Un américain nommé Kazan
Claire Duguet
2019 - 52 min - Vidéo - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

Greek-Turkish by birth, dead in 2003 at 94 years, Elia Kazan represents the American dream: the one of an immigrant who left with nothing and who became after World War II a prince of Hollywood and Broadway.
Actor, theatre director, filmmaker, writer, Elia Kazan founded the Actor’s Studio, has worked with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and has discovered Marlon Brando and James Dean. We owe him masterpieces like "A streetcar named desire", "America, America" or "East of Eden".
In 1952, in the middle of the McCarthyism, Kazan decides to offer names of his old fellows, despite of being a former communist militant. It was a very difficult decision, which brought him the disgrace of a large number of the movie and theatre colleagues. Kazan never excused. On the contrary, this gesture provoked a new liberty in his creativity, and he made some of his most beautiful pictures, from "On the Waterfront" to "The Arrangement".
Who was Elia Kazan, who considered himself all along his life as a stranger, an outsider? And how did he became the most controversial artist of Hollywood?