"Splendor In The Grass"

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• Lee says:

  February 27, 2015 at 10:16 am

  Toothsome.

• HTS says:

  February 27, 2015 at 10:33 am

  This looks like a facial tem­plate tra­cing the nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of every single one of my relationships.

• Petey says:

  February 27, 2015 at 11:10 am

  I’m a fan of Kazan, even des­pite the obvi­ously prob­lem­at­ic nature of On the Waterfront, but I had a ser­i­ous dis­like of Splendor In The Grass when I saw it for the first and only time more than a dec­ade ago. The film seemed to aggress­ively make the sub­text into text in such a way that both bored and dis­gus­ted me. Highly likely stemmed more from the exec­rable William Inge than Kazan, but giv­en his power at that point, it’s Kazan’s ulti­mate fault.
  Regardless, a won­der­ful series of stills, Glenn. Tells a story.

• Unkle Rusty says:

  March 1, 2015 at 9:51 pm

  Not sure what the motiv­a­tion for the post is, but this is my favor­ite single sequence amongst many great ones in Kazan. I agree to a cer­tain extent with Petey the film itself does not entirely coalesce, but in this sequence it all comes togeth­er in an emo­tion­ally crush­ing way, a fusion of form, mean­ing (it is, after all, a film about long­ing), act­ing, mise en scene. One of the great moments in American film history.

• Kurzleg says:

  March 2, 2015 at 11:50 am

  Petey (or any­one else famil­i­ar with the “prob­lem­at­ic” aspects of “OTW”) – Could you point me toward some cri­ti­cism that out­lines the issues with “OTW”? Thanks.

• andy says:

  March 2, 2015 at 3:32 pm

  Kurzleg–it basic­ally serves as an odi­ous quasi-rationale for Kazan’s testi­fy­ing to the House Un-american Activities Committee. I finally saw the film a few years ago, and while I was aware of Kazan’s mor­al com­prom­ise, I had no idea what the film was about…as it began to make its case for inform­ing I was pretty dis­gus­ted, and could­n’t believe it has a mostly stain-free repu­ta­tion as a clas­sic. Divorced from con­text, per­haps, although I was­n’t overly taken with it regardless.
  I just scanned it, did­n’t read it, but here is some­thing more thorough:
  http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue2/kazan.html

• HTS says:

  March 2, 2015 at 4:44 pm

  As an anti­dote, I’d watch Herbert J. Biberman’s “Salt of the Earth,” released the same year as “On the Waterfront.” Made by black­lis­ted film­makers, based on a true story about a labor strike. Like all pub­lic domain films, it’s easy to find, but it can be tricky find­ing a good-looking copy. (FWIW, it was selec­ted for pre­ser­va­tion by the Library of Congress in 1992.)

• Michael Dempsey says:

  March 2, 2015 at 7:14 pm

  In his auto­bi­o­graphy, Elia Kazan explains in great detail why he named names before HUAC. His explan­a­tions (assum­ing that they are true and not just self-serving) do account for why he did what he did.
  But they don’t jus­ti­fy it because that is impossible. HUAC had no right to demand that any­one reveal his or her own or any­one else’s mem­ber­ship in the Communist Party or any oth­er polit­ic­al group. The treat­ment by the Hollywood stu­di­os of those who refused to knuckle under to this demand remains what it has always been – cow­ardly and despicable.
  Numerous lives were crippled or des­troyed because of what Kazan and oth­ers did. This can nev­er be white­washed. Regardless of how under­stand­ably angry he was at the way the Communist Party treated him and oth­er artists and regard­less of the oth­er reas­ons his book provides for his actions, his involve­ment with HUAC will always be a major blot on his record. He him­self acknow­ledged this to some degree in the book-length inter­view he did with crit­ic Michel Ciment.
  However, this does not mean, in my view, that simply reject­ing “On The Waterfront” as noth­ing more or oth­er than a ration­al­iz­a­tion for HUAC inform­ing is a good idea.
  Kazan and screen­writer Budd Schulberg (also a HUAC inform­ant) may have inten­ded the film to offer such a ration­al­iz­a­tion by cen­ter­ing it on a prot­ag­on­ist for whom inform­ing is a right and prop­er course of action.
  Nevertheless, what the film depicts dif­fers sharply from the HUAC situ­ation; they are not the same stor­ies, meta­phor­ic­ally or otherwise.
  In “On The Waterfront”, inform­ing really is a brave and neces­sary action, giv­en that its tar­get is organ­ized crime. Terry Malloy’s struggle over wheth­er or not to inform is dra­mat­ic­ally and emo­tion­ally val­id. His final decision to do so amounts to what we now cel­eb­rate as whistleblowing.
  So simply dis­miss­ing “On The Waterfront” as merely a defense of its prime cre­at­ors’ capit­u­la­tion to HUAC and the major stu­di­os of the time seems some­what facile.
  The film does con­tain, among its many oth­er vir­tues as well as some flaws, Marlon Brando’s still mes­mer­iz­ing per­form­ance, per­haps the single most influ­en­tial piece of film act­ing (for good and maybe some ill) of the past sev­er­al decades.
  No mat­ter how much time passes, “On The Waterfront” may nev­er com­pletely shed its HUAC con­text. But it does seem likely to retain its artist­ic validity.
  Which, if my dim recol­lec­tion of a single long-ago screen­ing is accur­ate, does­n’t seem likely for the pon­der­ously earn­est “Salt Of The Earth”, no mat­ter how genu­inely worthy are the pro­gress­ive sen­ti­ments that this pic­ture struggles to express.

• andy says:

  March 3, 2015 at 9:57 pm

  I agree com­pletely that the scen­ari­os for inform­ing are rad­ic­ally different–which is what made it seem out­land­ishly self-serving to me, and why i referred to a “quasi rationale.” But to me the stretch to find a defense just made it seem more egre­gious, not mak­ing it so beside the point as to be “facile.” I also think it should be judged at least on one level on the mer­its alone, as I attemp­ted to imply. I’m pretty good at divor­cing art from the foibles of a cre­at­or, but the cojones of this effort (again, by mak­ing it right for Brando to inform) were too much to stom­ach eas­ily. But wheth­er you feel as I do, or feel that it is simply talk­ing about some oth­er scen­ario, more or less, depends on what you are will­ing to assume as the motives of a stranger. But to grant it an exist­ence without con­text seems in this case to allow Kazan a voice without the con­vic­tion of a per­son behind it…

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  March 4, 2015 at 8:54 am

  If ever a man deserved to be informed on, it was that tal­ent­less Stalinist Clifford Odets.
  When did Kazan meet Boris Kaufman? I’ve always wondered if his friend­ship with the broth­er of Dziga Vertov, one of the many great artists to be des­troyed by the Soviets for not toe­ing the political-aesthetic line in just the right way, influ­enced his decision.

• Petey says:

  March 4, 2015 at 9:09 am

  “But to me the stretch to find a defense just made it seem more egre­gious, not mak­ing it so beside the point as to be “facile.” I also think it should be judged at least on one level on the mer­its alone, as I attemp­ted to imply. I’m pretty good at divor­cing art from the foibles of a cre­at­or, but the cojones of this effort (again, by mak­ing it right for Brando to inform) were too much to stom­ach easily.”
  Yup. The con­text and self-serving nature of Kazan’s decisions in the film are simply abom­in­able. It’s as if O.J. Simpson were to make a movie where the prot­ag­on­ist’s wife is a Bond Villain-level threat to world peace, and thus the husband/protagonist’s decision to kill her was an admir­able choice.
  But at the same time, were one to watch the film zero know­ledge of the con­text, it’s a quite fine film. Thus why I described it as “obvi­ously prob­lem­at­ic”, rather than “abom­in­able and execrable”.
  Personally, I watched it twice in a theat­er in quick suc­ces­sion, and bey­ond my admir­a­tion for the film­mak­ing, I was so turned off by Kazan’s utter craven­ness that can­’t see ever want­ing to watch it again…

• Kurzleg says:

  March 4, 2015 at 9:28 am

  Thanks, every­one. I’d for­got­ten about Kazan’s HUAC capit­u­la­tion (or per­haps learned about it after see­ing OTW). Will be an inter­est­ing exer­cise to watch it again with this in mind.

• Petey says:

  March 4, 2015 at 10:07 am

  Thanks for that link, andy. Especially loved the Brando quote express­ing his feel­ing of betray­al once he finally real­ized what Kazan had used him for.

• andy says:

  March 4, 2015 at 10:28 am

  Sorry–“not mak­ing it so beside the point as for such an inter­pret­a­tion to be ‘facile’.” I’m about a day behind on sleep. And oth­er excuses.

• andy says:

  March 4, 2015 at 10:31 am

  Great ana­logy, Petey…