For Martin Scorsese, growing up in Little Italy, seeing On the Waterfront and East of Eden as a young man was a life-changing experience. Scorsese appears on and off camera throughout A Letter to Elia, taking us through Kazan’s life and through his own as well, and through his growing realization that there was an artist behind the camera, someone “who knew me, maybe better than I knew myself.” The film is about being exposed to the right movies at the right moment in your adolescent life, when you’re wide open and ready to connect, to be spurred on by the work up there on the screen, and then, maybe, to chart a course toward making your own movies.

Composed of clips, stills, readings from Kazan’s autobiography and his speech on directing (read by Elias Koteas), a videotaped interview done late in Kazan’s life, and Scorsese’s commentary on and offscreen, A Letter to Elia takes a close look at the life of art and its creation – the work, the distractions, the inspirations, the complications, the intersections between art and experience.

A Letter to Elia, written and directed by Scorsese and his longtime collaborator Kent Jones, is a deeply personal film, a frank portrait and self-portrait, and an equally frank acknowledgement of the closeness and the distance between artists and their art.

“Panic in the Streets” c. 1950 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Renewed c. 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

On March 21, 1999, and for the first time in its long and illustrious history, the Academy Awards® ceremony occurred on a Sunday. Over 45 million people watched on television. While glamorous nominees and other Hollywood elites walked the fabled red carpet into L.A.’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, perhaps the most accomplished and influential attendee entered discreetly through a back door.

Introduced by one of the greatest actors of our time, Robert De Niro, and one of the greatest directors of our time, Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest directors of all time prepared to return to the OSCAR® stage to receive the iconic gold statuette for the first time since 1954. After a video retrospective featuring the man and his work, Elia Kazan was escorted onto the stage by his wife, Frances, to receive an honorary OSCAR® recognizing and celebrating his lifetime of extraordinary achievement in film.

Not everyone applauded. Even fewer rose to their feet. But the ovation lasted for nearly a full minute—an eternity in an OSCARS® television broadcast. Although his history was controversial and his relationship with Hollywood was at times ambivalent, no one could deny the genius of his visionary and influential body of work in film. Kazan graciously thanked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its courage and generosity in bestowing such an honor. He embraced an emotional Scorsese and DeNiro, then humbly concluded, “I think I could just slip away.”

Kazan the honoree was not always so reserved and retiring. Elia Kazan the director bravely and artfully confronted some of the more pressing social issues of his time: topics such as class division, bigotry and corruption. His courage and talent behind the camera delivered some of Hollywood’s most unforgettable cinematic achievements, such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954) and East of Eden (1955). His leadership and tutelage elicited OSCAR®-Winning performances from screen greats such as Vivien Leigh, Anthony Quinn, Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint.

Elia Kazan was born Elias Kazancoglu in 1909 to Greek parents living in Turkey. His family emigrated to New York City in 1913. Although there were expectations that he would join the family rug business, his heart was set on theater. Kazan graduated from Williams College, then attended the School of Drama at Yale University.

Following his education, Kazan entered the world of theater in New York. He began as an actor, appearing in stage productions such as Golden Boy and Men in White. He quickly earned a reputation as a reliable jack-of-all-trades, earning the nickname “Gadge” (short for gadget). Kazan eventually earned the opportunity to direct.

On stage, he brought to life the works of some of America’s greatest playwrights, including Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Arthur Miller (All My Sons, Death of a Salesman). The latter two productions earned Kazan Tony Awards® for Best Direction (1947) and Best Director (1949), respectively. Kazan also won a Tony® for Best Direction in 1959 for his work on J.B.

The gifted Kazan was discovered by Hollywood early in his career. He executive produced and appeared as an actor in 1935’s Pie in the Sky. Kazan moved behind the camera to serve as an assistant director on the 1937 short subject People of the Cumberland. His education in film continued when he was cast in the role of “Googi” in the 1940 James Cagney vehicle City for Conquest. Kazan took particular note of Cagney’s acting technique and his rapport with the cast and crew.

Kazan’s unique experience, talent and versatility earned him a contract with Twentieth Century Fox in 1944 to direct five films in five years. His first outing proved that the studio made the right choice. Kazan’s direction of the 1945 adaptation of the beloved Betty Smith novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a critical success and an instant classic. Kazan’s natural ability to summon great performances from his cast was fast becoming his trademark—James Dunn won the 1945 ACADEMY AWARD® for Best Supporting Actor, and Peggy Ann Garner won an OSCAR® for Outstanding Child Actress (a Special Award at the time, for which she was bestowed a miniature statuette).

The 1945 film The Sea of Grass gave Kazan the opportunity to direct silver-screen heavyweights Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Kazan, however, was disappointed with his sophomore directing effort. Kazan bounced back in 1947 with the fact-based murder drama Boomerang, earning him Best Director awards from both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. Kazan’s profile continued to rise in Hollywood. Fox’s 1947 film Gentleman’s Agreement — a controversial study of anti-Semitism — earned Kazan his first ACADEMY AWARD® Best Directing Nomination and Win. His triumph would turn out to be bittersweet. The politically sensitive nature of Gentleman’s Agreement also garnered the unwanted attention of the U.S. Congress and its House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

In 1952, after initially refusing to testify, Kazan appeared before the HUAC (not to be confused with the U.S. Senate counterpart led by Joseph R. McCarthy). Kazan had briefly been a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America in the mid-1930s. While questioned under oath, Kazan reluctantly identified people in the worlds of both theater and film—and most ended up blacklisted in Hollywood. Torn between his principles and personal loyalties, Kazan made a difficult and lonely decision to speak truthfully rather than to protect his friends and their careers. Many would never forgive Kazan. Others, in time, would come to respect him not only for his undisputed cinematic talent, but also for his honesty and integrity.

Excruciating moral dilemmas also punctuated many stories Kazan told from behind the camera. His fearless honesty, profound vision and innovative aesthetics led to ACADEMY AWARD® Best Directing Nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), East of Eden (1955) and America America (1963), also earning Kazan nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Most notably, Kazan again took home the Best Director OSCAR® in 1954 for On the Waterfront, a singular masterpiece earning twelve ACADEMY AWARD® Nominations, which culminated in eight OSCAR® Wins, including Best Picture. This Kazan classic would be cherished and honored for years to come. In 1989, On the Waterfront was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” as deemed by the United States Library of Congress.

In a twist of personal irony, the story in On the Waterfront culminates in longshoreman Terry Malloy’s (Marlon Brando, Best Actor Winner) moral dilemma as to whether he should give testimony against a powerful and crooked union boss (Lee J. Cobb, nominated Best Supporting Actor), who is connected with his [Malloy’s] attorney brother (Rod Steiger, nominated Best Supporting Actor). Perhaps it was Kazan’s own difficult decision to finally relent to the HUAC and give his own testimony that gave him the unique perspective and impetus to evoke landmark performances that earned OSCAR® Wins or Nominations for not only Brando, Cobb and Steiger, but also for Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint (Winner, Best Supporting Actress).

Kazan’s remarkable work continued through the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Under his direction, films such as John Steinbeck’s classic tale East of Eden (1955), the provocative Baby Doll (1956), the revealing Splendor in the Grass (1961) and his very personal America America (1963, loosely based on his uncle’s life) earned additional OSCAR® Nominations and Wins for others affiliated with Kazan’s work. His final film was an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon (1976), starring Robert DeNiro.

Scorsese and DeNiro proudly stood behind Kazan while he faced a theater full of grateful admirers and unforgiving detractors on that memorable Sunday in 1999.

Solemnly holding his third and final ACADEMY AWARD®, Elia Kazan personified the conflicted, controversial and principled outsider who often underscored the allure and cultural significance of his many films. He may have then openly wished to “just slip away,” but the cinematic treasures he left us ensure that he will forever be first remembered as a man of remarkable gifts and accomplishments during a truly golden era of Hollywood. Elia Kazan passed away on September 28, 2003.

Martin Scorsese

Kent Jones: We started this movie half a decade ago.

Martin Scorsese: We started talking about it a year or so after Kazan passed away. I wanted to make something that honored him and his place in my life and my approach to the work, but that was also honest, that reflected his honesty about himself, and I asked you to work on it with me.

KJ: You wanted to be able to express what you couldn’t express to him when he was alive…

MS: Which eventually became part of the subject of the movie.

KJ: Yes. It had to be.

MS: Exactly.

KJ: It started off as a very different kind of project.

MS: We were going to do interviews. And then it seemed like the right idea to go in a different direction.

KJ: There’s a very good film to be made about Kazan as a person, as the man who started with the Group Theatre, who acted in Waiting for Lefty, who went on to revolutionize Broadway, then started the Actors’ Studio, then became a friendly witness before HUAC and suffered the consequences, then made a string of great films, changed the face of acting in theater and movies, suffered through the trauma of his first wife’s death, reinvented himself as a writer, and so on. It would be a real epic. But that felt like someone else’s idea.

MS: The thing was to convey something about the relationship, and by that I mean my relationship to the films, and that meant going back to the way that I received them when I saw them as an adolescent.

KJ: And the distinction between your relationship with the films and your relationship with the man, and the way you saw the films when you were young and the way you see them now.

MS: Right.

KJ: I thought that was really interesting, because it doesn’t have anything to do with film aesthetics or official history. Actually, in a sense, it does – it’s the way you receive films when you’re young and wide open to them.

MS: Yes. You don’t know how it’s done or why, you just know that the picture is speaking to you and addressing something that can’t be addressed in your life, by anyone you know, because it’s private, embarrassing. You’re young and figuring out who you are in relation to everyone around you, the adult world around you, but you’re not on the adult wavelength yet.

KJ: Or maybe you don’t want to be, and it’s about finding a way to talk to yourself.

MS: Yes. Which is what a psychoanalyst is supposed to help you do.

KJ: But when you’re a kid, you’re trying to do it yourself. You need to. It does remind me of something Andrew Sarris said, that if you want to psychoanalyze someone, just ask them about the movies they’ve seen.

MS: I wouldn’t know where to start there. I’ve seen so many. So have you.

KJ: I received your movies in the way you’re describing when I was a little older, when I was 16, 17.

MS: And I was 12 and 13 when I saw On the Waterfront and East of Eden.

KJ: You weren’t really aware of the Actors’ Studio or HUAC or any of that when you were young, were you?

MS: Not at all. Of course, we knew about the red scare in general and the blacklist, we knew about the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Rosenberg case. But Kazan’s testimony and the reaction to it we never heard of. And the Actors’ Studio? Another world.

KJ: We talked quite a bit about HUAC and how to deal with that.

MS: I didn’t want to make a movie about the blacklist. It’s been done and done well.

KJ: The issue is: how do you talk about Kazan? Because, of course, you can’t not talk about his friendly testimony. But it’s just as important to not let his testimony overshadow everything else. I was fascinated by his autobiography, the way he circled around the topic over and over again – apologizing for it in a dream, rationalizing it, raking himself over the coals for it, moving past it, returning to it. It was completely unresolved.

MS: The important thing was to not judge him on the one hand, and to not lecture anyone on the other hand.

KJ: And obviously neither of us wanted to condemn him. I think it’s so strange when people do that, and then his movies along with him.

MS: The movies?

KJ: Sure. Like, “He was an informer so his movies were worthless.” I’ve read it over and over again. I always feel like asking them, “So you’re not going to watch Wild River because Kazan named names? Or East of Eden? Or Splendor in the Grass? They’re all bad a priori? Along with Celine’s novels, Ezra Pound’s poetry, and Heidegger’s writings, I guess.” And how about Robert Rossen? He named names, so I guess he’s out too. And Clifford Odets and Burl Ives and Jerome Robbins. And there’s a lot of confidence about what you or I would have done if we’d been on the stand. It’s interesting.

MS: We deal with it in the movie, but it doesn’t overwhelm the movie.

KJ: The amount of time we spend on it is relatively small, but in a way it colors the mood. It’s part of the melancholy. Along with the sense of the immense distance between the artist and their art.

MS: That’s a subject I’d looked at in No Direction Home. That equation between Dylan and his music was terrifying to him, when people called him a prophet and told him that he’d changed their lives and that kind of thing. You hear that, and it’s a wonderful compliment, and then it’s: “Okay – now what?” Can you have a simple conversation after that? Probably not. And ultimately, it wasn’t him, it was the songs. Of course, he’d written the songs, they were his, but then, in a way, they really weren’t anymore – they had a life of their own. Which is painful, and beautiful at the same time. Because ultimately, that’s what you want, for the painting or the movie or the novel to take on its own existence. That’s where the old adage to trust the tale and not the teller comes from.

KJ: We settled on a certain way of looking at the question of style. It’s encapsulated in the moment where we’re looking at Dean and Harris hidden by the tree and Davalos coming to confront them, and you say that at the time, you didn’t know anything about technique, you just responded to what was genuine and what wasn’t.

MS: That’s the key. You don’t get interested in films because of camera angles or editing choices. You get involved in them. You’re drawn into the world of the film and the emotional lives of the characters and the conflicts between them. You get older and more sophisticated, and you begin to understand the differences between the pictures that work and the ones that don’t, you start to understand the way films are assembled from so many elements, what direction and editing and lighting and sound design are, how they all fit together, and you develop a growing awareness that every movie is a series of choices. But then, when you make films, you come back to the understanding of what those choices are for. If you’re making narrative films, you’re dealing with emotions, conflicts, trying to build a world in which the characters come to life and the audience connects with them.

KJ: I remember you once telling me that you’ve been drawn, more and more, to simplicity, in your own work and in the movies of others.

MS: Sure, but that’s what you’re always striving for when it comes right down to it. The term “director” is kind of odd and even wrong in a way, but in one sense it’s on target: you’re directing the audience’s eye, their attention, from one moment to the next, through all kinds of means. And yes, when you look at something like the taxicab scene in On the Waterfront between Brando and Rod Steiger, you have the kind of absolute simplicity you’re aspiring to. Kazan, in his autobiography, says that he didn’t really “direct” the scene, he just allowed it to happen. He made some choices with Boris Kaufman, he let Brando and Steiger, who already knew their characters so intimately, interact, and it came alive. Sometimes, that’s what direction is – letting things happen, not interfering.

KJ: It’s a powerful experience to look at that scene with fresh eyes, after it’s been anthologized and clipped in so many award shows and montages. When I talked to Lois Smith about Kazan, she told me that one of the things she valued most about the Actors’ Studio was learning to “account for what happened right now,” being responsive to the moment. The look on Brando’s face when Steiger tries to put the blame on his manager seems to me to be a perfect example of that – staying in the moment within your character, and surprising yourself.

MS: That’s right, and only an artist as powerful and sensitive and concentrated as Kazan could create the conditions where that happens.

KJ: We mention Cassavetes briefly in the movie, and there is a real link there. Cassavetes admired Kazan greatly.

MS: Sure. They’re so different, but you can understand how one makes the other possible. And then John had an enormous effect on me, personally and professionally. And Kazan had a great effect on Francis Coppola, and so many others.

KJ: I’d forgotten that Coppola wanted to cast Kazan as the Jewish gangster in Godfather II, the part that Lee Strasberg played so beautifully. His work had a great effect on so many people.

MS: Right. I hope we did justice to that with A Letter to Elia.

About the Filmmakers:

MARTIN SCORSESE

Martin Scorsese is one of the most prominent and influential filmmakers of our times. He directed the critically acclaimed, award winning films Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and The Departed. In 2005, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan was broadcast as part of the “American Masters” series on PBS and released on DVD worldwide. Scorsese’s most recent film, Shutter Island, was released earlier this year. Scorsese is currently at work on documentaries featuring George Harrison and Fran Lebowitz. He is serving as Executive Producer on HBO’s series Boardwalk Empire for which he has also directed the pilot episode. He is currently in production on his latest feature film, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

KENT JONES

Kent Jones is an internationally recognized critic and filmmaker. His writing has been published in magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies throughout the world, and he is the author of several books. He and Martin Scorsese have collaborated on several documentaries. Jones is now the Executive Director of The World Cinema Foundation. He lives in Manhattan.

For Martin Scorsese, growing up in Little Italy, seeing On the Waterfront and East of Eden as a young man was a life-changing experience. Scorsese appears on and off camera throughout A Letter to Elia, taking us through Kazan’s life and through his own as well, and through his growing realization that there was an artist behind the camera, someone “who knew me, maybe better than I knew myself.” The film is about being exposed to the right movies at the right moment in your adolescent life, when you’re wide open and ready to connect, to be spurred on by the work up there on the screen, and then, maybe, to chart a course toward making your own movies.

Watch a preview:

Composed of clips, stills, readings from Kazan’s autobiography and his speech on directing (read by Elias Koteas), a videotaped interview done late in Kazan’s life, and Scorsese’s commentary on and offscreen, A Letter to Elia takes a close look at the life of art and its creation – the work, the distractions, the inspirations, the complications, the intersections between art and experience.

A Letter to Elia, written and directed by Scorsese and his longtime collaborator Kent Jones, is a deeply personal film, a frank portrait and self-portrait, and an equally frank acknowledgement of the closeness and the distance between artists and their art.