Elia Kazan: Seven great films in memory of a director who made a huge splash in Hollywood
When news of his death spread two decades ago, many thought that Elia Kazan had died long ago and that others had killed him while he was still alive. For if there was anything that stood out above this director’s cinematic talent, it was his fierce involvement as an informant in the disastrous McCarthy witch hunt that characterized Hollywood in the early 1950s.
While Dashiell Hammett ended up in prison for his silence, Kazan spoke at the same time as the premiere of one of his most famous films, Viva Zapata!, and presented to the committee the list of his well-known comrades from the Communist Party of yesterday about un-American activities. . This allowed him to continue his career, but also sealed his fate in the Mecca of cinema. For example, while Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro were on stage presenting the honorary Oscar the director received in 1999, the likes of Ed Harris, Holly Hunter and Nick Nolte crossed their arms to avoid applauding him at one of the coldest awards ever. will be remembered. “I congratulate you,” said the director, responding to the provocation of an inflated ego.
Kazan became a representative of the conflict between artistic creation and political affiliation, because when he received this award there was actually no doubt that he was a monumental filmmaker who made unforgettable films while at the same time receiving rejection from colleagues like Jules Dassin. “Kazan was a traitor. Some of the people he ratted out were his best friends. Their lives and futures were destroyed. He became an ally and accomplice of a notorious committee that shamed the country,” he wrote wordlessly in a query.
Elias Kazanjoglou is of Greek origin and was born on September 7, 1909 in Constantinople. In 1913 the family settled in the United States from Berlin. He came from a humble background and worked as a night porter to finance his acting studies at Yale University. Shortly thereafter, he joined the innovative Group Theater and later founded the Actor’s Studio with Lee Strasberg. Human Connections in 1945 marked his entry into the film industry and the beginning of a productive career as a director that would reach its peak by the early 1960s. He then turned to theater and literature and expanded his productions until his departure from the cinema with “The Last Tycoon”, which starred De Niro, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, Jeanne Moreau, Dana Andrews, John Carradine and Jack Nicholson .
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Below is a review of some of Kazan’s films available to stream.
A journalist moves to New York with his son and mother and is assigned to write an article about anti-Semitism. To achieve this, he decides to adopt a Jewish identity, collect information from his own experience and thus discover the latent discrimination in a society. Shot shortly after the end of World War II, Darryl F. Zanuck (including “42nd Street,” “How Green Was My Valley!”, “Vines of Wrath,” “Blood and Sand”) decided to produce the film after He was denied membership in the country club in New York on the assumption of his Jewish origins. The huge box office success won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Gregory Peck) and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). The cast also included Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield, Jane Waytt and Dean Stockwell.
Light is for Everyone is available on Star+ as The Invisible Barrier.
When this film was made, based on the Tennessee Williams drama of the same name, written by the same author along with an adaptation of Oscar Saul, everyone was convinced that Kazan would create his masterpiece. Blanche, a woman stuck in the past, visits her sister Stella and her abusive husband Stanley, with whom she continues to live. When she tells them about the loss of the family property, Stanley becomes suspicious and decides to investigate Blanche’s past. Kazan, a masterpiece about the troubles in Williams’ relationship, creates a more mature performance that earned him four Oscars, including Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter) and the Artistic Director. It became a cinema classic and the film that made Marlon Brando special.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is available at xiclos.com.
Based on Edgecumb Pinchon’s novel, the great John Steinbeck crafted a powerful screenplay that chronicles the life of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata from his farming roots to his work in the Mexican south to his rise to power and the hundred-gun ambush that led him to death. Huge blockbuster shot in Texas that reunites Kazan with Marlon Brando (as Emiliano Zapata) along with Jean Peters (Josefa Zapata), Alan Reed (Pancho Villa) and a colossal Anthony Quinn as Eufemio Zapata, who won the Oscar for Best Actor in the distribution won. Released in Argentina in the Gran Rex cinema, the strong profile of the leader-turned-myth allowed the director to offer another of his reflections on the nature of power mixed with legends.
Long live Zapata! It is available on Qubit.tv and Star+.
At the end of 1948, the New York Sun newspaper described the conflict of longshoremen, who were affected by union violence, corruption and the presence of organized crime. Based on these articles, Budd Schulberg developed a script in which the New York docks are controlled by a gangster while a former boxer works for him. So he meets a beautiful young woman, the sister of Joey, one of the victims of the mafia, and who will make the boxer doubt between loyalty or denunciation. Kazan had already spoken out against McCarthyism (also the screenwriter), but he focused this film on the ambiguity between denunciation and denunciation beyond the original social conflict. Unforgettable: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Rod Steiger and Lee J. Cobb. The film won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress.
Rat’s Nest is available on Qubit.tv as The Law of Silence
In a town in California, a farmer lives with his two sons who are like Cain and Abel. Aron is a worker and Cal is the living profile of a rebel, but he is equally loved in the city. One day Cal learns that his mother, whom both brothers thought was dead, runs a brothel in Monterrey. Faced with a bad business deal for his father, Cal decides to help him by asking his mother for money and is successful, but that doesn’t mean his wayward son’s approval. James Dean’s first leading role (and first Oscar nomination), who with only three leading roles will become an icon of the youth of his time. Jo Van Fleet received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and was celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival. Adaptation of the second part of the book of the same name by John Steinbeck.
“East of Paradise” is available on Qubit.tv.
Deanie lives in a small town in Kansas in the late 1920s and has promised her mother that she will remain chaste before she marries her boyfriend. But the young man’s father is against the marriage and longs for a much better future than the one his sister offers them. The conflicts continued until the crisis of 1929 broke out and meant a rethinking of all social conditions. It won the Oscar for Best Screenplay and Natalie Wood was nominated for this work, the best of her entire career, sharing the award with newcomer Warren Beatty. “Through a restrained melodramatic story, Kazan presents on screen various aspects of the members of a society corroded by their lack of spiritual integrity,” LA NACION said when the film premiered in Argentina on April 13, 1962.
Splendor in the Grass is available on Qubit.tv.
A tortured romance between Lee Remick and Montgomery Cliff: he as a government employee and she as the granddaughter of a quirky old woman portrayed by Jo Van Fleet who refuses to sell her land. This Kazan film – based on two novels adapted for the big screen by William Brandford Hule and Bordon Deal – refers to a historical event in the United States about the way the government expropriated land in Tennessee to build some dams along the river to build river. The film was part of the official selection of the Berlin Film Festival and was listed as one of the ten most important films of the year by the National Board Review, as well as the legendary French magazine Cahiers du Cinema.
Wild River is available on Star+.