Kazan On Film

First time in paperback—Selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1999, these never-before-published interviews conducted in the early 1970s prove to be "an invaluable addition to film scholarship, [which] allows aspiring filmmakers to study the working methods and wisdom of one of our greatest artists."—Martin Scorsese. Illustrated with 72 photos and 19 original movie posters, this fascinating book conveys the essence of Young's hundreds of hours of interviews with Kazan, featuring a summary of each film plot and a discussion of 18 of the director's films in his own words, concluding with Young's commentary on Kazan's final film, The Last Tycoon.

In this collection of interviews, renowned Academy Award-winning director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Gentleman's Agreement, Splendor in the Grass, Baby Doll, The Last Tycoon, A Face in the Crowd, and others) reveals with brutal honesty the joys and complications of production and his unique insights on acting, directing, and producing. 60 black & white movie stills and posters, Index, Filmography.

In this collection of interviews, renowned Academy Award-winning director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Gentleman's Agreement, Splendor in the Grass, Baby Doll, The Last Tycoon, A Face in the Crowd, and others) reveals with brutal honesty the joys and complications of production and his unique insights on acting, directing, and producing. 60 black & white movie stills and posters, Index, Filmography.

Elia Kazan is the director responsible for films such as On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata! and East of Eden - to name but a few. With Marlon Brando and James Dean he inaugurated a new age of screen acting - one closely connected to the New York Method school - which has left a lasting impression on American movies. A Greek immigrant - who immortalized his family's struggle to reach the New World in his film America, America - he was ferociously committed to dealing with the problems that beset American society - trade unions in On the Waterfront; anti-semitism in The Gentlemen's Agreement; media manipulation in A Face in the Crowd; and ecology in Wild River. His demand for an authentic intensity of performance from his actors brought a powerful emotionalism to American movies and created moments of cinema that live forever in the memory. This book chronicles, in his own words, the career of a director who re-defined American film acting.

Elia Kazan was the twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan’s list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound impact on the art of directing. This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan’s method: how he uncovered the “spine,” or core, of each script; how he analyzed each piece in terms of his own experience; and how he determined the specifics of his production. And in the final section, “The Pleasures of Directing”—written during Kazan’s final years—he becomes a wise old pro offering advice and insight for budding artists, writers, actors, and directors.

In 1999, Elia Kazan (1909-2003) received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement; it was a controversial award, for in 1952 he had given testimony to the HUAC Committee, for which he was ostracized by many. That Oscar also acknowledged Kazan's remarkable contribution to American and world cinema, making such films as 'On the Waterfront' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Kazan's life in the cinema is due a reassessment, one that is presented expertly and gracefully by Brian Neve in this book, drawing on previously neglected and some hitherto untapped sources. Focussing in particular on the producer-director's post-'On the Waterfront', New York based independent work, and on his key artistic collaborations, including those with Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck and Budd Schulberg, Neve gives a fascinating reassessment of Kazan's famed technique with such actors as Marlon Brando and James Dean, and his lifetime concern to provoke and photograph 'authentic' behaviour. He reveals a pattern, through the films, of personally resonant themes, relating for example to ethnicity and the American immigrant myth. He reviews Kazan's style, from the colour and wide screen of 'East of Eden' to the creative use of location in his Amercian South films, including 'Baby Doll'. He debates the reception of Kazan's work and the controversy - which dogged his career - of his 1952 Congressional testimony. These elements and more make this a very readable and memorable, fresh portrayal of the film career of this ever fascinating director. 'Working with an impressively wide variety of archival material, including Kazan's personal papers and notebooks, Brian Neve here offers a solidly researched, insightful, and historically grounded portrait of Elia Kazan, his working methods, his 19 feature films from 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' (1945) to 'The Last Tycoon' (1976), and his place in the cinematic and social world of his age.' - Chuck Maland, Professor of Cinema Studies & American Studies, University of Tennessee

ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • In this amazing autobiography, Kazan at seventy-eight brings us the undiluted telling of his story—and revelation of himself—all the passion, vitality, and truth, the almost outrageous honesty, that have made him so formidable a stage director (A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tea and Sympathy), film director (On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Gentleman’s Agreement, Splendor in the Grass, Baby Doll, The Last Tycoon, A Face in the Crowd), and novelist (the number-one best-seller The Arrangement.) “This is the best autobiography I’ve read by a prominent American in I don’t know how many years. It is endlessly absorbing and I believe this is because it concerns a man who is looking to find a coherent philosophy that will be tough enough to contain all that is ugly in his person and his experience, yet shall prove sufficiently compassionate to give honest judgment on himself and others. Somehow, the author brings this off. Elia Kazan: A Life has that candor of confession which is possible only when the deepest wounds have healed and honesty can achieve what honesty so rarely arrives at—a rich and hearty flavor. By such means, a famous director has written a book that offers the kind of human wealth we find in a major novel.” —Norman Mailer Kazan gives us his sense of himself as an outsider (a Greek rug merchant’s son born in Turkey, an immigrant’s son raised in New York and educated at Williams College). He takes us into the almost accidental sojourn at the Yale Drama School that triggered his commitment to theatre, and his edgy, exciting apprenticeship with the new and astonishing Group Theatre, as stagehand and stage manager—and as actor (Waiting for Lefty, Golden Boy) . . . his first nervous and then successful attempts at directing for theatre and movies (The Skin of Our Teeth, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) . . . his return to New York to co-found the Actors Studio (and his long and ambivalent relationship with Lee Strasberg) . . . his emergence as premier director on both coasts. With his director’s eye for the telling scene, Kazan shares the joys and complications of production, his unique insights on acting, directing, and producing. He makes us feel the close presence of the actors, producers, and writers he’s worked with—James Dean, Marlon Brando, Tennessee Williams, Vivien Leigh, Tallulah Bankhead, Sam Spiegel, Darryl Zanuck, Harold Clurman, Arthur Miller, Budd Schulberg, James Baldwin, Clifford Odets, and John Steinbeck among them. He gives us a frank and affectionate portrait of Marilyn Monroe. He talks with startling candor about himself as husband and—in the years where he obsessively sought adventure outside marriage—as lover. For the first time, he discusses his Communist Party years and his wrenching decision in 1952 to be a cooperative witness before HUAC. He writes about his birth as a writer. The pace and organic drama of his narrative, his grasp of the life and politics of Broadway and Hollywood, the keenness with which he observes the men and women and worlds around him, and, above all, the honest with which he pursues and captures his own essence, make this one of the most fascinating autobiographies of our time.

The year 1955 was a watershed one for New York’s film industry: Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront took home eight Oscars, and, more quietly, Stanley Kubrick released the low-budget classic Killer’s Kiss. A wave of films that changed how American movies were made soon followed, led by directors such as Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. Yet this resurgence could not have occurred without a deeply rooted tradition of local film production. Richard Koszarski chronicles the compelling and often surprising origins of New York’s postwar film renaissance, looking beyond such classics as Naked City, Kiss of Death, and Portrait of Jennie. He examines the social, cultural, and economic forces that shaped New York filmmaking, from city politics to union regulations, and shows how decades of low-budget independent production taught local filmmakers how to capture the city’s grit, liveliness, and allure. He reveals the importance of “race films”—all-Black productions intended for segregated African American audiences—that not only helped keep the film business afloat but also nurtured a core group of writers, directors, designers, and technicians. Detailed production histories of On the Waterfront and Killer’s Kiss—films that appear here in a completely new light—illustrate the distinctive characteristics of New York cinema. Drawing on a vast array of research—including studio libraries, censorship records, union archives, and interviews with participants—“Keep ’Em in the East” rewrites a crucial chapter in the history of American cinema.