After a year of having it on my DVR, I finally watched this "American Masters" document just now along with the short Reflections on Kazan which followed it. Martin Scorsese co-wrote, co-directed, and appears telling how much film director Elia Kazan meant to him from childhood on to his first meeting with him when he was a guest speaker at New York University where Marty was a student in 1964. Especially being discussed are On the Waterfront and East of Eden, both of which resonated so personally with him. Quite touching is A Letter to Elia and highly recommended to followers of both. In Reflections on Kazan, actors Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn, and Robert De Niro who appeared in Elia's The Last Tycoon, among others discuss the director's unique methods and his demeanors and attitudes. Both films touch on his naming names during the Communist witch hunts. Also highly recommend. Makes me want to watch or rewatch many of the movies that were showcased...
A Letter to Elia
2010
Documentary
A Letter to Elia
2010
Documentary
7.5Plot summary
Director Martin Scorsese speaks candidly and passionately about one of his formative filmmaking influences: the late Elia Kazan. Utilizing precisely chosen clips from Kazan's signature films including "On the Waterfront," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Gentleman's Agreement," "Baby Doll," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," "A Face in the Crowd," "America, America," and "The Last Tycoon," and interview footage of the director himself, co-directors Scorsese and Kent Jones recount the director's tumultuous journey from the Group Theatre to the Hollywood A-list to the thicket of the blacklist. But most of all, they make a powerful case for Kazan as a profoundly personal artist working in a famously impersonal industry.
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