Dos jóvenes y guapísimos Natalie Wood y Warren Beatty protagonizan 'Esplendor en la hierba'

Yo estoy deseando de que llegue el viernes para ver ‘Esplendor en la hierba’. De tan romántica y tan letal, debe ser deliciosa.  Dice Carlos Losilla en la revista Dirigido que la última escena de esta peli es “para muchos la mejor de la filmografía de Kazan”. En ella, “Wood, recién salida del hospital psiquiátrico, decide visitar a Beatty con unas amigas, un trance por el que debe pasar si quiere liquidar de una vez por todas su pasado”.

Un pasado que remite a un amor imposible que en un momento dado pudo ser acreedor de un sueño americano que no llega a materializarse: para algo es un sueño y para algo es Elia Kazan, no hay más que ver ‘Río salvaje’. En un tono más manso, con más matices, es muy significativa la mirada triste de Montgomery Clift cuando sobrevuelan la isla finalmente desalojada y la presa que, a punto de abrirse, simboliza el progreso por el que él ha luchado y que ahora se traduce en tristeza, en duda.

Los sueños sueños son y América tiene toda una trayectoria contemporánea de claros y sombras que de forma melancólica pudo anticipar hace cincuenta años el director que ahora homenajean los héroes del cineclub.

Treinta años después y con otra pose, Beatty con la inigualable Madonna de quien fue novio en la realidad

En esa memorable escena final de ‘Esplendor en la hierba’, un desmejorado Beatty – aún no ha conocido a Madonna, eso llegó años más tarde en ‘Dick Tracy’ – recibe a esta Wood que trata de ajustar cuentas con ella misma. Siguiendo con la sinopsis recogida de la revista Dirigido, “las bulliciosas conversaciones entre los dos enamorados se precipitan hacia el lugar común, hasta que afloran las aguas torrenciales del pasado, mitigadas ahora por el paso del tiempo: ‘Nunca te olvidaré’ dicen ambos casi al mismo tiempo”.

¡Me muero! Losilla también lo hizo en su adolescencia, y luego, ya adulto y pasada la treintena, cuando falleció Kazan y redescubrió el título al que elogia sin fisuras: “La intensidad de estos momentos, la emoción que destilan, las complejas relaciones que sugieren, dejan bien claro que, al contrario de lo que parecía en un principio, en esta historia no hay ni buenos ni malos, ni héroes ni traidores”.

Los padres de los jóvenes que fueron Beatty y Wood quisieron, con sus torpezas, lo mejor para sus hijos, y ellos se extraviaron un poco en la juventud para extraviarse definitivamente más tarde: desoyendo la llamada de ese amor puro que tan pocas veces puede alcanzar algo más que a dicha pureza. Como en tantas familias, como en tantas relaciones, aquí, en USA y en Pekín: “entonces la novela rosa, el panfleto social, dejan ver al desnudo la verdad oculta entre bastidores”.

Los Estados Unidos, medio siglo después, sueñan cada vez menos. Después de leer ‘La vida, un estadio intermedio’, de Carsten Bresch, por cuya recomendación siempre estaré agradecido, porque me amuebló la cabeza de un modo científico a la par que sugerente, sobre la esencia de la humanidad, su evolución, su punto de inflexión…; me meto de lleno en el análisis político con un libro que he encontrado de un antiguo editor de la revista Foreign Affairs, Faraid Zakaria: el libro se llama ‘El mundo después de USA’.

Comienza así: “Este libro no trata del declive de América, sino del ascenso de todos los demás. Trata de la gran transformación que está ocurriendo en el mundo, transformación que, aunque se discute con frecuencia, sigue comprendiéndose poco. Pero es natural; los cambios, incluso los radicales, suceden de manera gradual. Por mucho que hablemos de una nueva era, el mundo parece el mismo que conocemos. Pero en realidad es muy diferente”.

Tengo una serie de películas que claramente me alegran el día, de esas que todos vemos de vez en cuando para animarnos o que sin más las vemos y nos dejan esa sensación de felicidad, pues Splendor in the grass es todo lo contrario para mí. Siempre me sienta como una patada en el estómago, aunque su final ni siquiera resulte tan pesimista. Aún así, tiene algo en ese sentido, es desgarradora. Pero da igual, porque es una película magnífica. Con una maravillosa Natalie Wood en el mejor papel que yo he tenido oportunidad de ver, con escenas sensacionales, aunque toda la película en general es un continuo diez para ella bajo mi punto de vista. Siempre me encuentro con cosas estupendas por parte de Elia Kazan, aunque no creo que eso sea una novedad, y en Splendor in the grass supo captar a la perfección ese terror que supone muchas veces la sociedad en la que nos toca vivir y cómo nos afecta su represión, en este caso, en sentido sexual y afectivo, pero podría extrapolarse en realidad a multitud de tipos distintos. Además, es la clase de película que, dentro de su probable perfección, todo lo que ves te parece increíble por lo acorde que está con lo demás, la fluidez y la necesidad de observar todo lo que aparece. No hay cosas fuera de lugar, no hay algo que puedas decir con claridad que esté de más o entorpezca el conjunto. Y vamos, que el guión es asombroso. Es una oda al final de la juventud de la manera más directa posible, pero con ese rayo de esperanza razonable que supondrá el recuerdo, como bien dice el poema en el que el título se basa. De igual forma pasaré por alto que hicieron un remake con Michelle Pfeiffer, porque eso ya me parece demasiado espeluznante, aunque no sé si tanto como el nombre del yate en el que Natalie Wood murió a los cuarenta y tres años: Splendour, llamado así en honor a la película.

Voto: 7 (su 10)

“La mia luce è la verità”. Lo dice Tetro, impersonato da Vincent Gallo, il protagonista del nuovo film di Francis Ford Coppola, Segreti di famiglia (Tetro in originale), mentre sta curando le luci di uno spettacolo teatrale. Ma potrebbero essere le parole di Coppola stesso. Tetro ama giocare con la luce, perché così crea un mondo, perché la cosa gli dà potere. Tutto questo è in fondo il desiderio di ogni regista. In particolare del nuovo Francis Ford Coppola, che da Un’altra giovinezza in poi ha imboccato la via di un cinema indipendente e personale. Che ha a che fare, eccome, con la luce: con un gioco di parole, Tetro potrebbe diventare “retro”, nel senso che è girato in un bianco e nero scintillante e ricco di contrasti che si rifà a film d’altri tempi come Fronte del porto di Elia Kazan, e anche al suo Rusty il selvaggio, l’unico altro film che Coppola girò in bianco e nero. E di cui Segreti di famiglia potrebbe essere il figlio: anche questa è una storia di fratelli. Bennie, 17 anni, arriva a Buenos Aires alla ricerca del fratello maggiore Tetro, che non vede da dieci anni. Tetro è scontroso, ha lasciato di New York per fuggire da un padre autoritario. Ed è di questo che parla il romanzo che ha scritto, in codice, che l’ha portato quasi alla pazzia e che custodisce gelosamente. Bennie prova a leggerlo, e a farne un’opera teatrale.

“Quello che si dice non è importante: il linguaggio è morto”. Sono più importanti le immagini o le parole? Se lo chiedono spesso i personaggi del film di Coppola. Che sembra propendere nettamente per le immagini, sin dagli affascinanti titoli di testa. Ma più che l’immagine in sé, Coppola sembra volere difendere un modo di fare cinema libero, in cui l’immagine abbia la precedenza, e il racconto non debba per forza essere quello lineare e più scontato del cinema mainstream. Il romanzo di Tetro è scritto al contrario e in codice. Toccherà a Bennie decifrarlo. E attraverso le sue parole proverà a decifrare l’anima del fratello. Così è il nuovo cinema di Coppola, più criptico e meno immediato di quello di un tempo. Anche l’opera di Coppola in un certo senso va decriptata, decifrata, decodificata. C’è, nella storia, la sua anima: non si tratta di un’opera autobiografica, ma di un film che porta in sé tanti temi della sua vita. E c’è nella forma visiva, fatta quasi sempre di inquadrature fisse (magistrale quella in cui Tetro/Vincent Gallo è fuori campo e la sua voce “parla” attraverso la sua ombra riflessa sul muro) o in cui la macchina da presa si muove pochissimo, l’amore per il cinema di maestri come Antonioni, Kurosawa e Kazan.

È meno potente, il Coppola di oggi, rispetto a opere come Il padrino e Apocalypse Now. E forse le sue opere necessiterebbero di una maggior coesione. Ma il suo cinema sembra quello di un giovane. Segreti di famiglia mescola dramma, farsa, romanzo di formazione e anche un tocco di noir, con scene lineari e pulite e altre movimentate e teatrali che potrebbero essere uscite dal primo Almodovar come da La dolce vita di Fellini. Quella di Coppola è davvero, per citare il titolo del film che ha segnato il suo ritorno, Un’altra giovinezza: Coppola ha la voglia di sperimentare e la passionalità di un autore ventenne. Youth Without Youth, recitava il titolo originale di quel film: è proprio giovane senza esserlo Coppola, perché la sua vitalità prescinde dall’età anagrafica. “Brama di vagare”, si chiama l’opera di Tetro che viene messa in scena. Anche queste parole sono un altro segnale del senso del cinema di questo autore: Coppola e il suo cinema bramano di vagare tra le loro storie, tra i generi cinematografici, tra i paesi del mondo cinematograficamente più giovani per trovare linfa vitale. Dopo la Romania di Un’altra giovinezza, ora c’è l’Argentina di Segreti di famiglia. In ogni caso siamo lontani, lontanissimi, da Hollywood.  

Da vedere perchè: Coppola e il suo cinema bramano di vagare tra le loro storie, tra i generi e tra i paesi del mondo. Lontano da Hollywood.

(Pubblicato su Movie Sushi)

On their recent album of cover songs, alternate takes and unreleased gems, rock and roll lifers Drive-by Truckers offer a glimpse into the vault of quality tracks that inevitably amass when your band boasts three top notch writers. Among the highlights are two songs which offer very different takes, both musically and thematically, on the art of incisive Southern song craft.
“Play it All Night Long,” the Truckers version of a Warren Zevon concert staple, can be seen as a near spoof of the genre, a systematic tour of the very worst Southern stereotypes – imbecility, incest, alcoholism — inflated to almost comic levels; a sort of musical counterpart to the carefully orchestrated, gothic portraits of Appalachian hill people by the much-reviled photographer Shelby Lee Adams.

Grandpa’ pissed his pants again
He don’t give a damn
Uncle John’s been acting strange
He ain’t been right since Vietnam.

A queasy mix of humor, homage and horror married to a churning, down-cast riff that can hold its own with the work of the godfathers of the very musical style Zevon was taking the piss out of, the Truckers version glefully magnifies these qualities, elevating it into a full-on hard rock stomp musically while lead singer Patterson Hood drags the lyrics through the slow creeping drawl of his unreconstructed vocals, replacing the morally-neutral spectator of the original with a red-eyed, gleeful participant. The way he slurs and drags out the last line of the chorus, “Play it alll nighhhhtt loooong” conveys more menace and half-crazed desperation than any lyrics could hope to. In concert, the Truckers join voices to shout out the songs summation of country life essentials – Sweat, Piss, Jizz, Blood. It’s a cry of defiance as much as anger, all the contradictions of rural southern culture boiling to the surface and carrying the song beyond any notion of parody or high brow condescension.

Sweet Home Alabama
Play that dead man’s song
Turn the speakers up full blast
Play it all night long

That dead man’s song. When it was first recorded in 1980, Ronnie Van Zandt had been in the grave 3 years. The band he fronted, Lynyrd Skynyrd, was in shambles, recovering from both the physical and mental wounds of the 1977 plane crash that also took the lives of guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, back-up singer Cassie Gaines, as well as their assistant road manager and the planes two pilots. The band would eventually reform in the mid-80’s, but during the dark years in between, the members plunged into a limbo of drug abuse, drinking and grief-fueled self destruction. The south had lost their finest band; the surviving members had lost years of hard work, their dearest friends and seemingly, their very sanity.
If Zevon considered any of this when he penned the song, it doesn’t show in the lyrics: They’re merciless, sardonic, as cold as winter rain on a grey tin roof.
In the Truckers hands, however, the song becomes something more, both a celebration of long lost heroes and embattled communities, and a condemnation of the willful stupidity and impoverishment that refuses to question the regions heroes, the old attitudes and avenues of existence. By confronting the very flesh and gristle of the boogeyman trapped in the South’s closet, the Truckers have aimed the rear view mirror of history and tradition not only at their fans, but at themselves as well. As tangled as Brer Rabbit’s briar patch, as dark and filled with creaking doors, distorted shadows and drunken laughter as a backwoods funhouse, in the end the song simply rocks too damn hard and weird to ignore.
Jason Isbell was the youngest member of the Truckers when he joined the group just prior to their “Southern Rock Opera” tour, but he quickly established himself as more than a match for Hood and fellow songwriter Mike Cooley, blossoming over three albums into an artist of often staggering emotional nuance, displaying the depth and rare soul of someone well beyond his early-20’s. All of these gifts are on display in “TVA,” Isbell’s tribute to the saving graces of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a Depresion-era, government-funded project that brought jobs and electricity to a large swath of the South through the building of dams along the Tennessee River.
Isbell turns what could easily have been a stale history lesson into a meditation on family and how they’re shaped by the history of the land they call home. The song opens with a son recounting a childhood spent fishing along Wilson Dam with his father, a man whose past is inextricably linked to the river and the Tennessee Valley. Isbell’s rough-hewn, loam-rich voice immediately erases any distance between artist and listener, storyteller and protagonist. The way he evokes the distance that grows between father and son as the one moves into adolescence and the other towards old age, as the fishing trips become fewer and farther between – “When I got a little older I wouldn’t and now daddy can’t.” – is as simply stated and moving as any musical moment could ever aspire to.
The song’s true nature becomes clear towards the end of the first chorus, with an image of near mythic power.

So I thank God for the TVA
Thank God for the TVA
Where me and my daddy would bow to the river and pray
Thank God for the TVA.

As the ancient Egyptians once worshipped and offered sacrifice to the Nile, father and son fall to their knees in the dam’s shadow, before the roiling embodiment of life and prosperity. It’s a scene as fraught with meaning as those found in any Sunday morning hymn; in fact I would argue this song represents that rarest of finds …the secular gospel.
The song moves from the narrator’s childhood to his teenage years, as the dam morphs from a place to fish with his old man to a conveniently secluded make out spot; the young man and his girlfriend drawn to the banks of the river to explore each others bodies and simply soak in the joys of a lazy summer afternoon. Seen through his eyes, even the wildlife seems possessed of some harmonious magic, as raccoons and terrapins dance on the rocks for him and his girl.
Following those nearly whimsical verses, Isbell leads us farther into the past, into the life of the boy’s grandfather and his father before him, a down on his luck sharecropper struggling against hope and nature to provide for his growing family. That opportunity is provided by the federal government, in the form of a job building the very dam beneath which, decades later, his grandson and great grandson would fish, pray and grow into men with families of their own.

Where Roosevelt let us all work for an honest days pay
Thank God…

It’s impossible to hear this song now, in this era of partisanship rife with charges of socialism and far worse, and not feel some measure of nostalgia for a time when the government was actually seen as a force for positive change. It’s a measure of how far we’ve come as a nation and a people, that it’s nearly impossible now to imagine federal initiatives being put into action to lift a region from the blight of near third world levels of poverty, as existed in the Tennessee Valley prior to the TVA act of 1933. There is, of course another side to the story – witness Cooley’s “Uncle Frank” or Elia Kazan’s classic movie “Wild River” – but for a brief time this countries noblest ideals seem to have gained life through bold, decisive action, the likes of which are now simply stories shrouded in the dust of memory.
The mythology of the South is large enough to encompass both Isbell’s and Zevon’s vision: The hardworking family man passing on the history of the land and its people, and the leering drunk cranking up the misunderstood anthem of his fallen hero. Turn them speakers up full blast, but don’t forget the blood and sacrifice that runs like a river behind you. And for God’s sake, don’t forget a prayer for the future.

   “The Arrangement” opened to mostly terrible reviews in  November of 1969. Vincent Canby of the New York Times said, “The Arrangement” is Elia Kazan’s most romantic movie. It may also be his worst…”  Later on Canby in the same review he says,  “The Arrangement” reeks with slightly absurd movie chic but, unlike Douglas Sirk’s “Written on the Wind” or Vincente Minnelli’s “Two Weeks in Another Town,” it’s not only not much fun, but it’s a mess of borrowed styles.”  Harsh words and while I am not going to claim that “The Arrangement” is a lost masterpiece or even a satisfying film that has grown better with time, the film is not the mess Mr. Canby seemed to think it was.

    Based on Kazan’s successful novel (it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 37 weeks)  which ran over 500 pages and had to be condensed down to a film slightly over two hours. It is the story of Evangelos Arness, a man who spent his life selling out, he even changed his name to Eddie Anderson. Eddie is a successful advertising executive  married to Florence (Deborah Kerr), they live in a large house with servants. The marriage is affable, they seem to have it all, she seems content, Eddie we find out is not.

    On his way to work Eddie cracks up, both figuratively and literally when he lets go of the wheel of his sports car and crashes into a truck in the next lane. Not able to not willing to speak he remains silent during his recovery drifting in and out of painful recollections of his childhood with a father who intimidated and dominated him and his mother. These memories are intermixed with visions of his affair with Gwen (Faye Dunaway), a sexy bright independent office associate who finds it painful that Eddie has sold out and how much he must hurt him to imagine what he could have been.

    When Eddie physically recovers, his sanity is still in question. His father is taken ill, Eddie goes to New York to stay with the dying man but their time together only brings back the memories of his anguished childhood. He meets up with Gwen, who now has a child, she claims to not know who the father is. Gwen is living with another man, Charles, who asks nothing from her, even when she has affairs with other men, he is there for her.

    Florence comes to New York, only to find Eddie back with Gwen (she literally finds them in bed together). Convinced that he is still unbalanced she make arrangements with the way too friendly family lawyer, Arthur (Hume Cronyn) to have him hospitalized. Eddie, who after a lifetime of being what everyone else wants only wants to be himself even if that means staying in a mental hospital. Gwen comes to get him out and they agree to make another go at a life together. When his father dies, at the cemetery Eddie is there with Gwen, Florence stands close to the family lawyer, her arm in his. They all seem to be okay with the arrangement.

    Kazan wanted Marlon Brando for the role of Eddie, but Brando was reluctant to take on the role. Weather it was a fear of working with the man he did some of his greatest work with or it was too soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, which Brando claimed, he turned Kazan down.  The alternative choice was Kirk Douglas, which probably hurt the film. Nothing against Douglas but Brando would have brought a sensitivity and depth that Douglas lacks. Faye Dunaway, who first worked with Kazan in a Lincoln Center production of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall”, gives a perfectly pitched  performance as Gwen, a woman working in a man’s world, intelligent enough to rebel with wit and strength. She seems to have little respect for the men she worked with or for.

    A criticism at the time of its release is the film was too choppy and Kazan could not find the key to slim down the massive book into a two hour cohesive film. What works for me is Dunaway’s performance, and by the way, she never looked better, plus a couple of other interesting scenes, one between Eddie and Florence at the boathouse and the scenes with Eddie and his father, Sam. “The Arrangement” is a hard film to recommend. It is slow in spots and I’ m sure some will find it disjointed and dull but if you look, you still see Kazan’s touch, the outsiders, in both Eddie and Gwen, a theme that he has used over the course of his brilliant career.

    A Priest is shot and killed one evening on the streets of Stamford, Connecticut. Based on a true story in   Reader’s Digest, written by Richard Oursler, director Elia Kazan, in this 1947 film focuses on the investigation and accusation of an innocent man, a homeless ex-serviceman trying to get his life together, who is accused of this infamous murder. Filmed mainly in Stamford with mostly non-professional actors except for the leading roles, produced by Louis de Rochemont, and released by 20th Century Fox, the film has a semi-documentary style similar to the previously released “House on 92^nd Street” and the then forthcoming “The Street with No Name”, both released by Fox.

    The film’s opening statement informs the audience that this is a true story filmed in the actual locations. As with most films even when claiming the story you are about to see is true the facts are at least somewhat distorted. The actual crime took place Bridgeport, Connecticut not Stamford where most of the film was made. Additionally, the real life crime took place more than two decades earlier, in 1924, than it is recorded here. The move to Stamford was due to the reluctance of the town of Bridgeport to allow 20th Century Fox to film in their streets, subsequently Stamford was used as a substitute.

    The murder of Father Lambert is quick and sudden right as the film begins. We are barely two minutes into the film proper when a gun is put to the back of the pastor’s head and the trigger is pulled. Even today, it is a shocking beginning.  “Witnesses” seem to be everywhere though the camera only shows the murder suspect from the back wearing a dark overcoat and a light hat which in late 1940’s America was just about every man in the street.

    Flashbacks, with the assistance of a narrator reveal how beloved the minister was by all. We see him interact with his flock in several situations including, as we will soon discover, one individual who will become the alleged suspect, John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy). We also see a conversation the pastor has with another individual who he demands seeks help for his mental condition. If he refuses, the pastor will make the call himself. The man is plainly upset at what the pastor is attempting to do and as we shall realize provides a hint, and a motive, at whom the real murderer could be.

     As the days pass by without an arrest, the police are criticized by the local newspaper for not making any progress in the case stating city hall is running around like chickens without a head.  Finally, eighteen days after the crime, the suspect John Waldron is apprehended in Ohio, where he went searching for a job, and is brought back to Connecticut. A harsh police interrogation coerces a confession out of Waldron. Early on, during the interrogation, Waldron had asked for a lawyer and Police Chief Harold Robinson (Lee J Cobb) tells him there is plenty of time for a lawyer later on. So much for civil rights. The evidence against Waldon seems solid. He is picked out of a lineup by local citizens who witnessed the shooting. The gun that fired the bullet was found in his possession and of course, he confessed, signing with the assistance of the police department’s interrogation techniques.

    State’s Attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) is presenting the case. The local warring politicians want Waldron convicted, whether he is guilty or not does not seem to be an issue. Harvey’s cronies are encouraging him to run for Governor, only he has to win this case. While the evidence at first seems solid against Waldron as Harvey begins to review and test the evidence he finds it is not as sound as originally presented. The “witnesses” are as not as perfect as first thought. When the case goes to court, Harvey goes against the political heavyweights demanding conviction, as his doubts about the guilt of the accused mounts.    

    In  Boomerang!  corrupt politicians are purely out for there own gains or protection. The townspeople want justice i.e. revenge for the death of their beloved minister even if the wrong man is convicted. The police department is squeezed in the middle being pressured by both the politicians and the public for “justice.”  For Kazan, this was the first time he touched on the subject of corruption, a topic he would revisit in more detail in later films. Here, he seems to be somewhat restrained maybe still believing that most political officials were honest and decent folks with no personal agendas. Kazan was still in the early stages of his film career and “Boomerang!”  was pretty much a job for hire.  What Boomerang! did do for Kazan was introduce him to the benefits and realism of shooting on location, freeing him of the studio bound restrictions of his first two films. Location shooting would be something he would pursue in his best works, films like “On the Waterfront”, “Panic in the Streets” “Viva Zapata”, “Wild River” and others. Kazan does credit Boomerang!” for setting the tone of his development and style as a filmmaker. In Jeff Young’s interview book “The Master Director Discusses His Films”, Kazan states, In “Boomerang!” I think, is the basis for “Panic in the Streets” and in “Panic in the Streets” is the basis for “On the Waterfront.” If you see these three films together, you’ll see the development.”   

    The acting highlight is the young Arthur Kennedy as the ex-veteran  John Waldron who previously worked with Kazan in the Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in the role of Biff Loman. Of course, part of that same cast in that brilliant work was Lee J. Cobb who played Willy Loman. Cobb would lose out to Fredric March in the 1951 film version of  “Death of a Salesman”, but would get the chance some 15 years later to put his mark on film in a 1966 TV production for which he won an Emmy. Cobb owns the role of Willy Loman like Brando owns “A Streetcar Named Desire.”     

   Kazan was comfortable with Cobb and Kennedy, actors from the same theater background as himself, as opposed to Hollywood trained actors like Dana Andrews and Jane Wyatt. This is reflected on screen with Andrews particularly comes off as if his is “acting.” He seems a bit stiff and unnatural as opposed to Cobb and Kennedy’s organic performances. This clash in performing styles is made obvious in scenes where the opposing actors appear together. Sam Levene is the local newspaper reporter who writes hard-hitting articles attacking the police amateur style investigation of the crime. Also, look for another Kazan favorite, an early unbilled appearance by Karl Malden as one of the detectives.  Finally, playwright Arthur Miller, has a small role as one of the suspects in the lineup.  

    As the film ends the narrator announces that the character of States Attorney Henry Harvey was based on that of Homer Cummings who would go on the become Attorney General of the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

    “Boomerang!” is not first class Kazan, here he was still learning his craft. That said, the film is his first that deals with the social issues that would consume most of his future work, issues that would be explored in more detail in films like “Gentlemen’s Agreement”,  “On the Waterfront”, “Wild River” and “A Face in the Crowd.” “Boomerang!”  remains a solid if not spectacular piece of work.

With the Film Forum in New York doing a three week  tribute to the work of Elia Kazan, I thought it would be a good time to provide a link to a review I wrote on this film for Halo-17.

Click here for the Film Forum web site

Click here for my Halo-17 review

Click here here for my short tribute to screenwriter Budd Shulberg. 

Books about Elia Kazan
The Master Director Discusses His Films (Jeff Young)
Elia Kazan: A Biography (Richard Schickel)
A Life (Elia Kazan)
Kazan on Directing (Kazan and Lahr)
Kazan on Kazan (Michel Ciment)

Novels by Elia Kazan
The Arrangement
The Assassins
The Understudy
America, America
Acts of Love
The Anatolian

Ad, LA Weekly, Nov.10-16, 1989

[Added, 11-25-09: Polanski may be getting bail and house arrest in Switzerland. I have added at the bottom of this blog, a comment from a friend who wrote me a  thoughtful reply upon reading my statement in its second draft.]  

(I am assuming that the readers of this blog are familiar with the basic facts of the controversy. For the latest, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/movies/11polanski.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp). [ I am going to add thoughts I have had since posting this blog, which has seen more traffic than most: the fixation of media figures on this man and his conduct is so extreme and vehement that, though I was a child in American during the second world war,  I am again distressed by the indifference of the world to the Shoah, both while it was in process and afterwards. Polanski is a Holocaust survivor: how he survived after his father threw him out of the doomed Warsaw Ghetto (to save him from certain death), I do not know, but his mother was murdered at Auschwitz. He is also of Jewish descent (although he was not religious, his father was Jewish, his mother was half-Jewish, according to Nazi racial ordering). His pregnant wife Sharon Tate was horribly knifed in her belly by the Manson family in their rampage. RP is now an old man. His movies are about the indifference of the world in the face of the worst corruption and evil (think especially of The Pianist and Chinatown). How he has functioned at all in the world is something of a testament to the resilience of our species. Ask the children of Holocaust survivors how they and their parents have fared: they are not always mentally healthy human beings, as numerous reports by clinicians can attest.

    Perhaps none of this personal and professional history gets through to his most sanctimonious pursuers, but it does to me. We were not there to witness the activities of long ago that impelled one media personality to wish him dead: did the latter "libertarian" imagine Samantha Geimer as a young blonde, contaminated by a carnal Jew despoiling her forever? Was he protecting his fantasy that all children are innocent, until corrupted by sexuality sometime in adolescence? I am asking questions that any artist would understand: the world is not black and white but grey. I am thinking now of Elia Kazan's publication of  Tennessee Williams' letter to him, warning that neither Stanley Kowalski nor Blanche Dubois was a stick figure, to be painted either black or white, and most especially that Kowalski was not "a black-dyed villain." (I am referring to A Streetcar Named Desire, before it was either a stage play or a movie. Kazan directed both, and the letter is in Kazan's confessional autobiography.)

   While all the ink is spilled and hot air blown about, we are in one crisis after another in the world in this country regarding our safety and that of our children. What is the matter with those who are so quick to take a position before they have either empathy or the facts? The victim herself, married and a mother of four, has asked that RP not be prosecuted further and yet the howling mob must take its revenge. [Compare to this nugget from Kazan's autobiography: The (Catholic) Legion of Decency made this demand for him to change the movie version of  Streetcar: "We must make the audience believe that Stella and Stanley will never again be happy together." (p.434). Recall that at the climax of the movie, Stanley rapes Blanche, while his wife is giving birth in the hospital. As Kazan recounts, the Church did prevail, and his film was "mauled," in his opinion giving heart to the right-wing assaults that would follow. At that time, Catholics were 20% of this country. They are now 40%. Think now of Dick Wolf and his Law and Order, SVU.] I for one am sick of this reflexively politically/religiously motivated behavior on the part of the talking heads and those who nod in agreement like ventriloquist dummies.  Having said that, with anger on my part, I must reassure the reader that I have not condoned Polanski’s behavior, but then neither has he, to my knowledge. Added: 10-13-09, 10-15-09]

    The world may be falling apart, the nation is certainly politically polarized, Washington politicians seem to have lost their collective minds, Israel and other Western targets may be nuked by Iran, and the President seems increasingly ineffectual, while for several days now, numerous intellectuals on the Right, and even some who are “moderates”  are waxing indignant over such matters as a petition signed by dozens of the threatening  corps of “Hollywood liberals” who stand accused of defending not only Polanski, but  pedophilia.

   I just watched a Pajamas TV video in which Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd express their horror that famous European intellectuals (including Bernard-Henri Levy, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bertrand Tavernier, and Claude Lanzmann, the director of  Shoah!) and American directors such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, David Lynch, and their most vulnerable colleague Woody Allen, have signed a petition. (The petition is not described for its content, which does no more than criticize the mechanics of the arrest in Switzerland, Sept. 26. The movie industry was asserting its rights to have chosen its honoree, Polanski, for lifetime achievement, without intervention by the Swiss authorities, who had not moved against Polanski before this, though he has a home in that country.) But on the video, these ostensible nihilists are depicted as excusing Polanski for his crimes, though there is not a word in the petition concerning his conduct with young Samantha Geimer.  No, in a breathtaking gesture of populist solidarity, the petition signers are damned by Simon and Chetwynd as “elitists” who “create their own moral universe,” one which is opposed to that of the presumably virtuous “People,”  who have shamed the morally rotten intellectuals in their comments as posted to the press reports of the arrest and its noisy aftermath.

   What is wrong with this picture?   

1.    The fact that Woody Allen has made movies such as Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point does not prove that Allen is rooting for the bad guys. He is, as usual, posing the problem of Job: how can God, should One exist, allow evil to go unpunished? What kind of an amoral world are we living in?

2.   Polanski has been quoted as saying that everyone wants to “f—- little girls.” You would think that some feminist or male sympathizer to feminism would stop a moment and reflect on either the veracity or the mendacity of such a broad claim. The rest of this blog considers the condition of women and the sexual expectations which are laid upon them by men.

VICTORIAN WOMANHOOD. Surely we have all seen pictures of those respectable ladies with their hair pinned up, no visible makeup, wearing black bombazine and looking rather grim. And yet they seem to have had relatively successful marriages, had many children, and, oh yes, created the first feminist movement in this country, while also leading such movements as abolitionism, uplifting urban prostitutes, and fighting alcoholism in men. We loathe them as Victorian battle-axes, right?

HOLLYWOOD AS BABYLON.  Budd Schulberg was eloquent on the sexual free-for-all that was Hollywood from the very outset. Although he blames this decadence on the Roaring Twenties, the world of the theater was probably always libertine, as Goethe demonstrates in his quasi-autobiographical  Wilhelm Meister novel, much of which is about his life in the burgeoning theater of eighteenth-century Germany. Nor does he complain about la vie boheme.  Goethe was quite the wild man (though not a revolutionary of any kind), and possibly bisexual. Yet no one is trashing him for his moral blindness today: rather as rooted cosmopolitan and internationalist he is the greatest European intellectual who ever lived, according to his millions of admirers.

   Any mother who has allowed her pubescent daughter to go near the mini-sultans of the movie industry (or its related business of modeling) should know what a risk she is taking. But those few commentators who point this out are shouted down as excusing Polanski.

THE HYPER-SEXUALIZATION OF WOMEN BY THE FASHION, COSMETICS, AND PLASTIC SURGERY INDUSTRIES.  Schulberg’s memoir is also quite explicit about the ties between the fashion industry and Hollywood. We all know about it, and millions of women world-wide are spending way too much time perfecting themselves as little dolls, while plastic surgeons batten on the “narcissism” that women develop to please men and their infantile fantasies of female beauty. Studies show that the ideal glamour-girl looks like a child: lithe little bodies, big eyes, long lashes, undeveloped nose, bee-stung lips, silken skin, Rapunzel hair, pearly white baby teeth…you know the drill. And their mothers are complicit in this fashioning of the perfect nymphet. Women know (my mother certainly did) that it is suicidal for a woman seeking marriage with a promising male to flaunt her intellectual or artistic accomplishments. My own mother advised me to become a good listener and not to show off my brains.

   Need I add that women are frequently viewed as perennially sexually available to their husbands, and that the multiple demands made upon them by motherhood or other activities are no excuse for saying no?   Indeed, women’s magazines, even WebMD, are full of advice regarding spicing up marriage, and the perversion of sadomasochism is now a joke on sitcoms, with no tut-tuts or curiosity about its history in the psyche of its practitioners. (See my prior blogs on this subject, almost too numerous to mention.)

    I am saying here simply that there is enormous social pressure to under-develop women and to exhaust them before their time. The pro-Life Right would wear them out with too many children, while the bohemian Left spurns fidelity altogether as a bourgeois imposition, activated by unleashed female curiosity that would pry into all their secret feelings and harness them to a deadening domesticity. Monogamy is notoriously square.

    The second wave of feminism started out with the reformist fervor of the nineteenth-century first wave, but then became co-opted by the “progressive” anti-imperialist Left (think of the Anne Hathaway character in The Devil Wears Prada who reverts to p.c. dowdiness at a magazine something like The Nation) and in their upward mobility into journalism, academe or business, these lucky few too often forgot about the great majority of women who were left behind. About this lamentable state of affairs, the punditry remains silent.

[Anonymous comment from a friend:] I read it with interest and agree in great part with you — I also feel this whole Polanski fracas is more complex than it appears, while at the same time being old news and dull news (compared to say, the real scandal of what happened in Guinea, or even, more locally, the gang rape of a young woman up in Richmond while onlookers took pictures and laughed).  I, too, think back to Polanski’s horrifying childhood and the Manson murders.  I think about what the man has endured.  

    I was also struck, after reading Samantha Geimer’s deposition, how Lolita-esque this whole episode was.  She had had intercourse before, several times.  Polanski, the pedophile, offered to perform (and did perform) oral sex on her, which she referred to as “cuddling”.  He did many things which he should never, ever have done.  But he kept asking her (again, according to her testimony) if she wanted champagne, if she wanted a quaalude, if she would like to take a dip in the hot tub, and she kept saying yes.  Now, of course, she is 13.  She is a child.  She doesn’t know what to do, even if she is somewhat sexually experienced.  And, alas, girls are implictly taught to be polite and acquiesce.  And is it so terrible to imagine that she could be both scared and curious simultaneously?  Then, she says she wants to call her mother and Polanski gives her the phone.  She calls her mother.  Her mother asks if she should come get her?  The girl says no.  So mother does not come.

 What the hell was Samantha Geimer’s mother thinking?  Or not thinking?  I hate to make this into an indictment of the mother — it was Polanski, after all, who is responsible — but still.  WTF?

L.A. in the 70’s was a very dark place.  It reads like something out of Didion, if Didion had written about it.  

 And still again… I don’t think Woody Allen’s support is doing Roman Polanski any good at all.  

 As the mother of two girls, at the end of the day, I think Polanski got away with something ugly and wrong, and even though Geimer moved on and doesn’t want more attention for this, it isn’t right. “Chinatown” may be about “the indifference of the world in the face of the worst corruption and evil” (well put), but it is also about a man who has raped his daughter and fathered a child by her.  A child he wishes to rape as well.  If Polanski could have just left his demons in his movies…

 The stupid right-wingers hate, because they fear, complexity.  But then again, they’re right about one thing:  being an artist doesn’t make it okay to have sex with a 13 year old. [end, comment from a friend]

Data
Title: On the Waterfront
Year: 1954
Length: 108 minutes
Director: Elia Kazan
Writer: Budd Schulberg, “suggested by” articles by Malcolm Johnson
Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint
Music: Leonard Bernstein
Distinctions: Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing (story and screenplay), Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actress (Saint), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (black-and-white) and Best Editing; currently #103 on IMDb’s Top 250

My reaction
Synopsis: dock workers are afraid to speak up against their murder-happy union
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Concept: Okay. Makes for a solid story, but if Brando hadn’t gotten his hands on that character it wouldn’t have been anything special.
Story: Great.
Characters: Great.
Dialog: Great.
Pacing: Okay. Never boring, but it does feel too long.
Cinematography: Indifferent. Does everything it needs to, but never more.
Special effects/design: Eh. The location sets are good. The sound is terrible. And my goodness what did the make-up people do to Brando’s face? As my wife says, his eyebrows are magnificent.
Acting: Great. About as good as acting gets.
Music: Okay. It’s good music, but it is not a score.
Subjective Rating: 7/10 (Good). Underneath all the exceptional writing and acting, at its heart it’s still just a gangster movie.
Objective Rating: 8/10 (points off for cinematography and special effects/design) 8/10 (Good).

Le n° 2 de DVD Park II est en ligne.
Un 12 pages numérique contenant plus de 20 chroniques de films édités en vidéo ces dernières semaines.
Plus de 30 titres à (re)découvrir, et un mode d’emploi indispensable pour préparer vos prochaines soirées DVD !

Disponible en téléchargement seul, ou en “pack” avec l’un des deux (ou les deux) numéros de VERSUS épuisés et toujours très demandés :
VERSUS n° 5 et VERSUS n° 7 (couvertures ci-dessous).

À la une de ce DVD Park II : Le Jour le plus long en Blu-ray.
Et de nombreaux autres temps forts à vivre ou revivre : Le Jour des morts-vivants Blu-ray, Pour elle, In The Shadow Of The Moon…

Téléchargez ce supplément (plusieurs formules au choix) à l’adresse suivante :
www.versusmag.fr/dvdpark2

Le Jour le plus long Bande annonce / Trailer extrait en VO non-ST

Le Jour des morts-vivants, extrait en VO non-ST

Pour elle, Bande-Annonce

It’s funny sometimes how the truth behind a satire from another time seems to come to bear in the present.

This past weekend, I watched part of  A Face In The Crowd, the classic film that I’ve seen many times from 1957 starring Andy Griffith as slimy Lonesome Rhodes, a drunken Southern drifter who by virtue of circumstance becomes a media darling and mouthpiece for conservative populism a la Glenn Beck of today. It’s a great film, one that always provokes a strong reaction and always seems, even in its dated setting, to have something that we can see in our own circumstances today.  It was a tour de force performance from Griffith and a far cry from the gentle, wise Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry.  Lonesome Rhodes was the type of character that would have had Barney Fife pretty nervous.

Lonesome Rhodes knows how to manipulate the people, spark them into a fiery force, yet has nothing but contempt for them.   He has a natural ability, like many cons, of being able to read people, sense their drives and triggers while ingratiating himself at the same time.   He is all charisma.  But beneath this patina of charm and folksy wisdom lies a core of anger, sex and violence- a dangerous timebomb who strives to shape the public opinion into his vision.

It’s a great depiction of how the public reacts to a man of the people, even when he may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  There is always talk of remaking this film and I always cringe at the thought.  Like most remakes of great films, it would probably lose that intangible spark that makes the original blaze, be it a stellar performance and natural charm like  that of Andy Griffith, a great supporting cast featuring Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, or the sharp, angular storytelling from director Elia Kazan, a controversial figure himself.  I really hope that they choose to leave this one alone.

Anyway, if you like social satire check out this film.  Good stuff.  Here’s the original trailer-

East of Eden

Pais: EU
Año: 1955
Género: Drama
Duración: 115 min.
Dirección: Elia Kazan
Guion: Paul Osborn (Novela: John Steinbeck)
Música: Leonard Rosenman
Producción: Warner Bros. Pictures

Reparto:
James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Dick Davalos, Jo van Fleet.[/size]

Descripción:
Un granjero californiano viven con sus dos hijos, Cal y Aron. Cada uno de ellos tiene un carácter muy diferente, pero ambos compiten por el cariño de su padre. Además la situación se complica cuando Cal descubre que su madre no está muerta, y que además regenta un local de alterne.

Críticas:
1955: 1 Oscar Mejor actriz secundaria (Jo Van Fleet) y tres nominaciones (guión, director y actor principal).

Abel habitó al este del Edén
Primera película protagonizada por James Dean, inspirada en la novela homónima de Steinbeck.

La acción tiene lugar en Monterrey, Salinas y alrededores. El relato se inicia en 1917, antes de la intervención de EEUU en la I Guerra Mundial en abril de 1917 y finaliza antes de la terminación del conflicto (noviembre 1918). Narra la historia del granjero Adam Trask (Raymond Massey) y de sus dos hijos, Aaron (Richard Davalos) y Caleb/Cal (James Dean), que compiten por el aprecio del padre. Éste tiene sus preferencias puestas en Aaron, sumiso y formal, mientras Cal soporta sus reproches por independiente y rebelde. La madre, Kate (Jo Van Fleet), persona de espítiritu libre y vitalista, se vio obligada a dejar la casa y los hijos. Logró salir adelante regentando en Salinas, junto con Sally, un próspero establecimiento de lenocinio.

La película aporta elementos muy valiosos de reflexión. Critica el comportamiento inflexible del padre, que busca en la Bíblia refugio para su debilidad. Exalta la libertad de pensamiento y acción del hijo menor, más inteligente que el padre y más competente para los negocios. Rechaza la sumisión del hijo mayor y exalta la figura de su novia, Abra (Julie Harris), que sabe intervenir en el conflicto familiar, con determinación, desenvoltura y conciencia de que su papel en la vida ha de ser activo y fuerte. La madre aparece como la principal víctima de la intransigencia de Adam, que le ha negado el efecto y el respeto que le debía y la ha alejado de los hijos. Recluída en la satisfacción efímera de sus ganancias y el afecto de Sally, es una persona atormentada, que se siente indigna ante los hijos y sufre la herida de su forzada exclusión de una vida familiar feliz. La condena de la guerra emerge en diversas secuencias (“La guerras están hechas para los hombres de negocios”).

La música, de Rosenman (“El señor de los anillos”), en su primera intervención cinematográfica, se resume en la obertura de la obra, que contiene todos los registros y variedades necesarios para dar vida a cada uno de los episodios. La fotografía, de Tec McCord (“Belinda”) ofrece algunos encuadres que inclinan la imagen global para mostrar centrada la del protagonista. El guión, de Paul Osborn (“Sayonara”), determina intervenciones breves, rápidas y contundentes. La interpretación de James Dean añade a su presencia y dicción una expresión corporal de gran mérito. Son destacables las intervenciones de la pelirroja Julie Harris y la de la madre, que borda un papel dificilísimo. La dirección rebosa vitalidad, inquietudes sociales, anhelos de paz y una envidiable brillantez narrativa.

Drama familiar, bien construído, que obtuvo un gran éxito de público y encumbró a la fama al protagonista, símbolo de una nueva generación de grandes actores.

Datos técnicos:
Tamaño: 1,41 Gb
Duracion: 01:49:53
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 704 x 272
Bitrate: 1572 Kbps. Qf: 0.328
Códec Audio: Mp3 Cbr
Bitrate Castellano: 48000Hz  128 kb/s (1chnl)
Bitrate Inglés: 48000Hz  128 kb/s total (2 chnls)
Subtítulos: [Castellano-inglés]

Capturas:

Película

Subs.es-en

All kinds of perfect: Clutch

Saw Clutch last Wednesday at the Phoenix. I danced like a fool, had some fun in the pit (rolled over my ankle and sprained it, and took the back of someone’s skull in my eye socket) and lost my voice singing. The crowd impressed me, too, perhaps the best I’ve seen in Toronto. I saw Mayhem in June (not my video) but was underwhelmed — it had been years since my last metal show and I  too tripped out by all the kids on their cell phones all night — so I had been worried I’d lost my ability to get into a good, heavy show.

Clutch is one of my all-time favourite bands, inspiring near-fanaticism in me and others that’s well-nigh impossible to explain to those who don’t get it. It doesn’t describe well: post-hardcore, given solid doses of blues and funk so that it turned into a really stoned, less aggro Rage Against the Machine on the way to sounding like beer belly rock. But the band is tight, breathes the most monstrous grooves and has one of the most gifted lyricists around.

Upcoming shows

A lot of bands I want to see in town this fall. A bit of nostalgia (Obituary), a few bands past their glory that I still feel I should check out (KMFDM, Skinny Puppy, Os Mutantes — although the latter may still have some cred, we’ll see), and some top-notch contemporary shit (Bajofondo, Fleck/Hussain/Meyer). There are a few other metal bands I may add to the nostalgia list, but I’m too embarrassed to name them in polite, literate company. I missed Down and Voivod, they played last night, although that show may have been eminently missable anyway.

• Obituary : 25 September, Opera House
• KMFDM : 29 September, Phoenix
• Bajofondo : 28 September, Opera House
• Bela Fleck + Zakir Hussain + Edgar Meyer : 29 September, Koerner Hall
• Os Mutantes (listen to that fuzz!) : 2 October, Opera House
• Skinny Puppy : November 13, Phoenix

Lettuce know if you wanna catch any of these shows!

Cinematheque’s new season

Just got the new Cinematheque program with the fall schedule in the mail and am pleased as punch (they haven’t updated the schedule yet). My Cinematheque membership saved my life last fall, after I moved back to Canada and was still completely out of sorts; I caught a big chunk of the Oshima retrospective (In the realm of the senses is a must-see for those interested in power and desire in eroticism, and deeply disturbing) and Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 15-hour adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s novel, screened over a single weekend. I saw little in the spring, only Bicycle thieves quite by chance one day when the gal and I were strolling around the neighbourhood.

Among other dandies, the fall season has retrospectives of the films of Elia Kazan and Manoel de Oliveira. Again, happy for company.

Mis películas

En 1970, Elia Kazan aceptó ser entrevistado para un libro que preparaba un joven director de cine, Jeff Young, quien no publicó el resultado de más de cien sesiones hasta 1999, cuando se otorgó a Kazan un Oscar honorífico por el conjunto de su carrera, en la que cabe destacar la dirección de películas como Un tranvía llamado Deseo, La ley del silencio, Al este del Edén, Esplendor en la hierba o América, América, que lo convirtieron en uno de los grandes renovadores del cine clásico americano.

 Jeff Young desveló no  solo parte de la metodología cinematográfica de Kazan, sino sus relaciones con actores, productores y guionistas, como James Dean, Marlon Brando, Tenesse Williams, Vivien Leight o John Steinbeck.

Young ha participado en la producción de unas cuarenta películas, entre ellas Blade Runner y La selva esmeralda.

Though nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower / We will grieve not, rather find / Strength in what remains behind. Voici les quelques vers du poète anglais William Wordsworth dont est tiré le titre original du film, Splendor in the Grass (en VF, La fièvre dans le sang). Titre magnifique qui traduit parfaitement les thèmes de l’innocence perdue, du passage de l’enfance à l’âge adulte et de la manière dont la jeunesse est capable d’idéaliser même les choses les plus banales (voir l’explication de texte très juste d’une Natalie Wood en pleurs dans la salle de classe). A noter ici la présence pour la première fois à l’écran de Warren Beatty, frère de la délicieuse Shirley MacLaine, qui verra sa carrière exploser quelques années plus tard avec le Bonnie & Clyde d’Arthur Penn.

Nous sommes dans une petite ville du Kansas (comprendre “Amérique profonde”) à la vieille de la Grande Dépression qui touchera les Etats-Unis en 1929. Tout le monde connaît tout le monde, les valeurs puritaines sont légions et il n’est pour tout dire pas facile d’avoir vingt ans là-bas. Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) et Deanie Loomis (Natalie Wood) s’aiment mais le poids des convenances et les barrières sociales semblent les empêcher d’aller plus loin. Bud est le fils d’un riche exploitant pétrolier alors que Deanie est issue d’une famille de petits commerçants. Ace Stamper veut ce qu’il y a de mieux pour son fils pour qui il a de grands projets. Il ira à Yale pour quatre ans, qu’il le veuille ou non. Bud se soumet à l’autorité paternelle. Deanie accepte sa décision, lui dit qu’elle l’attendra quoiqu’il arrive. Alors que le puritanisme pèse lourd, le jeune homme ne peut contenir ses pulsions les plus normales pour quelqu’un de son âge. Il passe donc à l’acte avec une fille de la classe de Deanie ce qui provoquera petit à petit chez cette dernière un état de démence qui pousseront ses parents à l’envoyer dans un établissement spécialisé (voir la scène de la salle de bain face à la mère, complètement dépassée). 1929 arrive avec son krach qui apparaît paradoxalement comme salvateur pour nos deux protagonistes.

D’après un scénario de William Inge, Splendor in the Grass aborde des thèmes qui traversent l’œuvre entière de Kazan (A l’est d’Eden) et plus généralement ce que représentait la figure de James Dean (La fureur de vivre): poids du puritanisme, une jeunesse qui veut vivre sans entraves, faillite d’un système de valeurs chères au modèle américain. Le film aurait également pu s’appeler Freud chez l’Oncle Sam tant Kazan met en avant les pulsions, l’hystérie, le rapport au sexe (le code Hays en prend un coup). Une œuvre dense et entière portée par de très convaincants comédiens totalement investis de leur rôle.

Este lunes 7 de septiembre se cumplen 100 años del nacimiento de Elia Kazan. No importa el tiempo que pase, las películas que nos regalara o los premios que recibiera; su nombre estará unido para siempre a la caza de brujas de los años cincuenta. Kazan delató a compañeros de trabajo sospechosos de colaborar con el comunismo, lo que ayudó a destruir sus carreras o, en el mejor de los casos, a tener que reemprenderlas fuera de Estados Unidos. Por el contrario, él salió indemne y tuvo la suerte de dirigir magníficas películas.

En un momento de sus memorias, tituladas “Mi vida”, concretamente cuando trabajaba como actor en las obras de Clifford Odets y comenzaba a dirigir en Broadway, Elia Kazan se preguntaba: «¿Qué le pido a la vida? Si tengo el talento que dicen que tengo, ¿en qué lo voy a emplear?». En aquel periodo, Kazan se debatía entre la actuación y la dirección, pero también luchaba por abrirse un hueco, por sentirse un americano más, no un emigrante nacido en Constantinopla un 7 de septiembre de 1909, de padres de origen griego. Esta paradoja existencial le acompañó durante toda su vida. De hecho, la temática de sus películas navega por el compromiso, la culpabilidad, la conciencia de individuos desubicados frente a la sociedad, la degradación que el tiempo causa en las personas y la incapacidad de ser feliz. Por eso, tal vez, toda su honestidad la volcó en su carrera como director, pues por encima de sus grandes películas y de sus fracasos, lo que destaca en el cine de Elia Kazan es su lealtad estética y su dignidad para realizar sólo películas en las que cree profundamente.

En 1913 la familia de Kazan se instaló en un barrio de Nueva York, donde su padre montó un negocio de alfombras y él comenzó sus estudios hasta graduarse en 1930, decidiendo ingresar en la Escuela de Arte Dramático de Yale, lo que le valió el rechazo de la figura paterna, que le dijo «¿No te has mirado al espejo?», algo por lo que Kazan le guardaría rencor durante bastante tiempo. Un par de años más tarde se unió al Group Theatre, comenzando así su carrera como actor, aunque, poco a poco, se fue decantando hacia la dirección. Por aquellas fechas se casaba por primera vez y militaba en el Partido Comunista, más por mimetismo que por convicción.

Elia Kazan debutó en el cine con “Lazos humanos” (1945), dibujo naturalista-simpático de corte melodramático sobre las penurias de una familia en un barrio de Brooklyn, basado en una famosa novela de Betty Smith. A este filme seguirían el retrato de denuncia de corrupción política de “El justiciero”, protagonizado por Dana Andrews -un actor al que nunca se le ha reconocido su indiscutible talento- y la desafortunada “Mar de hierba”, con Spencer Tracy y Katharine Hepburn. Ese año, 1947, fundaba junto a Cheryl Crawford, Robert Lewis y Lee Strasberg el célebre Actor’s Studio. Así, el estilo de Elia Kazan peca en ciertos momentos de una diáfana postura teatral, ya que si bien adolece de la fluidez narrativa de cineastas como Fritz Lang o Howard Hawks, el autor de “¡Viva Zapata!” (1952) siempre se ha afanado en alcanzar la emoción y la búsqueda de una unidad plástica, la cual lograba mediante su contundente dirección de actores. Por algo a Kazan se le debe el descubrimiento de Marlon Brando, James Dean, Eva Marie Sant o Warren Beatty, entre otros.

Sin duda, su etapa más destacada abarcó desde principios de los años cincuenta a mediados de los sesenta, aunque su primer Oscar lo obtuvo por la dirección de “La barrera invisible” en 1948, donde aborda el tema del antisemitismo. Durante ese periodo realizó el thriller “Pánico en las calles” (1950), con un inolvidable Richard Widmark, como los inolvidables Marlon Brando y Vivien Leigh en el intenso fogonazo dramático de la obra de Tennesse Williams, “Un tranvía llamado deseo” (1952); el apologético cuadro del revolucionario “¡Viva Zapata!” (1952), también con Brando, al igual que “La ley del silencio” (1954), la emocionante «historia de la traición de un hombre que vive según sus valores», como afirmaba el propio Kazan, en la que se ha querido ver una justificación a su proceder durante el maccarthysmo, y con la que logró una nueva estatuilla de la Academia. Luego vendría la primera película del malogrado James Dean, al que descubrió en el Actor’s Studio, “Al este del Edén” (1955), que no ha perdido un ápice de su vigor original y en la que la cámara de Kazan caligrafía el conflicto de los personajes con una portentosa utilización del cinemascope. A “Baby Doll” (1956) y “Río salvaje” (1960) el tiempo las ha erosionado, no así la denuncia del poder de la televisión de ‘Un rostro en la multitud’ (1957), y mucho menos las magníficas, sinceras, brillantes y conmovedoras “Esplendor en la hierba” (1961) y “América, América” (1963), en las que el frecuente artificio del cineasta es eliminado por completo.

Menos interesante fue la última etapa: “El compromiso” (1969), adaptación de una novela homónima de Kazan; “Los visitantes” (1972), que aborda el tema del Vietnam; y “El último magnate”, la obra póstuma de Fitzgerald, que estaba pensada inicialmente para el director Mike Nichols, y que finalmente acometió Kazan, siendo un rotundo fracaso pese al impresionante reparto. Dicho filme, con guión de Harold Pinter, escritura que no termina de adecuarse al estilo cinematográfico de Kazan, cuenta, sin embargo, con algunos espléndidos pasajes crepusculares donde se vuelve a manifestar una vez más esa sensación del autor de crítica y amor por el país que lo ha acogido en un mundo que conoce bien.

«Los críticos siempre me han considerado como un outsider y supongo que lo soy (…) Al ser extranjero, inmigrante, no formaba parte de la sociedad y me rebelaba contra ella. Después del éxito, seguí siendo un outsider, se convirtió en mi forma de ser», confesó en sus memorias. Esa forma de sentir está de un modo u otro en su cine y en su vida. Estar dentro de un sistema pero a la vez rebelarse contra él. Y es que esa infructuosa lucha del ser humano por ser feliz en un mundo hostil que parece decidido a derrotarlo, no es otra cosa que la temática fundamental que subyace en toda la filmografía de Elia Kazan, el outsider, que se esforzaba en estar a bien con su conciencia, pero sobre todo en captar la fugacidad de la belleza, que sólo subsiste en el leve recuerdo, como nos muestra el más hermoso de sus filmes, “Esplendor en la hierba”, y en la última de sus escenas, la despedida de Natalie Wood y Warren Beatty, donde se condensa su mirada, el cine, el tiempo, la belleza de la emoción y de su arte.

Más información: Ególatra, delator, artista único, por Maruja Torres.

Elia Kazan, el director outsider. Texto: Miguel Ángel Oeste. Diario Sur. 04.09.2009.

Ator, diretor de teatro, cineasta, escritor

Dale Bennett escreve roteiros cinematográficos e era, naquela época, um dos meus melhores amigos. Ganhou uma vez um prêmio da Academia e, mais cedo ou mais tarde, alguém acaba sempre por lhe dar um emprego, apesar de aquilo que escreve ser dez anos antiquado, mesmo para Hollywood. No entanto, está inteiramente convencido de que seu talento é fantástico e insulta os críticos e produtores que são a favor da Nouvelle Vague, da fotografia desfocada, da filmagem invertida e dos cortes abruptos. Estes homens, diz ele, dão mais valor à forma que ao conteúdo; ele é o “conteúdo”. O Compromisso – Elia Kazan, o romancista.

Kazan não é dos meus queridos. Nenhum dos seus filmes está entre os meus favoritos. Nem a sua literatura é a das que me causam compulsão. O fato é que cultivei certa obsessão por Kazan durante algum tempo porque ele é uma daquelas figuras que me fascinam, um párea, um cara que passou décadas sendo espezinhado publicamente por coisas que nada deveriam afetar no julgamento da sua criação artística, mas que proporcionalmente levaram-no à criação. Assistindo seus filmes, lendo seus livros e assimilando suas entrevistas podemos facilmente entender o tipo de mentalidade que Kazan carregava e absorver o quão admirável era este homem, afinal, não é preciso pensar igual para se chegar num estado de compreensão, respeito e admiração.

1- Sindicato de Ladrões (On the Waterfront, 1954)On the Waterfront is a history of informing where it seems like the greater good, despite the fact it goes against the code of community. The script was based on a set of real events which had nothing to do with my involvement with the Communist Party or the information I later gave to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Those fellows in Waterfront were criminals. It was based on the life story of a guy named DiVicenzo, who I knew, whose house I ate at. He live through the same goddamn thing that Terry Malloy goes through in the film. The waterfront was a gangster-dominated, ritualized, Mafia-coded society where no one ever said who said who was brutalizing them. Even when they knew who killed somebody, nobody ever talked. That was absolutely a valid story of the waterfront. But when people said there are some parallels to what I had done, I couldn’t and wouldn’t deny it. It does have some parallels. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Até queria sair do lugar-comum e tentar gostar mais de qualquer outro filme do Kazan, mas Sindicato de Ladrões é mesmo o melhor. Está tudo no lugar certo, na hora certa: Brando possivelmente criando o melhor personagem de sua carreira, a jaqueta, Malden e seu padre badass, os pombos, Budd Schulberg dando aula de escrita, Eva Maire Saint deixando Hitchcock deprimido, Steiger & Cobb, mea-culpa e realismo por parte de Kazan.

2- Um Rosto na Multidão (A Face in the Crowd, 1957) Theoretically, I think one man should make a picture. But in rare case where an author and a director have had the same kinds of experience, have a same kind of taste, the same historical and social point of view, and are compatible as Budd and I are, it works out perfectly. (Elia Kazan Interview – Michel Ciment, 1974)
Existem cinco inegáveis grandes obras sobre meios de comunicação e manipulação: Cidadão Kane, Network, A Montanha dos Sete Abutres, Adorável Vagabundo e Um Rosto na Multidão, todos passam longe de resultados melodramáticos, muito pelo contrário, todos se atêm à acidez de um cinismo quase-cômico, mas foi Kazan quem legou o mais cruel dos desenlaces. Com o recém falecido Budd Schulberg voltando à bem sucedida parceria com Kazan que deu origem a Sindicato de Ladrões, nos é entregue um filme que poderia ser tão bom quanto aquele, mas que não chega a isso por falta daquele peso pessoal que incrustou toda a alma do diretor em Sindicato de Ladrões.

3- America America (1963)America America may be a legend, but it’s not a fairy tale. This is the truth. Nobody makes pictures about that class of people, about their way of thinking and their values. America America really captured another civilization. It’s my favorite of all the pictures I’ve made. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
America, America está para gregos o que O Poderoso Chefão está para os italianos, não apenas na teoria como na prática, pois é evidente a influência do filme de Kazan na saga siciliana do Coppola e muito se deve ao tipo de relação que os povos mediterrâneos têm com suas famílias. De todos seus filmes, este era o preferido de Kazan, ele escreveu o livro sobre o que levou toda a sua família para os EUA, adaptou o roteiro e filmou, tudo que o transformou numa obra única e exclusivamente do diretor, pessoal e artisticamente é o seu grande legado. Além da habitual reiteração sobre integridade que encontramos como tema em todos os filmes do grego expatriado, a relação familiar é expandida e é explicado porque o laço sanguíneo tornou-se também um dos seus mais queridos pontos de reflexão.
Também fica claro o quanto Kazan era encantado com o que rolava no cinema europeu em termos de linguagem, chega a ser estranho ouvir os atores falando inglês, o diretor foi um grande assimilador, tudo que ele fazia estava em perfeita sincronia com movimentos do cinema ao redor do mundo e aqui não é diferente. Como diretor de teatro talvez tenha sido mais revolucionário do que qualquer outro nos EUA durante o século XX, especialmente por ter incentivado e introduzido o método do Actor’s Studio nos meios teatrais, atitude essa que poucos anos depois fez questão de repetir em seus filmes, ajudando a delinear os rumos da atuação dos últimos 60 anos em qualquer país do mundo, seja no teatro, no cinema ou na televisão.

4- Viva Zapata! (1952) The competition between Brando and Quinn was wonderfully fruitful and creative. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with actors competing, as long as they’re competing to be good and not to be stars. In fact, I sometimes try to arouse competition. For example, I often praise an actor openly. Thats makes every actor on the set want the same praise. It’s nice to tell them they were good when they do something well. It makes them want more. After all, they’re hanging on you. They can’t see themselves. So when they deserve praise I always articulate it. I don’t believe in playing cool. One beautiful thing about actors is that they’re so exposed. They’re not being criticized only for your behavior, but for their legs and breasts, for their double chin; their whole being is exposed to criticism. How can you not embrace them and how can you feel anything but gratitude toward these people? I like actors and I believe my films show it. You look at them and see what whoever directed them likes actors. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films) E Kazan vai ao oeste. Ou ao sul, depende do ponto de vista. Antes eu não gostava muito desse filme, mas depois de uma revisão uns tempos atrás, coloquei o rabinho entre as pernas e hoje assumo que é mesmo um grande filme, especialmente por todas as cenas de assassinato presentes nele – Kazan foi brilhante em todas elas, podendo ser incluso entre os melhores westerns dos anos 50. Além do mais, possui a maior e melhor coleção de bigodes já vista numa tela.

5- Clamor do Sexo (Splendor in the Grass, 1961) It was the easiest picture I ever made because the script was good. It was pure and simple. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Esse é mais um dos filmes cujo tema é homossexualismo, mas que foram camuflados com personagens heterossexuais. O roteirista/dramaturgo William Inge foi inspirado em suas próprias experiências na adolescência em reprimir e esconder sua sexualidade durante os anos 20, assim como a personagem de Natalie Wood detêm traços semelhantes à personalidade do autor, especialmente quanto a colapsos nervosos e tendências suicidas. O primeiro roteiro original escrito pelo dramaturgo é um grande texto que foi facilmente convertido em uma grande obra cinematográfica por parte de Kazan, o resultado é acima da média e Kazan tem o seu ápice no melodrama, atingindo o mesmo nível de Douglas Sirk e o uso que faz do technicolor é indispensável para isso.

6- Os Visitantes (The Visitors, 1972) I wanted to make the scene strong, but I didn’t want to make an entertainment out of blodletting. So I had the car fill three-fourths of the screen and built up the sound of fight. Then I cut to the door of the house, where Martha was struggling with Tony. I use a lesser act of violence to suggest the much more savage violence that was going on behind the car. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films) E Kazan se adapta ao cinema dos anos 70. A tensão crescente remete imediatamente ao Straw Dogs do Peckinpah, mas podemos ver o filme facilmente como uma sequência do então ainda porvir Pecados de Guerra do De Palma. O que é intrigante quanto este filme é o fato de ser quase ignorado dentro da filmografia de Kazan, é um trabalho excelente e a primeira grande obra sobre a guerra do Vietnã. Vale lembrar que esta é a estréia na tela grande de James Woods e Steve Railsback.

7- Vidas Amargas (East of Eden, 1955)I try to base things in realism and take off from there. I don’t think of myself as a realist. I think myself as a poetic realist or “essencialist”, as I call it. That may be just a big rationalization for my lacking. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Esse é o grande ponto de confluência entre o cinema de Kazan e o do seu protegido Nicholas Ray, não tentando associar a escolha mútua de James Dean como o protagonista de seus filmes como marco da desestrutura familiar – não, é muito mais do que isso, naquele ano eles emplementam uma simbiose de estilo e filosofia.

8- Pânico nas Ruas (Panic in the Streets, 1950)Another thing I learned from Ford: he’s a great guy for foreground objects. He puts an object in the foreground that’s critical at some point in the latter half of the scene, and he moves the people up to that object. It breaks up the foreground spatially, so that the shot has quality, not abstractness. I use that a lot in Panic in the Streets. (Elia Kazan Interview – Stuart Byron & Martin Rubin, 1971). É exatamente aqui onde Kazan começa a fazer cinema de verdade e o próprio assumia isso para quem quer que fosse. É um grande filme, quando o assisti cheguei a ficar boquiaberta pelo fato deste não ser tão festejado quanto algumas de suas obras daquela mesma década, louvores extras ao Jack Palance que nos dá o prazer de conferir um dos maiores vilões do cinema. Essa é uma boa época para ver o filme, especialmente se a imprensa ainda não causou paranóia suficiente para que você saia correndo e gritando todo vez que uma pessoa ao seu lado diz que está com dor de cabeça.

9- Uma Rua Chamada Pecado (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951)Some people say I made Brando the hero. I didn’t mean to make Brando the hero. But I wanted to show exactly what Williams meant, which is that he, as a homosexual, is attracted to the person he thinks is going to destroy him – the attraction you have for someone who’s on the otherside, supposedly dead against to you, but whose violence and force attract you. Now, that’s the essence of ambivalence. And that’s what I tried to do, so what you felt sorry for her but could see, however, that his force was healthier. That’s why I made Brando attractive. (Elia Kazan Interview – Stuart Byron & Martin Rubin, 1971)
Esse filme é demasiado importante para a história de Hollywood, não só botou fogo literalmente em quase 20 anos de Código Hays como mudou toda a história da interpretação colocando Brando no patamar de ator mais influente do cinema americano pelas próximas décadas, o que ao meu ver não foi algo tão benéfico assim. Tolinha de Olivia de Havilland, a Blanche que tanto Kazan quanto Brando queriam, mas que não aceitou o papel por existirem certas coisas que uma dama não faz em cena – imagino o quanto ela ficou horrorizada quando os anos 60 e 70 chegaram – então podemos incluir o papel de Blanche como um dos grandes arrependimentos da vida de Miss Havilland e todos sabemos que esta mulher tem muita coisa para se arrepender – alguns bem graves, por sinal.
E Marlon Brando quebra tudo. O que é a visão de Brando entrando em cena??? O problema dessa introdução ao senhor Kowalski é que quando ele abre a boca é altamente broxante, à parte Brando ser gostosopacaraleo e um grande ator, ele tinha uma voz insuportável, por isso é bom quando seus personagens gritam, grunhem ou gemem. A verdade é que este filme mudou para sempre o rumo de como se encara um ator no set de filmagens, sem o que Kazan começara no teatro uns poucos anos antes não haveria Brando, nem Dean, nem Pacino, nem De Niro, nem Hoffman, nem uma porrada de ícones que todo mundo conhece.

10- Boneca de Carne (Baby Doll, 1956)I like everything in the south, except its ideas, standarts and beliefs. But the way the people are has always impressed me. It’s part of my own maverick anarchism. I find them very funny and cute and human, very Chekhovian. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Oh, Mr Vacarro! Esqueça Marlon Brando em Uma Rua Chamada Pecado, em Baby Doll está a prova do porque Eli Wallach constar na minha lista de homens mais sexys do universo. É a estréia do Wallach no cinema e é mesmo um absurdo, nos faz perceber algo bem peculiar quanto aos machos do Kazan: a sensu/sexulidade deles é bem mais evidente do que suas contrapartes fêmeas. Mesmo Miss Carroll Baker sendo um pitéu e ter a sua sensualidade natural bem delineada, Wallach domina o ambiente de tal forma que a única coisa que resta por parte dela é a reação à ação do macho dominante que Wallach representa no ambiente cênico.

11- O Justiceiro (Boomerang! 1947)We shot that entirely on location – not a set in the picture. The picture was a terrific thrill that way – it made me see my identity. I really enjoyed that life, whereas I was miserable on the MGM set. For one thing, I was miserable living in Hollywood – I never liked the place. I never unpacked my bags. (Elia Kazan Interview – Stuart Byron & Martin Rubin, 1971)
O homem era viciado em integridade, mesmo na sua fase pau-mandado-de-estúdio nos anos 40, lá estava Kazan envolvido na defesa das coisas em que acreditava, batendo na tecla de que não importa se o próprio indivíduo ou um clã se queima no processo desde que seja íntegro com a sua maneira de pensar e caráter. Particularmente gosto bastante deste filme, porque é intrigante, ágil, tem uma sorte de personagens e atores espetaculares, além de existir alí um vislumbre do cinema contemporâneo de Jules Dassin.

12- Rio Violento (Wild River, 1960) I think Miss Ella’s right to want to stay on her land. I think Glover is right, too. That picture, with all of its faults, is the epitome of what I feel more clearly than any other. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films) Tudo que Kazan tinha em boas intenções para com The Sea of Grass finalmente pôde ser colocado em prática no Wild River. A semelhança ideológica entre ambos é gritante, mas 13 anos na vida professional de um cineasta e do próprio cinema em evolução fazem uma diferença dos diabos, isso, é claro, se o mundo não for habitado por clones do Orson Welles.

13- O Compromisso (The Arrangement, 1969) Everyone become a salesman here. If you don’t sell anything else, you sell yourself. Ours is a society dominated by business, and the economic pressure even at the upper-middle-class level is fantastic. The epitome of this business civilization is the advertising industry. Everyone feels some degradation, some violation of self, when they spend their lives selling. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films). Não vou dizer que se você é romancista e cineasta jamais adapte o seu próprio livro, pois Kazan já o fizera muitíssimo bem com America, America, o problema em The Arrangement é adaptação às mudanças do próprio cinema. Kazan quis se adaptar a um estilo que não lhe caiu bem, chega a ser mesmo irritante o estilo de montagem, o uso da trilha sonora e a inserção de devaneios constantes, essa certamente não era a praia do Kazan, como admirador confesso da Nouvelle Vague parece que ele quis fazer algo como Pierrot Le Fou, mas as coisas ficam bem bizarras quando se força a encarar um estilo que não é o seu.
O livro tinha grande potencial para adaptação, tendo o mesmo tom de coisas que voltariam à moda nos anos 80 e 90 como Beleza Americana, Clube da Luta e Como Fazer Carreira na Publicidade. Notoriamente a semelhança fica mesmo por conta de Mad Men, quando comecei a assistir o seriado, o livro de Kazan vinha à mente constantemente, digamos que Mad Men é tudo que Kazan poderia ter feito com seu filme mas dolorosamente desperdiçou.
Vale lembrar que o livro do homem é basicamente uma autobiografia “camuflada” de seu relacionamento com a excelente atriz Barbara Loden, com quem trabalhou no cinema em Wild River e Splendor in the Grass.

14- Laços Humanos (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945)The one thing I really liked about that film was the little girl. By far the most authentic thing about the film is Peggy Ann Garner’s face. Nothing compares with it except maybe Jimmy Dunn’s face. He was terrific. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Kazan e seu assistente de direção conhecido como Nicholas Ray se encontram neste filme que delinearia muito do cinema futuro de ambos, em específico o traço da desestrutura familiar, um tema que foi muito caro em suas respectivas carreiras.  É mais um desses “filmes de ator” que Kazan fez e reitero o fato de que James Dunn era absolutamente apaixonante.

15- A Luz é para Todos (Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947)No matter what I think of it today, what I remember most about Gentleman’s Agreement is that at time no one said ‘jew’. When it was being made, all the rich jews in California were against it. And the Catholic Church was against it because they don’t want the heroine to be a divorcee. There were hell of lot people who said to Zanuck, ‘We’re getting along all right. Why bring this up?’ (Elia Kazan Interview – Stuart Byron & Martin Rubin, 1971)
Esse é um dos filmes de que Kazan não gostava, porque é um produto de estúdio, com muita relevância história e nulidade autoral. Zanuck possuía um tino danado para jogar com esses filmes polêmicos e gostava de colocar a bomba na mão do Kazan porque o cineasta sempre fora um homem de coragem ao assumir seus pontos de vista e atitudes, não importando a merda que daria. Sob o ponto de vista atual Gentleman’s Agreement é bem truncado, mas se localizado no pós-guerra dá para imaginar a bomba que caiu nas casas das famílias cristãs de toda a América.

16- O que a Carne Herda (Pinky, Elia Kazan/John Ford, 1949)Some years later I said to Zanuck, “Jack Ford never had shingles, did he?” And he said, “Oh hell, no. He just wanted to get out of it; he hated Ethel Waters and she sure as hell hated him”. I also think maybe he didn’t like the whole project. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Mesmo possuindo um tema pelo qual Kazan tinha fascínio e passaria o resto de sua carreira reiterando-o, ele ainda não estava tão ciente da linguagem cinematográfica, deixando o peso do filme nas mãos das duas (grandes) atrizes Ethel Waters & Barrymore. Ford começou o filme, mas saiu por falta de afinidade com o assunto tão espinhoso, Kazan era um tipo mais moldado para mexer num vespeiro com direito a romance interracial e propaganda para que se trate o negro como um igual em fins dos anos 40. Está longe de ser um dos melhores filmes do homem, mas a sua importância histórica é inegável.

17- O Último Magnata (The Last Tycoon, 1976)Não gosto desse filme. Não interessa quantas estrelas dão as caras e nem o quanto o Irving Thalberg era interessante, muito menos com quantos scottfitzgeraldeharoldpinters se escreve um roteiro, o filme é muito chato e não tenho nada a dizer, mas justamente por isso talvez seja hora de revê-lo.

18- Os Saltimbancos (Man On a Tightrope, 1953)I hated McCarthy. It was embarrassing to be on the same side as him. But I didn’t terrorize people. He did. I didn’t lie. He lied. I never said there were so many and so many, holding up a blank piece of paper, claiming it was a list of subersives in the State Department. He did. He lied. I never told a lie in my life about that stuff. It was terrible to be aligned with McCarthy. But as far as doing it for money, it’s fantastic, really, because in the first place they didn’t threaten me and in the second place they couldn’t have and in the third place I didn’t need a job in Hollywood. The blacklist did not extend to Broadway and I was at the top of my theater career. All my testifying did was lose me certain things. I knew that I’d lose Arthur Miller’s plays. I knew a lot of guys would turn against me, which they did. I’ve lived through that. In some ways the whole experience made a man out of me because it changed me from being a guy, who was everybody’s darling and always living therefore for people’s approval, to a fellow who could stand on his own. It thoughened me a lot. I’m not afraid of anybody. People say that too – that I was afraid. I never was in my life. They avoided my eye. I didn’t avoid theirs. I have some regrets about the human cost of it. One of the guys that I told on I really liked a lot… well, pretty much. I really thought it was killing him. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
É bem deprimente carinha fazer filme para provar alguma coisa que não é. Além de Man On a Tightrope ser ruim, parecendo desesperado e feito às pressas, o contexto em que foi feito atrapalha ainda mais, se Kazan estivesse defendo uma idéia e não a si mesmo quando o fez, meu olhar sobre o filme talvez não fosse tão decepcionado.

19- Mar Verde (The Sea of Grass, 1947)The only miserable experience I had was The Sea of Grass. I should never have made that film, or I should have quit. (Kazan: The Master Director Discusses his Films)
Geralmente não concordo quando cineastas renegam suas obras, pelo contrário, sempre defendo que os caras são demasiado auto-críticos, mas dessa vez tenho que concordar com o desprezo: ô filminho sem eira nem beira. Há um elenco sensacional, há um roteiro promissor, mas Kazan nunca foi talhado para trabalhar no Star System, tanto que o cinema dele só pegou mesmo no tranco durante os anos 50 quando aquele sistema morreu definitivamente, muito por culpa do próprio Kazan que ajudou a instaurar a revolução.

Gadget Kazan – o ator

Uma Canção para Você (Blues in the Night, Anatole Litvak, 1941)Blues in the Night é o berço de muita gente, além de Kazan como ator, há Don Siegel trabalhando na montagem e Robert Rossen lidando com o roteiro. Um daqueles filmes mais lembrados por sua trilha sonora do que por qualquer outra coisa, é um noir-musical-melodramático, se é que tal definição possa existir. Aqui o senhor Kazan tem a honra de representar um membro da banda protagonista da história, ao som de muita música do duo Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer, a surpresa fica por conta de ser um papel importante e não apenas um cameo, além de provar que se seguisse a carreira de ator teria um bom futuro, possuía desenvoltura nata e se adequou perfeitamente ao ritmo do filme, com seus diálogos rápidos e edição acelerada para acompanhar o ritmo da música.

Dois Contra uma Cidade Inteira (City for Conquest, Anatole Litvak/Jean Negulesco, 1940)Apesar de ser um dos melhores amigos do protagonista, o papel de Kazan aqui não é tão grande quanto em Blues in the Night, mas é de razoável importância, especialmente se ele faz as vezes do gangster-mor e isso num filme com Cagney é uma grande honra. Tenho o mesmo tipo de relação com o cinema do Anatole Litvak para com o do próprio Kazan, em geral gosto bastante de alguns do trabalhos de ambos, mas nada que faça com que eu professe um WOW e é interessante o fato de Litvak ter sido esse grande introdutor de Kazan em Hollywood.
E não interessa se o filme é bom ou ruim, se o Cagney está presente o prazer é garantido. Sempre.

Pie in the Sky (Ralph Steiner, 1935)Esse é da época que o Kazan era comunista. hehehe (Parte 2)

Nota 1: No livro O Século do Cinema de Glauber Rocha tem um capítulo interessante, onde Glauber, como sempre, desce a lenha no cinema do Kazan, mas que, ao mesmo tempo, conta sobre um encontro entre os dois narrado de forma bastante admirável.

Nota 2: Pelos próximos anos Scorsese estará ocupado envolvido com projetos sobre ícones que ele muito aprecia, alternando documentários e cineobios sobre gente como Sinatra, George Harrison e Roosevelt, tio Marty também está com um documentário sobre Kazan na gaveta, a intenção é dirigí-lo, mas veremos se o projeto vai para frente.

Nota 3: Enquanto fazia este post, acho que mudei de opinião, creio que o meu favorito é Um Rosto na Multidão, talvez seja o único filme de Kazan com o qual tenho grande afinidade, seguido de Splendor in the Grass.

In the early 1950’s, Hollywood was attacked by censorship.  Joe McCarthy (unfortunately, from Wisconsin), with the help of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), started hunting down every supposed communist in Hollywood – and the rest of the country – getting several of them blacklisted and banned from working in the US.  Blacklists which, in some cases, still stand.  All of this was discussed in the 2007 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

In this era, several people in Hollywood “named names.”  When called up to testify to HUAC, they gave out the names of other communists, actual and suspected, in Hollywood.  Most of them did this because they wanted to avoid the blacklists.  One of them, Elia Kazan, didn’t do it so that he could keep working.

He did it because he believed it was right.

What was the result?  He was shunned by large parts of the community for decades.  When, in 1999, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award by the Academy, several members (including some who’d never lived through the McCarthy era) booed him.  The man was undeniably an artist of incredible skill… but he spoke out for what he believed in, and was silenced for it.

How, pray tell, does this differ from what McCarthy himself did?  That Hollywood didn’t have the power of the government behind it?  If anything, that makes it worse.

You had a group of people who’d experienced first hand the pains of being censored; of being told that you’re not allowed to speak your beliefs, and that you’ll be punished if you do.  And they go and punish Kazan for doing just that.  Others who named names were forgiven, but not Kazan – because he sincerely believed he was doing the right thing.

Censorship isn’t just what the government does.  It comes from government bodies, and it comes from private groups.  The government uses laws to punish people in the name of protecting the public from content they feel shouldn’t be seen.  The entertainment industry censors the messages in their films for the sake of the almighty dollar.  The actors and others working in the industry do it because they don’t want to support messages they disagree with… and they penalize the people who do disagree with them, publically castigating them and effectively blacklisting them from working in major projects.

Which of these is the worst of the different types?

Ultimately, McCarthy was recognized as a lunatic, and his career (and efforts) were brought to an ignominious end.  The people who spoke out against him have come to be viewed as heroes.

But the people who agreed with him have been demonized, or at least had their agreement brushed under the rug.

Now, was Kazan right to name names?  I don’t know.  He believed he was.  Others believed he wasn’t.  But was it right to punish him for what he did?  No more than it was right for HUAC to put people on a blacklist and prevent them from working for their political views.  The only difference is who won in the long run.  But freedom of speech, the sacred right so often cited by the opponents of censorship, cuts both ways.  If you want to be free to express your opinions, regardless of who disagrees with them, without fear of punishment, then you have to be willing to grant the same freedom.

Unfortunately, I doubt we’re ever going to see that message come out of Hollywood… not really something that’d sell a lot of tickets.

Baby Doll

Director: Elia Kazan.

Guión: Tennesse Williams.

Intérpretes: Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Lonny Chapman, Noah Williamson.

Música: Kenyon Hopkins.

Fotografía: Boris Kaufman.

EEUU. 1956. 112 minutos.

Williams…

No interesa demasiado comentar los problemas que Baby Doll tuvo con la Liga de la Decencia y con el cardenal Spellman en la fecha de su estreno: el tiempo pone a cada uno en su sitio. Quizá sí interesa comentar, al hilo de la reseña de este filme, que es la única adaptación de una obra del celebérrimo dramaturgo Tenesse Williams en la que éste intervino directamente en el guión. Más que ninguna otra adaptación, su presencia en el libreto se nota en la estructura eminentemente teatral de la película –más incluso que La gata sobre el tejado de zinc-. Y en el aspecto temático, Baby Doll contiene el epítome del aura lírica y sombría de la obra del autor de A streetcar named Desire: nos habla de la pérdida de la inocencia, del ocaso de un modo de vida ya obsoleto, de la sinrazón de unos planteamientos abocados al fracaso, y de las perniciosas repercusiones de esa coyuntura en el espíritu humano; una serie de elementos que Williams no desglosa sino de cuya mezcolanza extrae la lírica, convirtiendo a los peones de la historia en personajes abocados al límite de sus fuerzas y de sus motivaciones, víctimas e involuntarios verdugos de una coda de destrucción.

…y Kazan

Kazan sirve a la perfección los postulados de Williams, y arranca de todos los espacios narrativos una perenne sensación de pérdida y de desconsuelo, tanto los concernientes a la turbia relación entre los cuatro personajes de la historia, como a lo relativo a la descripción del microcosmos escénico (esa mansión desvencijada, prolija en detalles de su latente destrucción, esos trabajadores de color esparcidos por la finca, desquiciados y abandonados a su blues, la suciedad, el aroma a marchito…). En secuencias como la de la seducción de Eli Wallach a Carroll Baker, o en el largo clímax de la función, el director de Splendor on the Grass certifica su intransferible talento en la dirección de actores y su ya legendaria capacidad para extraer destellos de improbable belleza de las situaciones más turbias imaginables.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048973/combined

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,808872,00.html

http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2009julsep/kazan.html

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-06-02/entertainment/ca-8579_1_elia-kazan

Todas las imágenes pertenecen a sus autores