Description: Elia Kazan: A Directors Journey (1995) is a lean and compelling 1995 profile of the filmmaker, presented through well chosen clips from Kazans films, through a sympathetic narration written by noted critic Richard Schickel and delivered by Kazan friend Eli Wallach, and particularly through long interview segments with the older but sprightly Kazan. If one of the films intentions is to shift the focus from the more controversial aspects of Kazans life and career back to the work and the record left behind on film, the documentary is mostly successful.
Schickel and producer Julian Schlossberg clearly had remarkable access to Kazan and his archives. We see a clip from a rarely seen short documentary, The People of the Cumberland (1937), in which Kazan looked at the effects of the Tennessee Valley Authority project, a topic he would revisit in his 1960 feature Wild River. Also on view is a brief screen test excerpt with Kazan and fellow actors at New Yorks Group Theater in the 1930s, made at the behest of producer Walter Wanger. A couple of years later the test would result in a few small but memorable Hollywood roles for Kazan, such as that of a small-time hood in the 1940 James Cagney Warner Bros. film, City for Conquest.
Kazans major film directing accomplishments are covered in chronological order, and for each movie mentioned Kazan reveals interesting tidbits of information or surprising levels of enthusiasm. For example, Kazan waxes nostalgic on Panic in the Streets (1950), his attempt to make a more purely visual narrative in sprawling outdoor locations (in and around New Orleans), following the dialogue-heavy feel of the award-winning Gentlemans Agreement (1947). Kazan also charmingly reveals a great fondness for Baby Doll (1956), regarded by many at the time as a misfire from the Kazan/ Tennessee Williams team.
Kazan and Schickel devote the most commentary to the Marlon Brando-starring films A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), and On the Waterfront (1954), as well as to the Budd Schulberg-scripted study of fame and media manipulation, A Face in the Crowd (1957). Kazans enthusiasm is truly infectious as he discusses the rarely-seen film America, America (1963). Adapted from his own novel, it is an affectionate look at the life of Greeks living in Turkey at the turn of the last century, and of a particular immigrants dream of reaching the United States. The film is the story of Kazans fathers generation, and Schickel presents a generous number of clips and a director as surprised as anyone that such a personally-felt movie could get made.
Elia Kazan: A Directors Journey also manages to reveal much about its subject in what it omits. Several of Kazans films are not mentioned at all, including the Western melodrama The Sea of Grass (1947), and the daring-for-the-time race relations drama, Pinky (1949). Also noticeably absent is any mention of Kazans last three films: The Arrangement (1969), a drama based on another of Kazans novels; The Visitors (1972), one of the first movies to deal directly with the war in Vietnam; and his final film, The Last Tycoon (1976), an ambitious Harold Pinter adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgeralds unfinished novel. In particular, Kazans ruminations on Fitzgeralds somber Hollywood tale would have been illuminating, given his own rocky relationship with the community. Coloring forever any discussion of Kazans film career is the fact that he named names in 1952 during the House Un-American Activities Committees investigation into Communist influence in Hollywood, and the documentary does not try to avoid the topic. The HUAC testimony is brought up only fleetingly, though, and dealt with mostly as a factor in the making of On the Waterfront (1954). Kazan admits that the film partially acts as a justification for the act of informing, but he says that it wasnt the central thing.
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