film “was criticized on several fronts: those who were angered by its assertion that the dockworkers” union was corrupt in 1954 (as Malcolm Johnson”s articles that served as a source for the film make clear), those who thought it was anti-union, and those who were irritated by the way Kazan and Schulberg (both informants for the Un-American Activities Commission) manipulated audiences to make them admire those who denounce the police and the government.” Writer and film scholar Robert Sklar wrote: “Critics continue to debate whether the film carries democratic values or offers an image of the dockworkers as passive followers of whoever is leading them – whether a tyrannical boss or an informant. Is it a true exposé, since it leaves the real holders of corrupt power untouched? Or is it merely a monument to the artistic aspirations and political compromises of its time.”

After the film”s release, The Hollywood Reporter concluded that “after so many costume dramas, this is probably what the box office needs, as the film is so edgy and gripping that it can only be compared to Little Caesar (1931) and Public Enemy (1931).” The New Yorker called it “a shocking work of the type we used to get when Warner Brothers Studios made movies about Al Capone and his accomplices.” According to Life magazine”s reviewer, it is “the most violent film of the year, which also contains the most tender love scenes. And it”s all thanks to Brando.” Film critic Anthony Weiler of the New York Times wrote: “A small but obviously dedicated group of realists turned art, anger and some terrible truths into this film, the most brutal and unforgettable testimony on film of man”s inhumanity to man that has ever been released this year. And while this powerful indictment of the vultures on the docks offers at times only superficial drama and over-simplification of psychology, it is nevertheless an unusually powerful, gripping and creative use of the screen by gifted professionals.” The critic goes on to note that “although Kazan and Schulberg did not dig as deep as they could, they chose a suitable and very strong cast and setting for their dark adventure. The film denounces many of the evils of mob activity at the port that were already known through the print press. Journalism had already told many “more substantive and multi-dimensional stories, but Kazan”s staging, his outstanding cast, and Schulberg”s informative and energetic acting gave the picture its distinctive power and terrific impact.” TV Guide later called the film “a devastating experience from start to finish, ruthless in its depiction of inhumanity. It is even darker and more brutal because of the striking, non-documentary approach of cameraman Kaufman.” According to the magazine, “It was a controversial film for its time because of the violence, the crude language, and the daring portrayal of labor unions in a negative light. The film achieved an astounding box-office success comparable to critical acclaim. It grossed $9.5 million on an investment of $900,000.”

The film received Oscar nominations in all acting categories. This is the first film to feature three actors in the same category–Best Supporting Actor–Carl Molden, Rod Steiger, and Lee J. Cobb. The film has won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actor (Sainte), Best Director (Kazan), Best Screenplay (Schulberg), Best Cinematography (Kaufman), Best Art Direction and Best Editing. The film also won awards from the New York Film Critics Society, the National Board of Critics and four Golden Globes, including Kazan. The film also won a Gold Cup at the Venice Film Festival.

Kazan”s next film, East of Heaven (1955), based on “John Steinbeck”s retelling of the story of Cain and Abel,” brought screen stardom to James Dean, who became “another great actor that Kazan found and nurtured.”

The film is set in 1917 in Salinas, California. Rancher Adam Trask (Raymond Massey) moves to town with his twin sons, troubled Caleb (James Dean) and upright Aron (Richard Davalos), whom he names after biblical characters. Despite their mutual love, the brothers are very different – Aron, like his father, is very pious and organized, while Cale is fickle and searching for himself in life, which causes his father”s disapproval. According to their father, the sons believe that their mother died shortly after giving birth, and Adam himself thinks that she escaped to the East. After accidentally learning that Kate”s mother (Jo Van Fleet) is alive and running a brothel in nearby Monterey, Cal suffers from thoughts that he is as “bad” as she is. Adam”s project to deliver fresh vegetables to the East Coast fails, and he loses nearly his entire fortune. To bail out his father, Cal, along with his old friend Will Hamilton (Albert Decker), begins to grow and sell beans, which makes a considerable profit. With the outbreak of war, Adam decides to return to his ranch due to lack of money, but Cal, keeping his bean enterprise a secret, asks his father not to worry. At the carnival, Cal protects Abra (Julie Harris), Aron”s girlfriend, from the advances of one of the soldiers. While waiting for Aron, they spend time together and spontaneously kiss while riding the Ferris wheel. Meanwhile, Aron becomes the defense of a German merchant who is being attacked by a mob of false patriots, and Cal helps his brother until Sheriff Sam stops the fight. When Abra shows up wearing Cal”s coat, Aron accuses Cal of starting the fight out of jealousy, whereupon Cal punches his brother several times. For Adam”s birthday, Cal gives his father the money he earned from selling beans, but he refuses to accept it because he does not want to profit from the war. Unexpectedly, Aron announces that he and Abrah are engaged. A distressed Cal cries out in pain and leaves, while Abra tries to comfort him. Aron, accusing his brother of “meanness and cruelty,” demands that he never touch her again. Cal convinces his brother to go with him to Monterey to meet Kate. After learning that his mother, whom he idolized, is a prostitute, a shocked Aron leaves. Upon returning home, Cal decides to start his own business with the money he earns and live independently of his father. When Adam asks about Aron, Cal replies: “I am not my brother”s keeper.” After accusing his father of not loving him because he reminds him of Kate, Cal confesses that he has been jealous of Aron all his life. He declares to his father that he no longer wants his love, and Abre says he wants “no more love” because it “doesn”t pay off.” Sam informs the family that Aron got into a drunken brawl, after which he decided to enlist as a soldier. Adam, Cal, and Abra go to the station to see off the drunken Aron, with whom they can”t even talk. After the train leaves, Adam faints and falls into Cal”s arms. The doctor prescribes bed rest for Adam and leaves him in the care of an angry nurse. Sam suggests that Cal leave town, whereupon, after apologizing to his father, he begins to pack his things. Abra confesses to Adam that she really loves Cal, after which she declares that Cal will never be a man without the love that Adam has denied him. She begs Adam to ask Cal for something as a sign that he loves and needs him before it is too late. Cal, at Abra”s urging, returns to his father”s room and tells him that he has heeded his words that “a man has a choice, and choice is what makes a man.” Then Adam begs Cal to fire the annoying nurse, and then whispers: “Stay with me and take care of me.” After kissing Abra, Cal pulls his chair closer to his father”s bed.

As film historian Sean Exmaker wrote, in 1954, “being at the height of his success, Kazan was free to choose whatever material he wanted, and he chose John Steinbeck”s bestselling novel East of Heaven, choosing to screen the last part of it, based on the story of Cain and Abel. Later in interviews, Kazan often described the film as autobiographical, a reflection of his own unsatisfactory relationship with his father and his younger brother, whom he believed his father always preferred: “The image of the boy is quite clear to me. I knew such a boy; it was myself.” As Exmaker goes on to write, “Despite Steinbeck”s prestige and Kazan”s fame, the film”s greatest attention was on Kazan”s discovery, young New York actor James Dean, who made his debut in the film in the title role. At the suggestion of screenwriter Paul Osborne, Kazan watched Dean play a small role on the Broadway stage, after which, although he was not quite satisfied with Dean”s acting qualities, he nevertheless knew immediately that he would play Cal, and Steinbeck agreed with him.” Kazan, who was a supporter of the Stanislavsky system, decided to abandon the involvement of Hollywood stars for the young actors from the New York Actors Studio, also invited Richard Davalos and Julie Harris for the main roles. More traditional school actor Raymond Massey was cast as Adam, and the difference between the two schools of acting underscored, in Kazan”s mind, the difference between the two generations. According to Exmaker, during filming Dean often came unprepared, did not know the words or deviated from the script, leading to the need for many extra takes and his numerous run-ins with Massey. However, as Kazan later wrote, this only played to the film”s advantage: “It was an antagonism that I didn”t try to stop, I fueled it. The screen was alive with exactly what I wanted – they hated each other.”

This was Kazan”s first color film and his first CinemaScope film, and he used these picture qualities superbly. With long shots he sets the film in the slower pace of the previous era, then drawing the camera”s attention to Dean”s restless and nervous spontaneity, which stands out markedly against the calm and restraint of the rest of the cast. As Kazan wrote, “He had a much more expressive and agile body than Brando, and there was a great deal of tension in it. And I used his lively body a lot in long episodes.” Outdoor shots were shot in the wide expanse of the Monterey coast, and the backdrop of massive fields was limited to the mountains in the scenes in Salinas. Bright daytime exteriors of golden fields and blue skies contrasted with dark interiors and night scenes as the story grew darker and more problematic.

As Exmaker notes, “the film was a tremendous success, and not only because it launched the James Dean cult.” Upon its release Variety noted the “powerfully dark dramaturgy of Steinbeck”s novel” that Kazan “brought to the screen.” Calling the picture “a strong work by a director who has a penchant for a powerful and dispassionate portrayal of life,” the magazine went on to note that “it does Kazan no credit that he seems to require James Dean to play along the lines of Marlon Brando, though the actor himself is so attractive that he manages to reach the audience, despite the heavy burden of copying someone else”s acting style, voice and mannerisms.” Film critic Bosley Krauser in the New York Times praised the film, writing that “in one respect it is excellent. In the way Kazan uses the expanse and atmosphere of California, it is unparalleled. Some of the interior shots, especially in the last scene, also have atmosphere, thrilling the viewer with their strong emotional undertones.” However, one gets the impression that “the director works more with the scenography than with the characters…The people in this film are not well prepared to convey a sense of the suffering they go through, and their demonstration of torment is markedly stylized and grotesque. This is especially true of James Dean as the bewildered and cranky Cal…. There is energy and tension in this film, but little clarity or emotion. It”s like a huge green iceberg – it”s huge and imposing, but very cold.” For the most part, however, the reviews of the film were positive. The Library Journal, for example, called the picture “one of the best films of this or any other year, a film that gives a deeply troubling inside look at what psychologists call ”feelings of rejection. William Zinsser in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that “Kazan makes his characters reveal themselves slowly, but when they finally burst into anger or violence, you understand exactly why it happens.” In 1984, noted film critic Pauline Cale expressed that it was “a strikingly sensitive and nervous, feverishly poetic film…As a romantic, alienated young hero, James Dean displays all kinds of charming clumsiness–he is sensitive, defenseless, hurtful…Dean seems to go as far as possible in portraying someone who is not understood…This is far from boring, but certainly a very strange film.” Jeff Andrew wrote in 2000, “Kazan”s adaptation of Steinbeck”s novel about two teenagers vying for their father”s love is as verbose and full of biblical allegories as the novel itself. Nevertheless, it is a film of superb acting, atmospheric camerawork and an accurate sense of time and place.” David Thomson in 2000 felt that “this is Kazan”s best film: partly because of Dean”s prickly indecision, partly because of the fascinating clash of acting styles (Dean and Massey), and also because the CinemaScope format has encouraged Kazan to work the camera with the same handwriting care that he usually gave entirely to the actors.” Kenneth Turan wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2005 that it was “not only one of Kazan”s richest films and Dean”s first significant role, it may be the actor”s best role at all.”

The film was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director (Kazan), Best Screenwriter (Osborne) and Best Actor for James Dean, who died in a car accident before the nominations were announced (it was the second posthumous nomination in Oscar history and the first of three for Dean). However, only Jo Van Fleet won an Oscar for her supporting role. The film also won a Golden Globe for Best Picture and an award for Best Drama at the Cannes Film Festival, and Kazan was awarded a nomination for Best Director by the Directors Guild of America.

Kazan served as both director and producer of his next film, Dolly (1956), which Rothstein called “a black comedy with a sexual theme.

The film, based on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, is set in a small town in the Mississippi Delta. In a dilapidated Southern mansion, an attractive nineteen-year-old girl nicknamed Dolly (Carroll Baker) is unhappily married to the hapless cotton-cleaning machine owner Archie Lee Meighan (Carl Molden), who is much older than she is. Before he died, Dolly”s father agreed to her marriage to Archie on the condition that he not take her virginity until her twentieth birthday. When another birthday is two days away, Archie becomes increasingly impatient in his desire to make Dolly his wife “for real” – first he peeks at her bathing, and then he tries to tackle her. The next night they see furniture being removed from their house for debt, whereupon Dolly decides to move out of her husband”s house and into a motel. Meanwhile, Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach), the manager of a new cotton-cleaning factory arriving from Sicily, celebrates with his workers their first successful harvest. Archie, who has lost all his income because of Silva, sets fire to his factory, which burns to the ground right during the celebration. Despite Silva”s attempts to report the arson, the police, who perceive him as an outsider, refuse to investigate. The next morning, Silva brings his cotton to Archie for processing. While he is busy with the cotton, Silva finds out from Dolly that Archie went somewhere from home last night. Silva then starts flirting with Dolly, thus deciding to get back at Archie for setting the fire. She is pleased by Silva”s attention, but finds the strength to resist him, and goes to her husband, who is repairing his car. Infuriated by her appearance, Archie slaps Doll in the face. Silva is horrified at the state of Archie”s equipment and the fact that the work has not yet begun. When Archie leaves to get a new belt for the machine, Dolly runs after him for fear of being alone with Silva. When the equipment manages to set up, Dolly tells Silva about her relationship with her husband, stating that her “readiness” will depend on whether or not the furniture returns to the house. In Archie”s absence, Dolly and Silva begin rampaging around the house with erotic overtones. In the end, Silva announces to Dolly that she will leave her alone if she will sign a witness statement incriminating her husband in the arson. With tears in her eyes, she signs the paper, after which she persuades Silva to rest in her crib. When Archie returns home, Dolly accuses her husband of arson and announces that their relationship is over. She says she will have fun with Silva while he handles the cotton on Archie”s car. Silva becomes increasingly confident in Archie”s house, and even hires Aunt Rose, who he fired, as a cook. Eventually Archie accuses his wife of cheating on him, but Silva assures him that he only came to get a statement. When an angry Archie grabs a gun, Silva hides in a tree, and Dolly calls the police and then hides with Silva. The police arrive and take Archie”s gun away, after which Silva shows Dolly”s testimony incriminating Archie. Before leaving, Silva promises to return the next day with more cotton. The town marshal then informs Archie that he must “for decency” arrest him, and Archie sees Dolly return to the house alone on her twentieth birthday. At home, she tells Aunt Rose that she will have to wait until tomorrow to see if the tall, dark stranger will remember them.

As film historian Jay Steinberg has noted, “Kazan, who never shied away from provocative material, in the early ”50s persuaded his frequent stage and screen partner Tennessee Williams to prepare a short one-act play for the cinema called 27 Carts of Cotton. The result was an amusing and often saucy black farce about the Deep South that infuriated the prudes of its time, but over time came to be regarded quite harmlessly.” The film was shot in Missouri, and Kazan enlisted many locals in small roles, to excellent effect. According to Steinberg, “both Carroll Baker and Wallach, whom Kazan brought in from the Actors Studio, gave a wonderful performance – the sexual heat they generated in their scenes together is palpable even today. Bosley Crowther gave the film a mixed review in The New York Times after its release, noting the weakness of the story and psychological imagery compared to A Streetcar Named Desire. At the same time, the critic praised the satirical component of the picture, noting that Williams wrote his “trashy, flawed people in a way that makes them clinically interesting,” and “under Kazan”s superb direction, the actors practically eat away at the screen. Moreover, the characters are presented with sizzling candor. Not a single ugliness of their lives is overlooked.” That said, the “flirtation of Dolly and Vacarro, which Kazan staged with strikingly meaningfulness, is particularly impressive. Although he defiantly leaves unexplained the question of whether the girl has actually been seduced, there is no doubt that she is being courted and exuberantly pursued. Mr. Kazan constantly balances the emotional and the ridiculous.” But, as Krauser notes, “by far the most artful and worthy feature of the film is Kazan”s pictorial compositions, rendered in contrasting black and white and set for the most part against the backdrop of an old Mississippi homestead.” TimeOut later called the painting “probably one of Kazan”s least ambitious. It”s essentially a black comedy about a strange and violent romantic triangle.” Although the film was condemned by the National Legion of Decency upon its release, “its erotic content is seen today as very restrained.” On the other hand, “the grotesquely caricatured acting and the lingeringly memorable picture of a sultry, dusty, lazy manor house make for witty and compelling viewing.”

According to Steinberg, despite strong critical acclaim, the box office was only mediocre and the film earned only four Oscar nominations–for Williams as screenwriter and Boris Kaufman as cameraman, and for actresses Carroll Baker and Mildred Dunnock. Part of the reason for this was the negative reaction to the picture by Christian organizations. Kazan recalled, “After the first good week, there was a rapid decline, and the film never made a profit. Today the film looks just like a rather funny comedy, and it is surprising that in its time it made so much noise. Kazan won a Golden Globe for his directorial work and a nomination for a New York Society of Film Critics Award, and the picture also received a BAFTA nomination for best film.

Kazan then turned again to collaborating with Budd Schulberg, producing “a powerful, satirical piece,” Face in the Crowd (1957), “a film about the media and stardom,” which tells the story of how “a rural demagogue comes to power through the media.” It is, according to Susan King, “a magnificent film about a drifter from Arkansas who becomes a TV star, destroying everyone around him” and, according to McGee, “a powerful film with a message about celebrity power in the mass media.”

The film begins with a scene in a rural Arkansas prison from where reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) is broadcasting for a local radio station. There she catches the eye of a drunken drifter, Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), who she persuades to talk about his life and sing for the radio. The charismatic, witty Larry”s performance makes a strong impression on the owner of the radio station, who decides to make a regular morning program with Larry, who gets the name Lone Rhodes. Marcia, with some difficulty, manages to persuade Rhodes to host the show, which instantly becomes a hit with radio listeners. At the bar, Rhodes confides in Marcia that all the tales he tells about his life on the air are in fact his fictions. Marcia takes Rhodes to the next level by moving with him to Memphis, where he successfully begins hosting a television program. Marcia and Rhodes begin an affair. After sales of the show”s sponsor, a mattress company, skyrocket, one of the company”s ambitious employees, Joey De Palma (Anthony Franchoza), forms a joint company with Rhodes, promising to arrange a major contract with an advertising agency in New York. Soon Rhodes begins advertising Vitajex vitamins, passing them off as libido-enhancing pills. Sales begin to skyrocket, as does Rhodes” own ratings. General Hainsworth, president of Vitajex, decides to use Rhodes to promote Senator Worthington Fuller for president. After being on the cover of Life magazine, Rhodes becomes a national figure, holding telethons and launching ships. In his posh penthouse, Rhodes proposes to Marcia, and she agrees. However, Rhodes returns from another business trip with his new wife of 17 years. Rhodes explains to Marcia that he is afraid to marry her because of her critical attitude toward his behavior, and Marcia responds by demanding to make her an equal partner in his business. While successfully promoting Fuller on television, Rhodes simultaneously begins to dominate him by imposing his views, which displeases Hainsworth. One day Marcia is approached by her former assistant, Mel Miller (Walter Matthau), informing him of his intention to write a feuilleton about Rhodes called “The Demagogue in Jeans.” Joey begins an affair with Rhodes” wife, and when Rhodes tries to break things off with Joey, he reminds her that he owns 51 percent of their joint company. The next day, Marcia, who has become disillusioned with Rhodes, decides to end his career by secretly staging a provocation during a TV show that makes Rhodes look bad. Audiences turn their backs on him, followed by advertisers. Rhodes convinces Marcia to work with him again, but she leaves, and Mel tells him that soon all his fans will forget about him. When Marcia hears Rhodes”s piteous call from the street, she stops for a moment, but Mel convinces her that they should move on.

As film historian Scott McGee has written, “Clearly ahead of its time, this is certainly one of the first films to raise the question of the impact of television.” Today, Kazan and Schulberg”s view of television “seems entirely visionary.” They made the film “as a warning that when we turn on our televisions or radios or exercise our right to vote, we should be wary of the specter of Lone Rhodes. That warning is still relevant today.” According to Kazan, “One of the reasons we made this picture is the fantastic vertical mobility in this country, the speed at which one goes up and goes down. We both knew this well because we had found ourselves up and down several times ourselves. Our aim was to warn the public, through Odinson Rhodes, be careful with television … We”re trying to say: don”t pay attention to how he looks, don”t pay attention to who he looks like, don”t pay attention to who he reminds you of, listen to what he says … Television is good for that. It deceives some people and exposes others.” Kazan later said in an interview that the film was “ahead of its time…The first part of the film is more of a satire, and the second part engages the viewer more in the fate and feelings of Lone Rhodes…What I like about this film is its energy and inventiveness and sharp leaps, which is very American. There”s really something wonderful about it, this constantly pulsating, changing rhythm. In many ways it”s more American than any other picture I”ve made. It represents business life, and city life, and the way things happen on television, the rhythm of how the country moves. Its subject matter, even today, is completely meaningful.”

The film was shot in various locations in Arkansas, Memphis, Tennessee, and New York. In New York, an old studio was used for filming, where the authenticity of the environment is maintained by the presence of many recognizable TV personalities in the frame. Film critic Dylis Powell of the Sunday Times recalled spending a morning in a studio in the Bronx “watching Kazan rehearse scenes from Faces in the Crowd. At the time, I was struck by the rich inventiveness Kazan brought to the work, his ideas on gestures, tonality, looks-a vast wealth of detail-working to enhance the comic vivacity of each scene. And now, when I see the finished film, again the same density of picture that strikes me. Nothing is left to chance.” According to McGee, unlike many other “honest” films whose weakness is their “softness, timidity and anaesthetic neutrality,” this film is “passionate, sublime, fierce and unrelenting, which gives pleasure to the mind.” The film is also significant in that it launched the careers of Andy Griffith and Lee Remick, who debuted in this film.

Upon its release, the film disappointed at the box office and received mixed reviews from audiences and critics alike. Bosley Krauser in the New York Times, in particular, wrote that Schulberg and Kazan, who “displayed a rare congeniality in their work on In the Harbor, are performing together again, tracing the phenomenal rise (and fall) of a top TV “persona” in their new film, Face in the Crowd. According to the critic, “This sizzling and cynical exposé has more to do with the nature of the idol”s flamboyant personality than with the environment and the machine that produced it. Shulberg painted the powerful man as a crude and vulgar bumpkin and redneck, and Griffith, under Kazan”s direction, plays him with thunderous energy. Schulberg and Kazan spawn a monster like Dr. Frankenstein”s monster.” And they are so mesmerized by it that they give it up completely for the entire film. As a result, Krauser suggests, his apparent “dominance, the sheer volume of television detail, and Kazan”s jerky narrative style make the film a bit monotonous.” Contemporary critic Dennis Schwartz called the film “a caustic and scathing satire of the ”rise and fall” that sends out a warning about the iconic personalities created by television — they can be hypocritical and not as wonderful as you think if you just judge them by how they look on screen.” Kazan received a nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for this picture.

Of the melodrama Wild River (1960), Thomson wrote that it was “a masterpiece that did not get the attention it deserved,” while Vosburgh called it “an underrated film. Beginning in 1941, when Kazan was creating a theater show for the Department of Agriculture in New York, he had the idea for the project, which eventually developed into this film. Kazan was interested in how government agencies treated “flesh-and-blood” people. In particular, he was concerned about the plight of those who encountered the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency formed in 1933 to provide water management and socioeconomic development in the Tennessee River Valley, a region that had been hard hit by the Great Depression. Kazan saw the project as a tribute to President Roosevelt and his New Deal. For years Kazan had been working on his own script for the proposed film, but was not satisfied with the result and asked for help from his friend, playwright and screenwriter Paul Osborne, who wrote the script for East of Eden. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox Studios had acquired the rights to two novels on roughly the same subject, Borden Diehl”s Dunbar Cove, about the battle between the authorities and the old landowners in the Tennessee Valley, and William Bradford Huey”s Mud in the Stars, which tells of a rural matriarchal family and its reaction to the destruction of their land. Osborne combined Kazan”s original idea with the two books, which finally satisfied the director.

The film is set in 1933, when the Tennessee Valley Authority has begun building a cascade of dams on the river to prevent deadly floods and raise the standard of living of the local population. The Authority sends its employee Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift) to a small Tennessee town with the task of completing the resettlement of the locals and clearing land in the section of the valley that is to be flooded. Chuck”s first task is to convince Ella Garth (Joe Van Fleet), an elderly woman whose family has lived on an island by the river for generations, to sell her land to the government. After Ella refuses to talk to him, Chuck turns to her three adult sons, but the eldest among them, Joe John Garth, throws Chuck into the river. The next day, Chuck visits Ella again, meeting her surrounded by her black employees and their families. She declares that she is not interested in the modern conveniences the dam will bring, and she cannot be forced to sell her land because it would be “against nature.” Chuck invites the workers to his office to discuss their employment opportunities. Chuck also reaches out to Ella”s granddaughter, Carol Baldwin (Lee Remick), a young and single widow with two young children who moved to the island after her husband died. Carol understands the inevitability of progress and agrees to help Chuck, even though she realizes that for Ella, moving from her native lands would be like death. A romantic relationship develops between Chuck and Carol. With the help of black laborers, Chuck begins clearing land on the island. This displeases the locals, who demand that Chuck pay the black workers less than the white workers. Gradually, Ella”s workers and then her sons are going to leave the island. In the end, Ella is left alone on the island, except for the faithful Sam, who refuses to leave her. Chuck is instructed from Washington to begin with the U.S. marshal the procedure of forcibly evicting Ella. Having secured the declaration of her mother”s incompetence, her two sons offer Chuck to buy back his mother”s land from them. Meanwhile, Chuck develops more and more respect for Ella. The next day, against his wishes, he asks the marshal to remove Ella from her plot, then goes to the island to make one last attempt to convince her to leave herself. Once again refused, Chuck returns to the house of Carol, who begs him to take her away with him, but Chuck cannot give her an answer. Meanwhile, a mob of angry locals destroys Carol”s house and Chuck”s car, then beats up Chuck himself. After the mob pounces on Carol as well, the sheriff stops the confrontation. Delighted by Carol”s heroism, Chuck proposes to her and they marry that night. The next day, Chuck and Carol arrive with the marshal on the island to visit Ella. After the marshal reads the eviction notice, a silent Ella walks to the ferry to the sound of axe blows and falling trees. In her modern new home, Ella sits on the porch, looking out at the river and refusing to speak. Some time later, as workers finish clearing the island and prepare to burn down her farmhouse, Ella dies. After the work is completed, Chuck flies out of the valley with his new family, flying first over Garth Island, which has become a tiny speck in an artificial lake, and then over the powerful new dam.

Kazan had originally planned to cast a not-so-young actor in the lead role, but as Osborne developed the script, Kazan decided to make the central character a young, sexy Department of Agriculture employee, which would have added energy and commercial appeal to the film. Originally Cazan wanted Brando for the lead role, but ultimately opted for Montgomery Clift, despite doubts about his reliability. After a terrible car accident that ruined his handsome face and destroyed his body, Clift suffered from an addiction to alcohol and drugs It was known that he struggled with his previous film “Suddenly Last Summer” (1959), but Kazan appreciated the talent of Clift back in 1942, when he worked with him on the play “The Skin of Our Teeth”. He offered the actor starring roles in his films “In the port” (1954) and “East of Heaven” (1955), but Clift refused both. This time Kazan said bluntly: “I can”t work with a drunkard,” and made Clift promise that he would not touch alcohol during the entire shoot. Clift, who had enormous respect for Kazan, did his best to keep his promise, and by all accounts was very successful, providing a powerful and concentrated performance.

In his memoirs, Kazan wrote about this film: “I discovered an amazing thing. I went to the other side … My character was supposed to be a resolute agent of the New Deal, engaged in the difficult task of convincing the ”reactionary” villagers to leave the land for the public good … But in the course of the work I found that my sympathies were on the side of a stubborn old lady who refused to be a patriot.” He also found that once Clift was brought in, the dynamic of the film changed: “He can”t match the villagers he has to convince of the ”greater good,” and he certainly can”t match any of them physically if it comes to violence. Figuratively speaking, it”s a story of the weak clashing with the strong – only in reverse.” Kazan gladly accepted this change, and reinforced the scheme with all the other actors. For the role of Ella Garth, he cast Jo Van Fleet, 44, who had specialized in the roles of much older heroines, and who won an Oscar for her role in East of Eden. As Kazan wrote, he knew she would “eat Clift alive” in their scenes together, and he aimed to achieve just that. For the role of soft but strong-willed Carroll Kazan took Lee Remick, with whom he worked on the film “Face in the crowd” (1957) and whom he considered “one of the best young actresses” at the time, as well as “an exceptional person. In the film, Kazan takes full advantage of the fact that Remick will be dominant and Clift will be “sexually insecure.” This unequal combination of personalities, according to film historian Roger Freistow, “gives an unusual and delightful tension to their love scenes.”

It was the first major feature film to be shot entirely in Tennessee. Filming began in November 1959 and lasted two and a half months. The locals, who had no acting experience, played about 40 of the 50 roles with words. The Garth homestead, which took two months to build and cost $40,000, was burned to the ground in the film”s climactic scene. For six months Kazan edited the film, which was released in July 1960. The film begins with a black-and-white prologue chronicling footage of the Tennessee River flood, which wrought great destruction and took many lives.

Sensing that the studio would not give the picture a chance for wide distribution in the United States and would not even bother with offers in Europe, Kazan did not make a “stormy scene” in the office of Spyros Skouras, the head of the studio. Kazan wrote, in part, “Money rules the market, and according to this rule, the film is a disaster. The film did disappoint at the box office, and the criticism of the time was mixed. A. H. Weiler in the New York Times, in particular, wrote: “Despite its title, the picture comes across as an interesting but strangely disturbing drama rather than a crushing examination of the historical aspect of a changing America. Although the focus is on the people affected by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the early thirties, producer-director Elia Kazan oddly distracts the viewer with a romance that shares importance with the social and economic upheaval that is surely closest to the heart of this film. Following two courses at the same time diminishes the potential power of the picture. The rivalry between young love and the impact of progress on old customs becomes an insidiously intrusive dichotomy. That said, curiously, both components of this beautiful folk story are done professionally…Kazan deserves real credit for not taking sides in addressing the social and economic aspects of its history.” The film won eighth place in the National Council of Critics” poll for best picture of 1960, and Kazan was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The film later proved to have many supporters among contemporary critics. For example, Dave Kehr of Chicago Reader called it “probably Kazan”s most subtle and profound film, a meditation on how the past both suppresses and enriches the present.” TimeOut magazine”s review said that “perhaps it”s the filming on location, perhaps it”s the acting, but this lyrical freestyle story by Kazan has become one of his least theatrical and most moving of his films. This is partly because the battle line–between town and country, old and new, expediency and conviction–is effectively blurred, making the conflict more dramatically complex than one might expect; but Kazan”s obvious nostalgia for the 1930s setting (New Deal) also gives the film more depth and scope than one usually finds in his work.” As Freistow noted, this film “has remained a favorite for the director himself.”

According to Rothstein, among Kazan”s films “that still resonate particularly with young moviegoers is Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood as teenagers in love who confront the hypocrisy of adults.”

The film begins in the late 1920s in a small town in Kansas, where two of the prettiest high school students in the school, Wilma Dean Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty), fall in love with each other. Despite their strong mutual attraction and desire for intimacy, they are forced to restrain themselves. Wilma”s mother actually forbids her from doing “it,” and Bud”s father, a wealthy oilman, insists that his son satisfy his needs with a “lesser girl” and forget about marriage until he graduates from Yale University. After receiving a de facto ban from his parents, Bud suggests that Wilma end the relationship, which takes a very heavy toll on both of them. Wilma attempts suicide, after which she ends up in a mental institution. Bud soon becomes seriously ill with pneumonia, after which he begins dating his classmate Juanita. Bud”s studies at Yale University clearly do not go well, and after the onset of the Great Depression, his father goes bankrupt and commits suicide. Bud leaves the university and marries a poor Italian waitress, Angelina. Meanwhile, in the sanatorium, where Wilma spends more than two years, she meets another patient, Johnny Masterson, who proposes to her. After leaving the sanitarium, before accepting Johnny”s proposal, Wilma goes in search of Bud. She finds him on a small farm where he lives with a pregnant Angelina and her young son. They realize that while they still have some feelings, the past is gone, and they will each go their separate ways.

As film historian Margarita Landazuri writes, “The film was made at a time when both cinematography and society in general were undergoing fundamental changes, and it is darker than traditional films about teenage love. It tells realistically, even shockingly, about the agony of first love, and the forces that deprive lovers of each other.” Playwright William Inge wrote the play about people he knew growing up in Kansas in the 1920s. Inge told Kazan about the play when they worked together on a Broadway production of Darkness at the Top of the Stairs in 1957. They agreed that it would make a good film, and willingly took on the work. Inge spotted young Warren Beatty in the play at one of the theaters in New Jersey, and impressed by his performance, recommended him to Kazan for the role of Bud. Although irritated by the arrogance of the inexperienced actor, Kazan was impressed by his acting and talent, and agreed to cast Beatty as Bud. According to Landazuri, “This was Beatty”s first film, and that film made him a star.

On the other hand, despite her 22-year-old age, Natalie Wood was already a seasoned Hollywood actress, having started acting in movies since she was five. Although she easily went from being a child star to adult roles, the films she played in before that were not particularly meaningful. Wood was on a long-term contract with Warner Brothers, the studio that produced the film, and the studio wanted Kazan to cast her. Seeing her as nothing more than a child star whose time had passed, Kazan began to resist. But when he met Wood in person, he sensed a “restlessness and impermanence” in her character that suited his vision of the lead character perfectly, and he cast her. Although Wood was married at the time of filming, and Beatty had a steady partner, there was not only a cinematic, but also an actual romance that began between them. Kazan, considering it useful to the picture, encouraged him in every way. He later recalled: “I had no regrets about it. It helped their love scenes.” At the time of the premiere of the film in autumn 1961 Wood and Beatty had already left their previous partners and lived together. As Landazuri notes, to enhance the picture”s artistic atmosphere, Kazan invited avant-garde composer David Amram, who wrote “modernist (often dissonant) music, and commissioned the production designer to develop the scenography in harsh and vivid colors, which made the picture the antithesis of sentimentality.”

Upon its release, the film received excellent reviews. Time Magazine noted that “in this picture…the relatively simple story of teenage love and disillusionment in a small Midwestern town becomes an angry psychosociological monograph describing the sexual mores of the heartless outback.” Thanks to Kazan, “the film is certainly made artfully, thrillingly and professionally in every detail.” According to Krauser of the New York Times, “Sex and parental despotism stymie the relationship between the two romantic high school students in Inge and Kazan”s new film. Inge wrote and Kazan directed this frank and scary social drama that makes your eyes pop out of your orbits and your humble cheeks start to blaze.” The picture presents life in the town, “ugly, vulgar and oppressive, at times comical and sad.” Noting the “excellent” color choices and “superb” art direction, Krauser also paid tribute to the acting, especially singling out Natalie Wood, who “has a beauty and radiance that carry her through the role of stormy passions and longing with untainted purity and power. There is poetry in her acting, and her eyes in the last scene testify to the moral significance and emotional content of this film.” Variety wrote that Kazan”s film touches “forbidden territory with great care, compassion and cinematic flair. It is an extremely personal and moving drama that benefits enormously from a cinematic delivery.” A Newsweek review noted that “shocked moviegoers may be puzzled as to who deserves their main thanks for one of the richest American films in recent years. For simplicity, the words of thanks can be addressed to Kazan. Acting as the primary focal point between Inge”s large cast and script, he made a film that reveals Inge”s unique talent for sympathetic satire in dramatic storytelling. It boasts the greatest number of colorful characters of any film in recent years, explodes with startling and frank humor, and sweeps along with a harrowing sense of inevitable tragedy.” Thomson later wrote that the film was “the best proof that Natalie Wood was a great actress” and that Beatty and Wood “played the best roles of their careers in it.” Wosberg also noted that in this picture “Wood gave away the game of her career.” The film earned William Inge an Oscar for best screenplay and an Oscar nomination for Natalie Wood. Wood also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress. Kazan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award. The film received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture in a Drama, and Wood and Beatty were nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes.

Also read, biographies – Alcibiades

Literary and film career in the 1960s and 1980s

As Thomson writes, in the 1960s, when Kazan was in his fifties, he began writing novels because he believed that literature was “more noble and valuable. Kazan once explained his decision to become a writer as follows: “I wanted to say exactly what I felt. I like to say directly what I feel. It doesn”t matter whose play you”re putting on or how sympathetic you are to the playwright, what you end up trying to do is to interpret his views on life… When I speak for myself, I get a tremendous sense of liberation.” Since the early 1960s, Kazan has written six novels, including several bestsellers. Two novels, America, America (1962) and The Deal (1967), he turned into films. In general, as Thomson wrote, Kazan “proved to be a fascinating author.” After the success of his first two books, he released the novels The Killers (1972), The Undertaker (1974), Acts of Love (1978) and The Anatolian (1982). According to Rothstein, these books have received “mixed or critical reviews.” As Thomson notes, “They can still be read today, but they are ordinary books.”

Kazan”s first novel, America, America (1962) recreated the odyssey of his uncle, a Greek youth who escaped poverty and persecution in Turkey and, overcoming numerous setbacks and troubles, reached America. According to Rothstein, “the book became a bestseller. In 1963 Kazan made a film of the same name based on the book at Warner Bros. Studios, acting as screenwriter, producer and director. The film is set in 1896 in a deep province of the Ottoman Empire, where the Greek and Armenian populations are brutally oppressed. Young Greek Stavros Topuzoglu (Stathis Yalelis) decides to leave the country after the Turks kill his closest friend for resisting the regime. His father sends Stavros to Constantinople to get into the business of his uncle Odysseus, who sells carpets. The parents give Stavros all their valuables, expecting to move in with their son later. However, on the way, everything of value Stavros has is stolen by his new Turkish acquaintance, who turns out to be a swindler. Stavros later finds and kills the Turk, but he cannot get the money back. Odysseus is disappointed that Stavros has arrived without money. He proposes to the handsome Stavros to marry a rich bride, but the latter fears that his family will be an obstacle to his goal of reaching America. After Stavros refuses, Odysseus throws him out into the street. Stavros takes the dirtiest work and sleeps in the dormitories, where he gradually begins to save money, but loses it all again after he meets a prostitute. Anarchists and revolutionaries congregate at the hostel, and during a raid on them by government troops, Stavros is badly wounded and loses consciousness. He is thrown into a pile of dead bodies to be thrown into the sea, but Stavros manages to escape. He returns to Odysseus and agrees to marry the daughter of a rich carpet merchant. He tells his bride frankly that he wants to use the dowry money to pay for his move to America. Having received money for a ticket from the wife of an Armenian-American businessman Aradon Kebyan, Stavros informs his bride that he cannot marry her and soon sails to the United States. Aboard the ship, Araton learns of his wife”s affair with Stavros. He presses criminal charges against Stavros, rescinds his job offer in America and threatens to deport him back to Turkey. At this point, a young Armenian who is friends with Stavros dies aboard the ship from tuberculosis. Just before he dies, the Armenian throws himself overboard the ship, allowing Stavros to use his name to get to New York. Upon reaching America, Stavros begins to save up money to move his entire family.

As Bosley Krauser wrote in the New York Times, the film is Kazan”s “magnificent tribute” to his uncle, who was the first of his family to emigrate to the United States. His tribute to his “courage, tenacity and vision, Kazan expressed in exceptionally lively, energetic cinematic terms.” But the film is not only a tribute, but also “a ringing ode to the whole great wave of immigration… This story is as old as Homer”s and as modern as the dossier.” And in it Kazan “invests all the longing, the frustration and ultimately the joy of the tireless wanderer who seeks and finally finds his spiritual home. Kazan brings to the audience the poetry of immigrants coming to America. Through masterful authentic staging and hard-hitting focus, he gives us an understanding of this drama never before seen on screen.” At the same time, however, according to the critic, “if the picture had not been so excessively long and redundant, it would have been even better.

According to contemporary film historian Jay Carr, among the many pictures of immigration to America, this one is among the most “memorable, and still makes a powerful impression. As the critic goes on to write, “This is Kazan”s most personal film, based on his own family history … Kazan used authentic location filming in Greece, he also cast an actor not known in America who was free of the burden of association that Hollywood actors possessed. According to Carr, Kazan chose Stathis Galletis for the lead role not only because he was Greek, but also because he could convey with his pale eyes the keen intellect necessary in the struggle to survive as he goes from innocence to experience. He is lied to, robbed and deceived, frustrated, attacked and left for dead, and as he goes through all this he gains the wisdom to transform himself from exploited to exploited, not forgetting his goal of getting to America. According to the film scholar, “shooting the film in Greece was a wise decision, as was using the black-and-white shooting that Kazan has adhered to virtually his entire career.” Susan King called the picture “Kazan”s last great film,” his “most personal and most beloved film.” Thomson noted that it “was the type of film that a man with Kazan”s history had every reason to make, and yet the direct self-expression was far less lively than, for example, the identification of himself with the recalcitrant Cal played by James Dean in Far From Heaven.”

The film won an Oscar for feature production, as well as three Oscar nominations for Kazan as producer for best film, as screenwriter and as director. As best director, Kazan was also awarded a Golden Globe, a nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award, the Grand Prize at the San Sebastian Festivals and the St. George Award, and as a screenwriter, a nomination for the Screenwriters Guild of America Award. At the same time, as Vosburgh noted, despite its critical success, “this nostalgic three-hour saga about a young Greek was a financial disaster.

According to Rothstein, Kazan”s second novel, The Deal (1967), dealt with “the midlife crisis of a walking businessman. Most critics had a low opinion of the novel, yet it became a bestseller. Blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein described the novel as “a book a guy would have rejected as unworthy of being made into a movie.” Nevertheless, in 1969 Kazan wrote a screenplay based on the novel, and then carried out the production of the picture as well. The Deal (1969) tells the story of Eddie Anderson (Kirk Douglas), a Greek-American who achieves great career success by becoming the successful director of a major advertising agency in Los Angeles. One day, he unexpectedly attempts suicide when he deliberately crashes his car into a truck on his way to work. Upon waking up, he refuses to talk, stating only that he will not return to the company. Eddie develops a severe psychological crisis connected to the loss of passion in his relationship with his wife Florence (Deborah Kerr), with whom he has lived together for many years. Another theme of Eddie”s experiences is the tumultuous affair with his advertising agency employee Gwen (Faye Dunaway), whom he broke up with about two years ago. Eddie plunges into a long depression that is accompanied by flashbacks and hallucinations about Gwen. Emerging from his voluntary silence, Eddie has long conversations with his wife, telling her about his dissatisfaction with life. Florence sympathetically listens to him, trying her best to save their marriage, but periodically begins to accuse her husband of adultery. After talking to a psychiatrist, Eddie returns to work, but soon insults an important client and then recklessly pilots his private jet in the skies over Los Angeles, raising new questions about his mental state. The family lawyer prevents Eddie”s arrest, then persuades him to sign a power of attorney in Florence”s name to dispose of all the family assets. Eddie heads to New York to visit his gravely ill father, where he meets again with Gwen, who lives there with her suitor named Charles and a year-and-a-half-year-old child (whose father”s name she refuses to give). When relatives want to place the father in an asylum, Eddie takes him to the family mansion on Long Island, where he soon discharges Gwen as well. They resume their sexual relationship, and Eddie convinces Gwen to marry him. However, their conversation is interrupted by relatives who break into the house and take Eddie”s father away in an ambulance, whereupon the lawyer again persuades Eddie to sign a power of attorney to dispose of the property. Eddie signs the power of attorney in the lawyer”s name, after which he follows Gwen to her house, where Charles shoots him, wounding him in the shoulder. After Eddie sets fire to the family mansion in a rage, he is placed in a mental hospital, from which he is ready to be released at any time if he proves that he has a job and a home. Gwen brings the child to him and tells him she has found a job for him. She accompanies Eddie to his father”s funeral, where Florence and Gwen see each other for the first time. Eddie sees his father off for the last time, surrounded by his mistress, his wife, who is holding a lawyer”s hand, and other family members.

As film historian Michael Atkinson noted, “Kazan”s novel, from which the film is based, was to a certain extent based on his own spoiled life in Beverly Hills, his own breakdown due to the onset of his mid-life crisis and his views on the pop culture current at the time.” However, according to Atkinson, the true extent of the film”s autobiography is not known. Judging from Kazan”s published memoirs, “in reality he was only fantasizing about how a real nervous breakdown would set him free.” As for the selfish wife played by Deborah Kerr, her image is in no way based on Kazan”s first wife, who died in 1963. According to the film historian, it was most likely a collective image of the L.A. wives Kazan dated. Kazan”s memoir also reveals that he was “a perfect adulterer, well acquainted with the intoxication of destructive relationships with other people”s wives.” Unlike Kazan, “in the middle of the last century no American director showed such interest and eloquence about nervous breakdowns and emotional collapse, while with Kazan the subject appears in at least six of his most prominent films.” As Atkinson goes on to write, the film is constructed as if “Douglas”s suffering hero is a kind of superhuman around whom pitiful humanity swarms,” it is “above all a monument to the furious solipsism of its creator.” Moreover, as the critic suggests, “Kazan”s film is in many ways symptomatic of its time, representing a clumsy attempt to assimilate the culture of old-school Hollywood into the new media environment of Easy Rider (1969), Woodstock, Vietnam and Bob Dylan. In its construction it is a “monster movie, demolishing everything, crude and thunderous, telling of the blinding materialism of Los Angeles even as its hero practically goes mad from its emptiness. It”s a film about the rejection of modern culture that erupts in it at every turn. It is a chilling portrait of Los Angeles in its impotence.” As the critic notes, moreover, it is “perhaps the first of many American films about the male midlife crisis of menopause, and to express this common human distress, Kazan uses everything, including the introduction of flashbacks, chopped and associative editing, even a bit of surrealism. All of this is mixed into a widescreen spectacle made in the fashion of the time. Perhaps this style was not chosen deliberately (the style of the picture is unlike any other Kazan film), but was simply an attempt to adapt to the changing times.” In Atkinson”s view, “Kazan”s phony attempt to be relevant, as with some other filmmakers of his generation, is both depressing and eloquent about that unpleasant stretch in American culture when anyone over 30 (including Kazan and his protagonist) suddenly found themselves increasingly irrelevant and disconnected from the world around them.” As the critic concludes, “Of course, Kazan”s mastery has always been strongest in showcasing urban stories, immigrant problems and the plight of the proletariat, rather than in showing the sun-drenched highways of Los Angeles and the ultra-expensive mansions of Beverly Hills. But the unbridled narcissism with which this picture is imbued may represent a moment of cinematic self-disclosure, his moment of exposure as an artist and as a survivor of the industry.”

Upon its release, the film received contradictory reviews from critics. For example, Vincent Camby in The New York Times wrote that it was “Kazan”s most romantic film. It is also perhaps the worst from a cinematic point of view and the most successful commercially.” It “reeks of slightly absurd movie chic.” But “it”s not funny at all, it”s just a jumble of borrowed styles. And, even worse, the film is probably largely incomprehensible on a narrative level unless one reads Kazan”s 543-page bestseller beforehand, which the director has more or less tried to summarize in the film.” While that said, “in places the whole thing is even interesting to watch as a melodrama, it also has some genuine fascination with Kazan”s fantasies about himself.” And yet, “Kazan, who has made some very good films, has turned his own life into a second-rate movie. He seems to have turned his search for himself into a soulless soap opera not worthy of his true talent.” Variety called the picture “a muddled, overly contrived and overly long film with too many characters that don”t care much for the viewer.” Roger Ebert wrote that it was “one of their long, boring ”serious” movies with stars that were popular in the 1950s before we began to appreciate style more than the director”s good intentions. It is not successful, especially by Kazan”s standards, but it is supported by the wonderful acting of Douglas and Dunaway.”

In 1972 Kazan directed The Guests (1972), made “on a tiny film budget from a script by his eldest son Chris (who died of cancer in 1991). The film was shot on 16mm film in and around his farm in Newtown, Connecticut, and was intended for very limited distribution in theaters.” One critic called the film “the son of ”In Porto,”” only this time “the noble informant was a Vietnam veteran who testified against two former army friends who raped and murdered a Vietnamese girl.” The film is set on a small farm in New England, where Vietnam War veteran Bill Schmidt (James Woods) lives with his girlfriend Martha Wayne and their young son Hal. They rent a house from Harry (Patrick McVeigh), Martha”s father, who lives next door and writes tabloid westerns for a living. One day two men, Tony Rodriguez and Mike Nickerson (Steve Railsback), show up on their doorstep and introduce themselves as Bill”s Vietnam combat buddies. It is noticeable that Bill is not particularly happy to see his comrades. Left alone with Bill, Tony informs him that he and Mike have just been released from military prison at Fort Leavenworth after two years in prison for a crime in which Bill testified against them. Seeing Bill”s excitement, Tony says he forgives him. After learning that Bill”s guests are war veterans, Harry invites them to his cottage, where he treats them to a drink and tells them about his service in the Pacific during World War II. During the conversation, Harry suddenly sees that his dog has been badly wounded by a neighbor”s dog. Seeing Harry”s displeasure, Mike pulls a rifle from his car and kills the neighbor”s dog to the approving glances of Harry and Tony. While the three men drag the body of the killed dog back to the neighbor”s house, Billy and Martha head to his house, where he tells her about the trial of Mike, Tony, and two other members of their posse. Bill says that Mike led a team that was searching for Vietnamese soldiers in a small village. Unable to locate anyone suspicious, Mike captured a teenage girl, raped her, and then ordered the other members of the squad to do the same. Everyone complied except Bill, who later reported the crime to his superiors. Martha is supportive of Bill, who continues to worry about his act. She also wants Bill to ask Mike and Tony to leave as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Harry, along with Mike and Tony, go to Bill”s house to watch a soccer game. Seeing this, Martha leaves the house to go for a walk. During the game, Harry gets really drunk and starts ranting about fighting communism and making racist remarks that piss off Tony. Bill goes upstairs to see his son. When Mike asks Harry why Martha and Bill are still not married, he calls Bill a wuss. After the game is over, Harry suggests we go out to dinner together and go raccoon hunting at night. Returning from the outing, Martha is clearly annoyed that Bill never asked Mike and Tony to leave. Left alone, Harry asks Mike about Bill”s involvement in the tribunal. When Mike tells the story, he notices to his surprise that Harry takes his side, asking why he didn”t kill Bill for his betrayal. After dinner, Martha sends a completely drunk Harry home and serves coffee to her guests. Left in the living room alone with Mike, Martha says that she knows about what happened in Vietnam, stating that she supports Bill. Mike, in turn, claims that she is insulting her father by living with a man out of wedlock. Mike claims that despite what the army has done to him, as a soldier he is better than Bill. When Mike tells her that he was shocked by the sight of his mutilated and brutally murdered comrades-in-arms, Martha becomes sympathetic to him and hesitantly agrees to dance with him. Intrigued by the resulting silence, Tony and Bill return to the living room. Seeing Mike”s smug face, with Martha snuggled in, Bill pounces on Mike. Tony stays to hold Martha, and Mike and Bill go out into the yard, where Mike viciously beats Bill. Mike then returns to the house, where he and Tony catch Martha and then brutally rape her. Tony drags the half-dead Bill back into the house, and then they leave with Mike. Martha slides down from the second floor and sits down next to Bill.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times raved about the film about the brutal legacy of the Vietnam War as “extremely moving,” noting that Kazan “is still a first-rate director.” As TV Guide magazine later wrote, “Kazan, who has made commercially successful films, has moved away from traditional studio filmmaking to try making more personal films with meaning. This film proves that this may not have been his wisest move.” As the review goes on to note, “presumably the film was intended as a treatise on the problems of soldiers who returned from Vietnam with the same notions that allowed them to commit mass murder.” Also present is the theme of the falsehood behind the ideals of those trying to lead a hippie lifestyle. Both themes are based on superficial concepts, and “neither of these themes is expressed honestly and fairly enough… Probably the son of Kazan, Chris, who wrote the script, is primarily to blame for this.”

In 1976 Paramount Pictures released Kazan”s The Last Tycoon (1976), based on Scott Fitzgerald”s unfinished novel of the same name. It was produced by Sam Spiegel (who had worked with Kazan on Into the Harbor) and the screenplay was written by Harold Pinter. The film has an all-star cast including Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Jack Nicholson and many others. However, as Thomson notes, “It”s as if all these geniuses had forgotten their heads at home. This is Kazan”s most boring film.”

The film received mostly negative reviews from critics. For example, film reviewer David Shipman wrote that “Scott Fitzgerald”s last, unfinished novel lies in ruins here,” and The New Yorker felt that it was “as powerless as a vampire movie that the vampires have left.” On the other hand, Vincent Camby in the New York Times noted that the film managed to retain the virtues of Fitzgerald”s unfinished novel, making it “a very complete and satisfying film through the use of a sharp, jerky editing style and an unusual form of narration… Made in a subdued and brooding, sad but unsentimental manner, it tells of a character similar to the famous Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg. The film tries to show Hollywood in a serious way, without hype or grotesque, and to present Talberg-Star in a particularly serious way.” According to Canby, “It”s a very understated film, and it”s so full of associations–with Thalberg, with stories about Hollywood in the ”30s, with Fitzgerald”s own life and career–that it”s hard to separate what you see from what”s brought in. The film contains no climax. We follow the horizon as if it were a landscape viewed by the camera in a long panoramic shot. And the backdrop is Hollywood of the golden thirties.”

Contemporary film historian Dennis Schwartz called the picture “a pretentious and empty adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald”s fragmentary unfinished novel. Perhaps the best that can be said of the film is that it is uneven and gives some opportunity to observe with interest the stars of its famous cast.” As the critic suggests, “The film takes itself and Hollywood too seriously and seems to piously worship itself, but it is too clumsy to matter much, or to be entertaining, or to overcome its boredom and emptiness. Pinter”s unengaging script has too many languid, meaningful pauses, and the actors are forced to utter heavy-handed, almost unintelligible lyrics. No one has the energy or enthusiasm in this film, only De Niro gives his character a grace and beauty that the rest of the film lacks.” As Schwartz notes, “The film was the favorite brainchild of producer Sam Spiegel, who intended it to be a masterpiece, but his constant interference only made the film worse.” The film was the last for director Elia Kazan.

According to Thomson, however, this was not the end of Kazan”s creative biography. For several years he had been working on his autobiography, Life (1988). It is “a very long, frank, though sly text to be read with the same caution with which a lawyer testifies under oath. But it is a crucial and deeply compelling book, a portrait of a very confused man and perhaps the best autobiography of a showbiz man in a century.” As Thomson continues, “Kazan”s enemies hated the book–and he further solidified his magnificent isolation. He was a demon, a genius, a man who left his mark everywhere. And nothing of what he did should be discounted or forgotten.”

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Family life

Kazan was married three times. From 1932 until her death in 1963 he was married to writer and screenwriter Molly Day Thatcher. They had four children, Chris (who died of cancer in 1991), Judy, Kate and Nicholas, who became a Hollywood screenwriter, producer and director.

He was married to the actress, writer and director Barbara Lodin from 1967 until her death from cancer in 1980. In this marriage his son Leo was born, and Kazan also adopted Marco Joachim, Lodin”s son from his first marriage.

He married the writer Frances Rudge in 1982 and lived with her until his death. As a result of this marriage, Kazan had two more stepchildren from Raj”s previous marriage, Charlotte Raj and Joseph Raj.

At the time of his death, Kazan had six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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Death

Elia Kazan died on September 28, 2003, at his home in Manhattan at the age of 94.

Mervyn Rothstein in the New York Times called Kazan “one of the most revered and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history.” On Broadway, Kazan was a member of the legendary The Group Theater from 1932-1945, founder and longtime director of the Actors Studio from 1947-1959, and in the early 1960s, founder with Robert Whitehead of the first repertory theater at Lincoln Center. Some of Kazan”s most significant theatrical productions include A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). He was “the favorite director of a generation of new American playwrights, including two of the most important, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller,” and, as Thomson notes while working at the Actors Studio, made important contributions to the development of the principles of “psychological naturalism.” In 1953 the critic Eric Bentley wrote that “Kazan”s work means more to American theater than the work of any contemporary writer,” and, according to Rothstein, “Kazan”s achievements have helped shape the principles of American theater and film for more than a generation to come.”

According to Susan King of the Los Angeles Times, “Kazan was one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20th century, directing such classics as ”A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951), ”At the Port” (1954) and ”East of Heaven” (1955).” As film historian and Brooklyn College professor Foster Hirsch said, Kazan”s films from the 1950s are “the films with the best acting I”ve ever seen.” As Hirsch suggests, “I don”t think this great acting has an expiration date. ”Dolly” and ”At the Port” are the best acting films ever made.” In 1995, Kazan said of his films, “I think a dozen of them are very good, and I don”t think there are any other films as good on these themes or feelings.”

As Hirsch further wrote, Kazan “created a truly new style of acting, called the Method,” which drew on Stanislavski”s system. Kazan”s method “allowed actors to create a greater depth of psychological realism than had previously been the case.” As Rothstein points out, “according to many critics, Kazan was the best director for American actors on stage and screen. He discovered Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty and contributed to redefining the film acting profession. Kazan was the director who gave the first major film roles to Lee Remick, Joe Van Fleet and Jack Palance.” King also notes that “such actors as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Carl Malden, Patricia Neal, Terry Moore and Andy Griffith blossomed under his direction. The actors who worked with him admired him and still do.

As the actress Mildred Dunnock once said, “Some directors see actors as a necessary evil, others as children to be handled. Kazan, on the other hand, treated actors “as equals, after he takes you on, he gives you confidence. Carroll Baker noted that Kazan launched the careers of many young actors in the Actors Studio. In her words, he “was truly an acting director. He discovered a lot of people, and he knew how to use you to get you to play your best,” he “was the best director for actors.” Patricia Neal recalled that “he was very good. He was an actor, and he knew how we played. He used to come in and talk to you in private a lot. I liked him a lot.” Terry Moore, calling him her best friend, went on to say: “He made you feel like you were better than you thought you could be. I had no other director who could compare to him. I was spoiled for life.” Actor Carl Molden, who played in four of Kazan”s biggest films, said, “We were as close as an actor and a director can be.” According to the actor, Kazan often took long walks with actors he was considering for a particular role. “Kazan needed to understand the actor, to know how to make his emotions work on stage and screen. So when he hired you, he knew more about you than you knew about yourself.” Dustin Hoffman said he doubted whether he, or De Niro, or Al Pacino could have become actors “without Kazan”s pioneering influence.”

At the same time, according to Rothstein, “Kazan also had his own cinematic detractors, who at times accused him of being simplistic and sentimental, of dumbing down his themes and relying on evasive endings. Kazan himself was also quite aware of his own limitations. He wrote: “I do not possess a huge range. I am weak in music and vivid spectacle. Classics are not my thing… I am a mediocre director except when a play or film touches on part of my own life experience… I have courage, even some courage. I know how to talk to actors–to encourage them to play their best. I have strong, even violent feelings, and those are my strengths.”

Later, according to Rothstein, Kazan also became a “successful novelist. He said, “When you write your own writing, it means more to me than I can extract from anyone else”s work (as a director), and some of what I have written has turned out quite well.” Summarizing Kazan”s personality and creative diversity, Thomson wrote, “Kazan was a scoundrel, perhaps. He was not always a reliable comrade or a pleasant person. But he is a monumental personality, the greatest wizard at working with actors of his time, a superb theatrical director, a cinematographer of genuine fame, a novelist, and finally, a bold, sincere, egotistical, self-destructive and defiant autobiographer-a great, dangerous man, the kind his enemies were fortunate to have.”

According to Rothstein, “Kazan was a short (167 cm), wiry, energetic and unusual man with a swarthy face, rumpled clothing and a dominant personality type, who over the years created many versions of his true self. An article about Kazan on the CBS page describes him as “a short, stocky, energetic man who preferred casual clothes and was straightforward in his communications. As Vivien Leigh once said of him, “Gadge is the sort of man who sends a suit out to be cleaned and wrinkled. He doesn”t believe in social convenience, and if he”s bored with any person or group, he just leaves without apology or explanation.”

As Kazan himself often said about himself, he was woven of contradictions. Comparing himself to a black snake, in his autobiography “Elia Kazan: A Life” (1988) he wrote: “During my life I shed several skins, lived several lives and experienced violent and cruel changes. Usually I understood what had happened after it had happened.” As Kazan went on to write, “I repeatedly surprised people with what seemed to be a complete reversal of attitudes and views. This sometimes led to distrust of me. Again and again my contradictory desires led to rejection of one or the other.” Arthur Schlesinger, in his article on Kazan”s autobiography in The New York Times Book Review, described the director as “brilliant, passionate, generous, restless, discontented, angry and vengeful, as a trove of creativity, resentment and controversy.” As Rothstein adds, “Kazan was all of these things, and many more.”

Thomson also recalls that, among other things, “Kazan was a fierce heterosexual, a man who required personal sexual identification in his work, and who often had passionate affairs with his actresses.” In his 1988 autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, he wrote of the many romances he had over the years, including an affair with Marilyn Monroe. “My novels were a source of knowledge for me-they were my education. Over the years in this field and only in this field have I used lies, and I”m not proud of that. But I must say this: my interest in women saved me. It pumped my juices and saved me from drying up, turning to dust and scattering in the wind.” According to Thomson, “His eventful career and contradictory impulses can in no way be reduced to a single article. To list all his merits would take a great deal of space and leave no room for a proper description of his truly ugly face, which attracted a look of shameful eyes. He was sharp, belligerent, seductive, enthusiastic, and cruel. One moment he could be a lofty humanist, the next a piratical womanizer. Until old age and illness overcame him, he was full of a fierce and competitive vitality. To be with him meant to know that in addition to all that he did, he could also be a hypnotic actor or an inspiring political leader.”

When Kazan was 78 years old, he wrote in his autobiography, “What pisses me off now is mortality, for example. I”ve only recently learned to enjoy life. I”ve stopped worrying about what people think of me – or at least I like to believe I do. I used to spend most of my time straining to be a good guy, to get people to like me. Now I”ve retired from show business and become my own man.”

Kazan won three Tony Awards as best director for his plays All My Sons by Arthur Miller (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949), and for his play J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. (1959). He was also nominated four more times for a Tony Award – as best director for his production of Tennessee Williams” Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1956), as best director and co-producer of William Inge”s Darkness at the Top of the Stairs (1956) and as best director for his production of Tennessee Williams” The Sweet-Haired Bird of Youth (1960). Five of Kazan”s plays have won Pulitzer Prizes for their authors: “The Skin of Our Teeth” for Thornton Wilder in 1943, “A Streetcar Named Desire” – Tennessee Williams in 1948, “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller in 1949, “Cat on a Hot Roof” by Tennessee Williams in 1955, and “J.B.” – Archibald MacLeish in 1959.

Kazan won Oscars for directing The Gentleman”s Agreement (1947) and Into the Harbor (1954), which also won Best Picture Oscars. Kazan was also nominated for Best Director at the Oscars for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), “East of Heaven” (1955), and for “America, America” (1963) he was nominated for three Oscars–for best screenplay, best production, and as producer for best picture. Thirteen of Kazan”s films have been nominated for Oscars in at least one category, and nine of them have won at least one award. Seven of Kazan”s films have won a total of 20 Oscars, including In the Harbor (1954) which won eight Oscars.

Twenty-one actors have been nominated for Oscars for playing in films directed by Kazan, including James Dunn, Celeste Holm, Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, Ann Revere, Jeanne Crane, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, Carl Moulden, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Eva Marie Saint, Lee Jay Cobb, Rod Steiger, Joe Van Fleet, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Mildred Dunnock and Natalie Wood. Among the actors listed, Dunn, Holm, Molden, Lee, Hunter, Quinn, Brando, Sainte and Van Fleet won Oscars. Four actresses have won Oscars for Best Supporting Actress for their roles in Kazan”s films–Holm, Hunter, Sainte and Van Fleet. Kazan is one of only four directors whose actors in films have won Oscars in all four acting categories. William Wyler, Hal Ashby and Martin Scorcese have also done so.

When the decision was made in 1999, four years before his death, to award Kazan an honorary Oscar for lifetime contributions, “the wounds of his appearance before the Congressional Commission on Un-American Activities were reopened. As Marvin Rothstein noted in the New York Times, receiving the award made a lot of noise because in 1952 Kazan provoked the ire of many of his friends and colleagues when he admitted before the Commission that he had been a member of the Communist Party from 1934 to 1936 and gave the Commission the names of eight other party members. Many people in the arts, including those who had never been Communists, sharply criticized him for this act for several decades. And two years earlier, the American Film Institute had denied Kazan its award. According to Rothstein, awarding Kazan an honorary Oscar generated numerous protests, but Kazan also had quite a lot of support. For example, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. said, “If this Academy case demands an apology from Kazan, then let his detractors apologize then for the help and sympathy they gave to Stalinism.” Kazan was also reminded that there were also actors who would never forgive him for naming the Congressional Commission. Thus, Victor Navasky, author of Naming Names, wrote, “Precisely because he was the most influential director in the country, Kazan should have used his influence to fight against blacklisting and fight against the commission, but he relented.” On Oscar night in 1999, more than 500 demonstrators gathered outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, protesting the presentation of the honorary award to Kazan. Inside the auditorium, things were also a far cry from the traditional standing ovation typical of other awards shows. On the night of the awards, part of the audience did not applaud, though others gave him a warm welcome. Director Martin Scorcese and actor Robert De Niro presented Kazan with the award, expressing their admiration for his work. In his response, Kazan said: “I”m very grateful to you. I”m really pleased to hear that, and I want to thank the Academy for its courage and its generosity.”

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Cinematography

Sources

1. Казан, Элиа
2. Elia Kazan