Elia Kazan Films

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Insightful post, David. I also like Sea of Grass because it is not the usual Tracy/Hepburn vehicle. I don't think the script was something specifically tailored for their abilities, but it may have been. I enjoyed the film because they had to up their game to match the material. That Tracy was "in his cups" I am sure made the directorial duties more treacherous than they would have been under normal circumstances, but when has their been much "situation normal" when dealing with Hollywood make-believe? I can just hear Hepburn saying how "mahvveluss, simply mahveluss" Tracy might have been in a take, and feeling Kazan recoil.

And those Plunkett costumes! He could transform anyone.

[charliechaplinfan]

I watched Sea of Grass a couple of months ago, this is what I wrote about it, as you can see, I really liked it, yet in the Hepburn/Tracy cannon of films it's hardly mentioned.

Today I watched The Sea of Grass the only Kate and Spence film that I recall where Kate is so womanly and it's not at all a comedy. It's her film, even if she disappears from view for a while, now I can see how she maintained her attractiveness, when she allows herself to be more feminine it suits her down to the ground. I'm not sure she suited the wedding dress in the opening scene but every other outfit that Plunkett designed for her showed off her great figure and well, I could see what Spence and Melvyn Douglas could see. Melvyn Douglas, another actor who's never done a thing for me on screen, not in the 30s screwball comedies, he didn't have it, which made the ladies so powerful and not too easy to understand if they were pursuing him. Aged and put into drama, then I was really rather taken with him and he's found his niche for me, it's in drama. Spence, I felt sorry for him, even when I don;t think I should have, I had sympathy with his idea but of course as a woman I had more sympathy with Kate, leaving her poor babies behind. It's quite a long film too but it's kind of a gentle journey, one I enjoyed. Not enough of Robert Walker in it, another guy who aged fast when you think about his Bruno Anthony or Phyliss Thaxter bu twhat good casting for children of Kate's. I can imagine it's not everyone's cup of tea but I loved it.

I need to watch A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I know it has a lot of fans on this board.

[JackFavell]

Be sure and set out a box of tissues before you pop A Tree Grows in Brookyn in the dvd player.

I'd say it's one of the best movies ever made.

[RedRiver]

Heavens to Betsy! I still haven't seen this movie. What keeps me from acquiring a copy? I don't know. I just never seem to get around to it. My favorite Kazan film is ON THE WATERFRONT. It's one of those classics that are so good, so meaningful, it's just mind boggling. I like A FACE IN THE CROWD, "Streetcar," GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT. But "Waterfront'"...wow!

[JackFavell]

That's funny red, it's one of my least favorite of Kazan's films. Still a great movie, but I like the others you mentioned so much more, excepting Gentleman's Agreement.

[charliechaplinfan]

I still love On The Waterfront, I've seen it countless times, I'll never get bored. I haven't watched Gentleman's Agreement either, I watched Face in The Crowd last year for the first time, I was very impressed, this Brit didn't really know who Andy Griffith was, I loved all it had to say about the television industry.

[sandykaypax]

I've had The Sea of Grass on the dvr for a few months now...it's one of the few Hepburn films that I haven't seen. After that interesting post, I need to make some time to watch it this week.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Kate Hepburn fan at the Oasis...I just love her. I even love her mannered early performances. I just BELIEVE her, no matter what.

Sandy K

[JackFavell]

I love her too, Sandy! I feel that way too, that she got so popular a few years back that there is a backlash of folks who don't like her now.

Some of my favorites are her supposed bombs... Spitfire, Sylvia Scarlett, The Little Minister, Quality Street, Alice Adams, Sea of Grass, Keeper of the Flame.... up through Long Day's Journey and Lion in Winter, though I think Lion in Winter was more popular than the others.

[RedRiver]

Kate is my favorite actress. There are some I like just as much. None better. Believable is the word. She lived the part. She was never better than in LION IN WINTER. The role of a lifetime! I also like her in the Philip Barry plays.

[charliechaplinfan]

It surprised me that The Lion in Winter wasn't a hit, with Kate, Peter O'Toole and many other names. It doesn't hit a dud not all the way through. I love Sylvia Scarlett too and Christopher Strong. Very rarely have I not enjoyed a Kate performance.

[CineMaven]

"LI0N IN WINTER" was superb. The performances, the battle of wills, the oneupsmanship. I suspect that Americans in general are on the dumb side sometimes. It was a very adult movie one had to pay attention to.

[JackFavell]

Actually, I was wrong, The Lion in Winter was a critical and also a box office success. I guess audiences of that year were smarter than we thought. I just couldn't resist throwing it in there, it's a great favorite of mine.

[Robert Regan]

Well, my friends, I'm always glad to see interest in Elia Kazan. He was the first director I was really conscious of. On the Waterfront and East of Eden were the first films that not only made a powerful impact on me, but in which I began to see just what a director does.
Not too long after that I first saw the film that I now consider his very best, Wild River just out on Blu-ray in the US. Kazan and his actors frequently overdid it more than a bit, but here his mise-en-scene and the acting, most notably by Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, and Jo Van Fleet are both marked by a subtlety that increases the power of the story and the intensity of the characterizations. There is no theatrical "barnstorming" in Wild River, rather the realistic presentation of a historical situation and the people affected by it.
Clift is an agent of the Tennessee Valley Authority during the thirties who arrives in a rural community to remove an aging matriarch (Van Fleet) from an island in the river that would soon be flooded by a series of dams that would provide the area with, among other things,electricity for the first time. Clift is excellent, unsurprisingly, in his last good role. There was an embarrassingly bad French spy movie after this.
While carrying out his government activities, he meets and begins an intense relationship with Van Fleet's granddaughter, a young widow with two children, played in one of the finest performances of the fifties or any other decade by Lee Remick. Now you might think that this is the Hollywood touch, adding a love story to a tale of social progress. Not so, for in Wild River, more than in any other movie I can think of, the social and the personal stories are thematically and dramatically united with a rare integrity.
Early in the film, someone characterizes the benefits of the TVA project as bringing to people things they need and want. This foreshadows the central drama, Lee Remick's powerful portrait of a woman who knows what she wants and needs, and can express her feelings openly and without embarrassment. Clift needs to satisfy the woman as well as the "people".
Now, I have already expressed my admiration for On the Waterfront, but if Eva Marie Saint's character were eliminated (heaven forbid), the main story would not be affected at all. In Wild River, the "girl" is not window dressing or an adjunct to the "hero", but the very center of the drama. For me, that makes a great film, especially when it is beautifully shot and superbly acted.