Elia Kazan - Legacy

Legacy

Kazan became known as an "actor's director" because he was able to elicit some of the best performances in the careers of many of his stars, such as Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, James Dean, Julie Harris, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach and Natalie Wood. Under his direction, his actors received 21 Academy Award nominations and won nine Oscars. He won as Best Director for Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and for On the Waterfront (1954), which is considered "one of the greatest films in the history of international cinema." Both A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront were nominated for twelve Academy Awards, respectively winning four and eight.

Kazan never lost his identification with the oppressed people he remembered from the depths of the Great Depression. With his many years with the Group Theater and Actors Studio in New York City and later triumphs on Broadway, he became famous "for the power and intensity of his actors' performances." He was the pivotal figure in launching the film careers of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Julie Harris, Eva Marie Saint, Warren Beatty, Lee Remick, Karl Malden, and many others. Seven of Kazan's films won a total of 20 Academy Awards. Dustin Hoffman commented that he "doubted whether he, Robert De Niro, or Al Pacino, would have become actors without Mr. Kazan's influence."

Upon his death, at the age of 94, the New York Times described him as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history." His stage direction of Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire is considered a "high point of world theater" in the 20th century. Although he became a "legendary director on Broadway", he made an equally impressive transition into one of the major filmmakers of his time. Critic William Baer notes that throughout his career "he constantly rose to the challenge of his own aspirations", adding that "he was a pioneer and visionary who greatly affected the history of both stage and cinema". Certain of his film-related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access.

His controversial stand during his testimony in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952, became the low point in his career, although he remained convinced that he made the right decision to give the names of Communist Party members. He stated in an interview in 1976:

I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did, and betray my own soul. I didn't betray it. I made a difficult decision.

During his career, Kazan won both Tony and Oscar Awards for excellence on stage and screen. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the Kennedy Center honors award, a national tribute for life achievement in the arts. At the ceremony, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who wrote On the Waterfront, thanks his lifelong friend saying, “Elia Kazan has touched us all with his capacity to honor not only the heroic man, but the hero in every man.” In an interview with the American Film Institute in 1976, Kazan spoke of his love of the cinema: "I think it's the most wonderful art in the world."

In 1999, when he was 90 years old, Kazan received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. During the ceremony, he was accompanied by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. The propriety of such an honor for Kazan who "named names" at the HUAC hearings remains a "contentious subject" according to the New York Times. Many in Hollywood felt that enough time had passed that it was appropriate to finally recognize Kazan's great artistic accomplishments, although others did not and would not applaud. Kazan appreciated the award:

I want to thank the Academy for its courage, its generosity. Thank you all very much. Now I can just slip away.

In his autobiography, A Life, he sums up the influence of filmmaking on his life:

I realize now that work was my drug. It held me together. It kept me high. When I wasn't working, I didn't know who I was or what I was supposed to do. This is general in the film world. You are so absorbed in making a film, you can't think of anything else. It's your identity, and when it's done you are nobody.

Martin Scorsese has directed a film documentary, A Letter to Elia (2010), considered to be an "intensely personal and deeply moving tribute" to Kazan. Scorsese was "captivated" by Kazan's films as a young man, and the documentary mirrors his own life story while he also credits Kazan as the inspiration for his becoming a filmmaker.