Harvard Film Archive

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The Complete Elia Kazan
July 31 - August 24

Baby Doll
Friday August 21 at 7pm
Among Kazan’s most controversial films, this dynamic and intensely cinematic adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ provocative study of sexual desire inflamed a passionate outcry from the Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency, who tried to derail the filmby branding it with their lowest rating of “C,” for “condemned.” Centered around Carroll Baker’s still shocking performance as the thumb-sucking yet sexually precocious Baby Doll and principally shot in rural Mississippi, Kazan’s mid-career masterpiece offers one of the finest renditions of the psychosexual territory of Williams’ mysteriously deep, Deep South. Print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
US 1956, 35mm, b/w, 114 min.

Boomerang!
Friday August 21 at 9:15pm
Kazan developed this engrossing policier—based on an actual unsolved crime, the murder of a Connecticut priest—with Louis de Rochemont, inventor of the semi-documentary form so successful at Fox after WWII. While Boomerang! adheres to central tenets of the semi-documentary (location shooting, notable use of nonprofessional extras, detached voiceover commentary), the film also hones in on the figure of the crusading District Attorney, played with signature virile nonchalance by Dana Andrews, to create a gripping moral and epistemological puzzle about the ineluctability of truth and the limits of cold, hard facts.
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb
US 1947, 35mm, b/w, 88 min.

Viva Zapata!
Saturday August 22 at 7pm
Filmed at the time of Kazan’s notorious HUAC testimony, Viva Zapata! offers a dramatically searching yet ultimately unresolved return to the director's roots in radical left-wing theater and politics. Written in close collaboration with lifelong Mexicophile John Steinbeck, who shared Kazan's fascination with Zapata's vision and failure, the film uses the idealistic revolutionary to offer an unflinching critique of the limits and corrosive potential of power. Featuring one of Brando's underappreciated bravura performances, Viva Zapata! is today considered one of the most evocative screen depictions of the Mexican revolution, despite the intense efforts by the Mexican film industry to suppress and censor the film during its early production stages.
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Marlon Brando, Jean Peters, Anthony Quinn
US 1952, 35mm, b/w, 113 min.

A Streetcar Named Desire
Saturday August 22 at 9:15pm
Perhaps the quintessential Kazan film, Streetcar is, ironically, among the closest to his stage work. Only the urging of his good friend Tennessee Williams convinced Kazan to reluctantly take on the screen version of a play he had already directed successfully on Broadway. Kazan decided eventually to retain the play's general form while also increasing the tightness and tension of the dominant interior scenes by shooting largely in close-ups and medium shots. The only aberration from the play's mesmerizing original line-up was Vivien Leigh—forced upon Kazan by producer Charles Feldman, who insisted on the presence of a tested marquee star.
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter
US 1951, 35mm, b/w, 125 min.

A Face in the Crowd
Sunday August 23 at 7pm
Budd Schulberg and Kazan reunited to adapt Schulberg's own cautionary tale about the manipulative and treacherous potential of television and advertising as political tools. Misunderstood at the time, and badly wounded at the box office, A Face in the Crowd seems uncannily prescient in its depiction of right-wing extremism cloaking itself as all-American cracker-barrel folksiness. Kazan's successful and highly unconventional casting of untested comedians and character actors—Dunn in Tree, Mostel in Panic—reached its apogee in his ingenious selection of stand-up comic Andy Griffith, in his first feature film, as Lonesome Rhodes, the hayseed populist transformed into an ultimately uncontrollable televisual sensation. Print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa
US 1957, 35mm, b/w, 125 min.

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