Word: kazan
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...while remaining well within the bounds of what is acceptable on the modern screen or stage. The real trouble with the film lies in Williams' failure to make his people anything more than corrupt. They have more medical than dramatic interest--or at least they did until Elia Kazan got to work on them...
...There is only one trend in the American theatre, and that trend is Eli Kazan.... I certainly don't know anyone whom actors venerate so much. But he seems to prefer plays concerned with extremes of pain, extremes of guilt, extremes of hysteria. Now there are a lot of awfully good plays on that subject"; here he instances Oedipus Rex. But "Oedipus expiates for the sake of his entirectiy," while the heroes of J.B. and Sweet Bird of Youth (the two plays most recently directed by Kazan) are concerned in their expiation only with themselves. "Somehow the connection between strong...
...There's no reason why realism shouldn't be poetic in its effect... But now that Kazan is beginning to impose on realistic plays like Sweet Bird and Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof] an operatic style, I think it's dangerous and forced." The mainstream of American drama ("I hate to use phrases like 'mainstream,'" says Tynan) has to do with "observable reality. I think--let's be frank--that Kazan has moved too far away from that without the moral or social realities that are necessary to sustain it. Even in a play like Our Town ... the performances...
...East London, which produced Brendan Behan. "And the great thing about it," he says, "is that it is being supported by young people." The plays of this new group are being largely written, directed, and watched by people under thirty, while "the kind of people who go for the Kazan-Williams-MacLeish group tend to be middle-aged...
Once away from the Trasks and Alma, however, the "East of Eden" world is one of two-dimensional people and scenes. Actually, there is less use of folksy humor and other side show effects than there might have been. Elia Kazan's handling of the anti-German feeling during World I seemed very fine indeed, and the movie is worth seeing just to watch its town parade of victory girls, the Kaiser in a noose, and Important Citizens...