Limelight:
Requiescat -- for a spirit
By
Lubna Abdel Aziz
The "Golden Age" -- a fabled time of the past, where winters vanished, and the earth bore constant fruit, where men lived idyllic lives......and Hollywood produced its greatest creations. He was a product of that age. He was a golden boy; he charmed wild beasts like Orpheus, son of Apollo, he made trees and rocks move.
He was a noble Greek, son of the mother of classic Western thought and culture. He carried his ancestry in his blood and on his sleeve, yet he never knew Greece. He was born in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1909 to George and Athena Kazanjoglous. It was not a great time for a Greek in Turkey, so George packed up his little family and emmigrated to the USA in 1913. A rug merchant, George expected his son to follow in his footsteps, but Athena encouraged young Elia to continue with his studies. Elia graduated from the prestigious Williams College and went on to Yale to study drama. He joined the New York "Group Theatre" as an actor in 1932, and was urged by them to join the Communist Party, which he left "in disgust" 18 months later. He made his directorial debut in Thornton Wilder's Skin of our Teeth and soon gained fame and admiration as one of Broadway's finest directors. His powerful and realistic production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire followed by Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman made him the toast of the town and the playwright's darling. Hollywood beckoned. His first film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn stirred critics and public; and won an Oscar nod for actor James Dunn. Kazan secured a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox.
The Golden Age of Hollywood was about to be born. The move to realism was steadily gaining in vividness and authenticity. Inspired by Italy's post- war Neo-Realism: Rossellini's Rome Open City and De Sica's Bicycle Thief, Hollywood was ready to shed some of its tinsel. It was perfect timing for the young idealist who abhorred the underlying tension and hypocrisy beneath a veneer surface of life in America. He rebelled against the corruption of power, the racial and religious discrimination, the rampant social injustice. He would fight it his way. He would fight it all the way. In film after film his voice resonated in disapproval and contempt. Gentleman's Agreement (1947) with Gregory Peck was his mournful cry of condemnation against unbridled anti-Semitism. Kazan won Oscars for best director as well as best picture.
In 1947 Kazan founded the Actor's Studio with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis, introducing a new concept of acting that examined the actor's true artistry. Derived in part from the Russian school of stage director Konstantin Stanislavski, it was known as "The Method", which sought the re- creation of a character from within, dramatically opposed to the prevalent British school of external manifestation of an inner emotion. It was electrifying, and Kazan was its major inspiration. His students began to shine in every medium, among them the legendary Marlon Brando. Brando was master at expressing an elevated degree of naturalism and a magnetism "full of sound and fury", depicting the confused and inarticulate modern hero. As "Stanley Kowolski" in A Streetcar Named Desire, Kazan put Brando on the list of Hollywood greats. Years later, Brando reflected on Kazan: "'Gadge' (Kazan's nickname) is the best actor's director. To him actors have an interior life of experiences, memories and emotions. He understands things that other directors do not. He also inspires you." From that moment on, every actor wanted Kazan, every actor wanted to be Brando.
Suddenly, the whole world came crashing down around him and ended the idyllic existence of the young Greek conqueror of the New World. The great tide of anti-communism was sweeping the Nation, and high-profile Hollywoodians became a primary target of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). Because he was briefly a member of a secret communist cell, in 1952 Kazan was asked to testify. He was presented with a dilemma of monumental proportions. Should he testify against a cause he now despised and no longer believed in? Or should he protect the identity of old colleagues and friends? Spyros Skouras, head of Fox threatened that he would never work again if he did not "name names". Arthur Miller considered it "a disaster if Gadge, a fierce anti-communist was run out of the picture business". What if he were not to testify? His career would be ruined, and for what? For something he did not believe in? His choice was hard, but Kazan testified and Hollywood has resented him ever since. Kazan did what he thought was right.
He stood by his convictions and saved for posterity an unparalleled career of unique creativity in motion pictures. He was attacked from the Right and the Left. He was maligned and slurred, scoffed and despised till the very end. Friends joined with enemies against him. Even Brando said he would never work with him again, but Kazan had no regrets, and when next he came calling, Brando came running -- "he is good for me". Together they did Viva Zapata (1952), "structured to expose the ineffectiveness of idealistic revolutionaries". The crowning glory of Kazan and Brando was yet to come. The year was 1954, the film On the Waterfront, the stars: Brando, Rod Steiger, Lee J Cobb, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, all alumni of The Actor's Studio. The story of the fight of a dockside worker, Terry Malloy, who exposes the criminal practices of his Labour Union by testifying against them, was a stunning success, re-establishing Kazan as undisputed king. Nominated for 11 Oscars, it won 7 including best actor and director and the parallel of Terry Malloy's story and that of Kazan was not lost on the critics. "When Malloy cried: 'I am glad what I done, you hear me? Glad what I done', that was me crying with identical heat that I was glad I testified as I had" wrote Kazan years later in his autobiography. The scene between Brando and Steiger in the taxicab is considered "the most celebrated two character exchange in the history of American movies" .
But Kazan was not done yet. He went on to give us John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955), considered by many as his best work. Yet another legendary figure in the history of film was created, a young vulnerable James Dean who peaked in his first movie Eden, and died following his third, Giant (1956), in a tragic car crash. Kazan is greatly responsible for forming two major legends amongst the many other stars he launched in the Hollywood firmament.
Honours and accolades came from everywhere: Berlin, France, Italy, his native Istanbul, Greece, and Egypt. All except Hollywood. He was accused of hating "Comms" on the one hand and of hating American life on the other, and "deliberately calculated to denigrate the US in foreign eyes" .
Finally after decades of hatred and resentment, the Academy of Motion Pictures decided to offer Kazan a Life Achievement Award in 1999. Robert De Niro, presenting him with the Honorary Oscar, introduced him as: "a great director who has influenced the very nature of filmmaking through his tradition of cinematic masterpieces" .
Every actor today owes a debt of gratitude to director Elia Kazan. He was master of a new kind of psychological freedom in acting, seeking raw performances from inside his actors' hearts and minds. The result was lyrical, noble, deep and powerful performances by all his actors who went on to win 9 Oscars in his films. The world bowed in admiration.
Kazan, who died last month at 94, was torn between the crude reality and raw brutality of today's world, and the classic perfection of ancient myths of our primal past. He needed to survive in his modern-day jungle to express his pain, and ours, in his delicately moulded spectacles. We are grateful indeed that he did!
"And there was silence in the House of Judgement"
