Sunday, March 21, 1999
Kazan should be honored for his work, not actions
BY MARGARET A. McGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It has been more than 40 years since filmmaker Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), then in a furious hunt for Communists and “sympathizers.”
What the panel wanted, and what Mr. Kazan gave them, was human fodder. In the parlance of the time, he named names.
The people he pointed out to the committee were not criminals; they had not sabotaged power stations or assassinated elected officials. But they subscribed to dangerous ideas. They were or had been Communist Party members. That was enough, in those days, to drive them out of their professions.
In the movie business, an unofficial but powerful blacklist denied work to anyone who had been a party member, even briefly, as many young idealists were during the 1930s.
Mr. Kazan insisted that he cooperated with the committee out of principle rather than fear for his career, as others did. Yet he earned the lifelong animosity of blacklist victims, and stuck himself with the label of a snitch.
Today, Mr. Kazan is due to be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his body of work, including A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. Some survivors of the witch hunts, men whose careers suffered because of their political beliefs, have urged people who attend the ceremony tonight to withhold applause when the 89-year-old director appears.
As protests go, it's a mild gesture. Still, it has spawned counter-measures from the Ayn Rand Institute, which is beating the public relations drum in favor of Mr. Kazan as a hero of Cold War anti-communism.
Art vs. politics
The issue has proven intensely controversial in Hollywood, where debate rages over the separation, or lack thereof, between art and politics.
I don't like informers any more than the next American, but as a student of film, I come down on the side that says, “Let the man have his prize.”
Lauren Bacall, an opponent of the committee in the '50s, argued that it was the studio bosses and congressional Red baiters, not Mr. Kazan, who bore responsibility for damaging lives and careers.
“Absolutely he deserves that award,” she said during an appearance in Cincinnati at the Aronoff Center. “It's all about the work.”
With that, she cut to the heart of the matter.
I am a fervent subscriber to the motto, “Life in short, art is long.” Artists die but their best work lives on. It is a mistake to get the two mixed up.
Mr. Kazan has contributed lasting icons to the American cinema. On the Waterfront alone would qualify him for the pantheon. But with Gentlemen's Agreement, Viva Zapata!, Splendor in the Grass and A Streetcar Named Desire, he made himself the agent of a defining influence in mid-century films — unadorned, emotionally raw naturalism.
His works express an earnest liberalism, in sometimes florid terms. But he had a vision of life in context. His people were not isolated in fantasy worlds of glamorous purity and evil; they in communities, in a world shaped by the tides and storms of a sprawling, contentious society.
Mr. Kazan's decision to help HUAC was hurtful to the people he named, even though they were already known to the committee. His justification, that he believed that communist philosophy in popular entertainment was dangerous to the nation, today looks like naivete.
As an instrument for world domination, the Communist Party of the USA was pitifully inept. The truth is that communism never had a prayer in the United States once the Depression was over.
Nevertheless, many, many politicians thrived by invoking lurid images of Soviet tanks rolling down Main Street, and convinced millions — including Mr. Kazan — that a whiff of pinko sentiment emanating from the local Bijou would open the door to prison camps and mind control.
It was Mr. Kazan's misfortune to have made his fateful decision in public.
Bad behavior
Many other filmmakers have been honored by the Academy for their life's work, and we have no idea what undisclosed evils they might have perpetrated. Who's to say how many careers might any one of them ruined through cowardice or malice or caprice? Remember, all of them worked in the movie industry, a world known to harbor and even reward extremely bad behavior.
It is equally true that we will never know what great works might have been created by the Red Scare victims whose downfall Mr. Kazan abetted. For that, he may — and should — feel remorse. But to deny recognition for what he did achieve over what they might have achieved is, as Ms. Bacall said, petty vengeance.
History is full of great artists you wouldn't want in your living room. The ironic truth is that the same faults that ruin lives can also fuel brilliant creativity. In the end, it is the fruit of that creative energy, not personality or politics, that speaks for the creator.
A hundred years from now, both Mr. Kazan and those who suffered from his actions will be gone. Only the work will survive. That is what the Academy honors, and so it should.
Margaret A. McGurk is Enquirer film critic. E-mail her at mmcgurk@enquirer.com.
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