ELIA KAZAN: A DIRECTOR'S JOURNEY is an entertaining portrait of the great stage and screen director that takes a purely hagiographic approach but features valuable and revealing interview footage with Kazan (shot in 1994) commenting on his films and the legendary performers he's worked
with.
Narrator Eli Wallach introduces stills, film clips, and interviews with Kazan to chronicle his career, beginning with his work as an actor and director in the 1930s with the left-wing Group Theatre, through his landmark Broadway productions of Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire in
the '40s, and focusing heavily on his feature film career, which includes such classics as ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), the prescient media satire A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), and the controversial erotic black comedy BABY DOLL (1956). The film also deals with Kazan, who was a former Communist turned
staunch anti-Stalinist, testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s and naming former Party associates. In 1963, Kazan makes AMERICA, AMERICA, based on his novel about his family's emigration from Turkey to the US, and then only makes three more films after
that, but has since written seven novels and an autobiography.
ELIA KAZAN: A DIRECTOR'S JOURNEY was produced by Castle Hill Productions founder Julian Schlossberg, who befriended Kazan in the '80s and acquired the distribution rights to the three films that Kazan owned (BABY DOLL, A FACE IN THE CROWD, and AMERICA, AMERICA). The documentary makes no attempt at
objective criticism; rather, it is obviously a loving tribute to Kazan, who was unquestionably a dominant creative force in the American theater of the '40s and '50s, and arguably the most important film director of the 1950s, but whose reputation has suffered because of his "naming names" to
HUAC. The film doesn't gloss over this issue, but it definitely puts a positive spin on it, claiming that Kazan was "forced to testify" and that he only gave the committee the names of party members which they already knew. Furthermore, Kazan's vigorous defense of his actions at the time (and
still unapologetic stance today) only added fuel to the fire. Because of this, it's now considered to be politically incorrect to praise Kazan, and as Wallach states, "in some quarters, he's never been forgiven"--in 1996, he was denied a Life Achievement award by the LA film critics purely on
political grounds (although he was announced to be the recipient of the Career Achievement award at the 1999 Oscar Awards ceremony).
While it may be impossible for some to separate their feelings about Kazan as a person from his directorial brilliance, his importance as a director cannot be minimized, both in terms of dealing with the post-war era's social issues and most importantly, his profound influence on modern acting
styles, manifested in the seminal performances of Marlon Brando and James Dean (though curiously, no mention at all is made in the film about Kazan's cofounding of the Actors Studio or his relationship with fellow Method acting guru Lee Strasberg). Writer-director Richard Schickel takes a reverent
and highly selective approach to Kazan's films, but Kazan's own comments and observations about his work are quite candid, revealing how he would utilize psychological tricks and exploit actors' personal problems to elicit such uniquely emotional performances (e.g., getting young Peggy Ann Garner
to cry by making her think that her fighter pilot father might be killed during WWII, or encouraging the real-life hate between Dean and Raymond Massey on the set of EAST OF EDEN by letting Dean improvise, which drove Massey crazy).
In the final analysis, Kazan comes off as intelligently combative as ever and certainly won't win over any of his enemies, but when a short list of the artistic giants of the 20th-Century is written, his name will have to be near the top. (Profanity.)
