So many of today’s youth have not seen films made before the year they were born and they are missing so much. I remember being 18 and spending some time with my girlfriend at the time at her job, which allowed for me to get a lot of reading done. One of her co-workers expressed some surprise that I was reading Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography. “Do you have to know everything about movies John?” Without hesitation I answered, “yes,” and still feel that way. The great directors of cinema past and present knew as much as they could ABOUT cinema past and present. Aspiring filmmakers should certainly take their cue.
Once, while showing “Psycho” in my film history class, a student suddenly shouted, “Marcellus Wallace and Butch…man Tarantino lifted this,” and he was right. There is a scene in the film where Marion Crane encounters her boss crossing a street in much the same manner Butch encounters Marcellus in “Pulp Fiction.” It’s small but I’m so happy someone in that class picked it up. You have to know where you’ve been to understand where you are and, certainly, where you’re going.
There is a retro-interest in Elia Kazan, the great director of the 1950s, that I find quite thrilling. Known as a bi-coastal director, Kazan enjoyed great success in film as well as stage, helming some of the first productions of the greatest plays of the 20th century, including “All My Sons,” “Death of a Salesman,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” He would direct the film version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1951 to great acclaim.
No other director before Kazan so understood the art of acting and was able to work with actors in the manner he did. He was among the first directors to make the actor part of the creative team, listening to his or her ideas and admitting when he had actually been wrong. It was unheard of for directors such as John Ford, William Wyler, Chaplin or Orson Welles to admit being wrong — they never were in their minds — but Kazan had no fear, believing the creative process allowed for error.
Having been trained as an actor befor he became a documentary filmmaker, Kazan understood the actor’s process, but as a director he wanted to be more than just the sort of director who blocked talent; he wanted to work with actors to create something as realistic as possible. Though he started his career as a director with Method Acting guru Lee Strasberg, the two parted ways when Kazan began evolving the style. Kazan went off to direct with his new ideas about the Method and found great success, winning two Academy Awards, Tony Awards and in 1999, under the cloud of controversey, an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.