Elia Kazan's Birthday
On September 7, 1909 in Constantinople (now - Istanbul, Turkey) in the Cappadocian Greek family was born a boy named Elias Kazantzoglou. When Elias was 4 years old, his family moved to New York, USA, where dad, George Kazantzoglou, a carpet dealer, quickly became rich. Father assumed that Elias would follow in his footsteps, but Elias's soul was reluctant to trade. Thanks to the support of his mother, Athena, and, naturally, the financial well-being of the family provided by father, Elias was able to graduate from Williams College in Massachusetts, and then the dramatic art department at Yale University. The resulting education determined the choice of Elias’s occupation for life: at first - the theater, but since the mid-30s - cinema.
It is curious that at the very beginning of his film career - as an actor and executive producer of short films - his name in the credits was indicated as follows: Elia "Gadget" Kazan. (Here, apparently, where did the word "gadget" come from :-)). Around the same time, when Elia took her first steps in the cinema, he joined the US Communist Party and was a member of one of its underground cells. True, not for long: after 19 months, Kazan left the Communist Party.
Subsequently, Kazan’s affiliation with the US Communist Party, although short-lived, had a significant impact on the fate of some of his colleagues, and on his own fate. In 1952, during the so-called "witch hunt" in the United States, Kazan testified at a hearing in the Committee to Investigate Anti-American Activities and posted (or "laid down") all the information about people he knew, only 8 people who also like him, were members of the Communist Party. These eight people were included in the so-called "black list". Many people involved in the “black list” had to at least part with their profession and career, someone had to flee the country, and someone received a prison term.
Incidentally, the requirements for testifying against acquaintances of members of the Communist Party were presented to many figures of American culture. But very few agreed. Kazan explained his action with the following considerations: 1) back in the 30s, he began to doubt the communist idea after his party members tried him for refusing to agitate his colleagues in the New York theater group for communism. But he finally lost faith in communism and the USSR after he found out about the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, 2) he gave only those members of the Communist Party about whom the Commission already knew, 3) with his testimonies, he added only a little harm to those whom he issued while a refusal to testify would have done him much more harm.
That is why, as Ty Burr and Joshua Rich wrote "for many, Kazan became the betrayer. When he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 and fingered at least eight former colleagues as Communist sympathizers, Kazan drove a wedge between himself and his peers that echoed long after the blacklist. Some saw a rat willing to do anything to save his career. Orson Welles supposedly said, ''Kazan traded his soul for a swimming pool.'' Some saw Waterfront as a squealer's brilliant apologia."
And even after more than forty years, the attitude towards Kazan from a significant part of American filmmakers remained, to put it mildly, negative. This is written by Roger Ebert in a kind of obituary dedicated to the death of Elia Kazan. In it, he noticed that "when the Academy gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, as many as half the audience members refused to applaud--because he "named names" during the Congressional witchhunt of the early 1950s."
However, the same event The New York Times covers from a slightly different angle, noting in the article by Bernard Weinraub titled "Amid Protests, Elia Kazan Receives His Oscar" "Although the television audience saw several actors, Nick Nolte and Ed Harris among them, remaining seated and not applauding Mr. Kazan, many members of the audience stood and clapped as Mr. Kazan walked slowly onstage. Such actors as Warren Beatty, Kathy Bates, Karl Malden, Meryl Streep and Helen Hunt stood and joined the applause." (The New York Times, March 22, 1999). However, the readers of our channel have the opportunity to see for themselves how comprehensive the respect of American filmmakers is to the great filmmaker, who has stained himself by collaborating with “witch hunters”. Just watch this story on Youtube.
For more than 30 years of creative activity as a film director, Elia Kazan made 19 full-length films. Of these, three movies entered the Golden Thousand. On this basis, Elia Kazan is included in the list of 100 greatest filmmakers of world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand.
