Taken from hours of conversations recorded over several months in 1971, Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films is, despite the conspicuous lack of pyrotechnics, an important and detailed discussion of eighteen of Kazan's nineteen films (omitting only The Last Tycoon, which Young was unable to ask about due to the timing of the interviews). Young provides a brief summary for each of the films along with a reproduction of the original poster art (some of it, as for Baby Doll, is quite impressive), and thirty pages of black-and-white stills supported by excerpts from the interviews that illustrate the scenes in question.

Although nothing can take the place of actual screenings of the films being discussed prior to a perusing of Kazan's thoughts on them, in the several instances I was not able to track down Kazan's more obscure work (it would seem he hasn't embraced the DVD format as enthusiastically as, say, a director like John Frankenheimer; tapes, too, can be scarce), the detail of Young's questions provided ample structure to the direction of the questioning.

A fledgling filmmaker at the time of the interviews, Young's introduction details how as a neophyte to the celluloid trade, he decided to seek out one of his idols and endeavor to learn the craft at his feet, so to speak. His persistence and, one presumes, arrogance, led him at last to the offices of Kazan and what amounts to a picking over of the director's portfolio from the perspective of the Stanislavsky method (which Kazan and Marlon Brando almost single-handedly popularized for the screen from its long tenure on the stage), Kazan's philosophy of read-throughs and rehearsal, and, most importantly, Kazan's collaboration with the enigmatic Brando. What's missing (and missed) is any kind of detail or analysis of Kazan's illustrious stage career, glossed over in a page or two of the introduction and then revisited only when brought up by Kazan to elucidate a point.

Still, students interested in this book are most likely curious about only a few things. Does, for example, Kazan try to explain his complicity with HUAC? What does Kazan have to say about his "big three:" A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden? And is he as big an asshole as he appears to be?

The answers are "yes," "a good deal," and "yes."

Let's listen to Kazan wax rhapsodic (and occasionally messianic) on his major films, on HUAC, and on his relationships with John Steinbeck, Brando, and James Dean.

Kazan's complicity with HUAC
Anybody who informs on other people is doing something disturbing and even disgusting. It doesn't sit well on anyone's conscience. But at that time I felt a certain way, and I think it has to be judged from the perspective of 1952. It all seems like ancient history now, but remember the Korean War was still going on. Russia was a monolithic power. . . The Party was getting all kinds of money out of Hollywood and out of the theater. Communists were in a lot of organizations--unseen, unrecognized, unbeknownst to anybody. I thought, if I don't talk, nobody will know about it. And although, as I say, it was disturbing to inform on my colleagues, when I thought about what it meant symbolically, about what would have happened if I'd lied and said I had no idea about what was going on, it would have been worse. . . But I never told one goddamn lie about it. . . I didn't duck it. It was a difficult situation, and I felt like I felt. People say I did it for money, but I never did anything for money in my life. (p.118-19)

Kazan on A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams got after me to do the movie of Streetcar, which I'd directed on Broadway in 1947. I really resisted like hell. I had a very sound instinct, which was not to try to get it up twice for the same material. I never did it again, except once, with poor results--when I adapted and directed The Arrangement. But Streetcar is a masterpiece, and I didn't know as much then about not doing things twice as I do now, so I said okay. (p. 81)

Kazan on On the Waterfront
That picture is terribly simple. It's all up front. It's mostly about this dumb kid who's unprepared and to whom it's painful to do what he did, who realizes through the girl and through what he knows in his heart and sees with his eyes, that telling on his friends was the better of the two choices facing him. (p.123)

Kazan on Brando
He almost always not only gave me what I asked for, but he gave me something different that I was grateful to have. It would always come out in a considerably more interesting way than I had thought of. There was always an element of surprise in what he did. (p. 83)

. . . you didn't really work with Brando. You told him what you wanted and tried to describe it in words that had meaning for him. By the time you finished telling him what a scene was about, he'd be way ahead of you. His talent used to fly. (p. 96)

Kazan on John Steinbeck
I was living next door to John Steinbeck, who was a close friend of mine in those years. He was between marriages and had been having a very bad time. Talking to him one day, I said I thought Zapata's story would make a good film. He said he'd been thinking about doing it for years. So John went to Mexico and did a thorough research job. . . I guess in a way I saved his life. (p. 90)

Kazan on East of Eden
I thought a that a good film could be made out of the last part of Steinbeck's book. John had a tough front, but he was an extremely vulnerable man. He was hurt badly by criticism. So I asked him as gently and tactfully as I could if I could fool around with it. I had to tread softly because I wanted to use Paul Osborn to writ it instead of working on it with John himself. John agreed, and Paul Osborn and I decided to write a script in which we just followed Cal, the main character. (p. 197)

Kazan on James Dean
He was a very, very neurotic kid. You can't not like a guy with that much pain in him. Later, however, when he got a taste of power, he enjoyed it and became abusive. A lot of insecure people behave that way. They yell at their dresser, who can't afford to answer back. Dean got spoiled very quickly, and he was impossible with Nick Ray in Rebel Without a Cause, and George Stevens had to yell at him and threaten on Giant. He never got along with any of them. He was good with me right up until the end, but I could just see it happening. He had a terrible time with Pier Angeli. She's dead now so I can say it. She found somebody else, and that aroused all of Dean's sexual insecurity. There was only one actor I disliked in my whole life, really, Tallulah Bankhead. . . Dean was a sick kid. If it hadn't been for Julie Harris, I don't think he would've gotten through the picture. (p. 199)

So: Jeff Young's Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films is an occasionally fascinating, always scholarly look at the object/business method of the method, a reminiscence on making some of the most influential films in history, and a glimpse into the mind of one of our enigmatic geniuses. Young's questions, with one or two exceptions, are refreshingly brief and well informed by exhaustive extra-textual research and an intimate familiarity with Kazan's oeuvre--and Kazan is surprisingly open to Young's rare bursts of pushy irritability and open hostility concerning the blacklist.

Nothing so intoxicating as a captive audience and a flattering isolation, I suppose, and therein lies the weakness of the collection: Kazan is never truly challenged about his views or his memories--the book is an opportunity for Kazan to go on at length about his power and his vision, but it lacks a true objective foil.

The book, in other words, leaves a good deal to be desired in terms of real controversy and a satisfying history of Kazan's life and his legendary run on Broadway. It sorely needs a strong critical voice to lend perspective on the film independent of Young's open admiration and Kazan's megalomania, and yet for pages of commentary, both insightful and trivial, concerning the major films of Kazan's portfolio, it's certainly a nice addition to the library.

One all the more essential now that the aged director appears to be in the sway of some kind of dementia. Besides, an intensive collection of memories and reflections is invaluable not only for the information collected therein, but also as a testament to the lingering importance of film as a medium worthy of discussion and preservation. If there are better places to go for studies of Kazan's films, so be it--Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films may well be the definitive document of Kazan on Kazan and that, in itself, is no small accomplishment.-Walter Chaw

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