Film Culture (1956)

ELIA KAZAN — THE GENESIS OF A STYLE EUGENE ARCHER The camera focuses on a woman walking along the unpaved street of a small California town. She is a heavily veiled figure dressed in black, in ominous contrast to the subdued pastel backgrounds. The camera follows her purposeful movement across the street from left to right, then changes angle to observe gossiping bystanders whispering behind a shop window at the woman's passing reflection. Another cut and the view point is reversed: the camera pans to follow the woman as she approaches from the right, then stops abruptly as she passes behind the figure of a white-clad blond boy. A sudden chord of music, coinciding with the camera’s pause, concentrates the observer's attention on the boy. He stares after the woman’s vanishing figure, then, unexpectedly, jumps to his feet and runs a few steps after her —then stops, as suddenly as he began. Cut to a close-up of the veiled woman, whose movement has not ceased; she crosses the screen in foreground, while the boy stares after her, hands in pockets, scuffing at the ground in an agony of indecision. Elia Kazan is a director with a distinctive personal style, and the opening sequence of East of Eden clearly illustrates its quality. Without a word of dialogue, conflict has been established and curiousity aroused. The contrast between the dark, mysterious, purposeful woman and the fair, ingenuous, hesitant youth is immediately apparent. The even flow of movement as the camera follows the woman is suddenly interrupted by the unexpected appearance of the boy; his abrupt actions and awkward pauses, emphasized by the camera and soundtrack, immediately suggest that the conflict is to be a violent one. Few films have begun with so vivid an example of visual symbolism. An understanding of the visual nature of his medium is not the least of Elia Kazan’s gifts. Kazan’s record as a director has been impressive. Since 1945, he has directed eleven major films, most of them successful both artistically and commercially. Three of these were chosen best of the yeat by the New York Film Critics; two won Academy Awards. Nine actors have won Academy Awards for performances in Kazan’s films; twenty-one have been nominated. Kazan is one of the few directors whose name is recognized by the general public, and he has been rewarded by a freedom of action rare in Hollywood. Today, with the privilege of choosing his own subjects and casts without regard to box-office requirements, Kazan is assured of financial backing for any project he cares to undertake. Surface Realism Kazan, unlike most Hollywood directors, served most of his apprenticeship on the stage. As a member of the Group Theatre, he acted in Clifford Odets plays with John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, and other professionals who were later to be associated with him in Hollywood. In the early 1940's, Kazan played gangster roles in a few films, notably Czty for Conquest. His first major success came as a stage director, with the production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize play, The Skin of Our Teeth, in 1942. One Touch of Venus, Harriet, and Jacobowsky and the Colonel followed. By 1944, Kazan was recognized as one of the most promising directors on Broadway, and on the strength of this reputation he went to Hollywood to direct his first film for Twentieth Century-Fox. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was an unusual assignment for a beginner. An adaptation of a popular novel, the film was allotted a high production budget, and was considered one of the studio’s prestige films. The production was not an unqualified success, being handicapped by excessive length and an episodic quality which demonstrated that Kazan had not yet acquired a feeling for the overall timing and continuity of a motion picture. For a first attempt, however, the film was a remarkable achievement. Kazan’s instinct for the medium was immediately apparent in the mobility of the camera work and in the sustained intensity of the dramatic scenes. The atmosphere of the Brooklyn slums of a -nostalgically-remembered past was carefully evoked. Kazan’s attention to detail—a quality which has 5