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Elia Kazan
383 documents for Elia Kazan
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Book review
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In his long life and successful career, Elia Kazan shed many skins, but the one that clung to him most tenaciously was that of traitor. The director collected endless accolades and awards - first on Broadway as a fierce interpreter of the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, then in Hollywood as director of such classics as "Gentleman's Agreement," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront." Yet Mr. Kazan's shining achievements have been overshadowed by the consequences of his decision to "name names" (already known to investigators) during the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings in the 1950s.
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Acting in the Cinema
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NEW YORK - Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's longtime editor, warmly greets a reporter outside their Manhattan offices ahead of a screening of Scorsese's new 3-D fairytale, "Hugo. Around the corner is Schoonmaker's editing bay, where she and Scorsese keep Turner Classic Movies running silently on a nearby screen while they work. Inside is a screening room where Scorsese often runs old films, familiar classics and newfound gems. At one time, they gathered with Elia Kazan every Saturday to watch one of his films. Large movie posters dot the halls: "The Third Man," "Black Narcissus." Directions to the bathroom are given as "across from Marlon Brando."
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Leading these movies that are new to DVD is Elia Kazan's 1963 black-and-white epic "America America," which is well worth checking out, as is the new Blu-ray edition of "Thelma & Louise." The newer films here? Not so much. America America" (Warner, 1963, b/w, $19.97). Based on the life of Kazan's uncle, this is a straightforward, character-driven story of a young man's burning desire to leave his oppressive Turkish homeland for the land of the free, America.
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Conversations with Scorsese by Richard Schickel, Knopf, 422 pages, ($30). Here, for certain, is one of the great film books of 2011. Nor is that status likely to change as the year proceeds. That's because it's one of the great books about filmmakers period. Yes, yes, it's true that Martin Scorsese's is one of the most lavishly documented creative lives and minds we have in American movie legendry. That's because he's been, in his time, not just a filmmaker but a film professor, a film preservation crusader, a film anthologist for video (his box set of favorite films of Elia Kazan was one of the great film artifacts of 2010), music and film documentarian, and an all-around willing Great Explainer about movies almost any time seriousness and erudition are called for.
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I always tell people my favorite movie is "On the Waterfront. As far as "favorite movies" go, it's beyond reproach. It's Elia Kazan's masterpiece, one of the key American films. The naturalistic performances were revolution-ary in 1954 -- particularly Marlon Brando's but also Rod Steiger's. It forever changed film acting and it holds up today, fever-inducing as ever.
