Why Richard Shickel's new bio of the famed director of Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman and On the Waterfront is his best work yet
Richard Schickel's previous biographies, while deeply informed, suffer from a decided partisanship. His last two subjects, Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen, he counts as friends. While like all worthy critics, he attempts to stay objective, it is also evident that he by no means wants to sever ties. His latest book, Elia Kazan: A Biography, is without a doubt his best work, likely because that tie has been severed for him; Kazan's death a few short years ago has freed Shickel to present his good friend's character in an even greater dimension than is his custom.
As Shickel rightly puts it, Kazan's most memorable achievements can be summed up in a succession of buzzwords separated by ellipses: Streetcar...Salesman...Waterfront (though he didn't bring the middle property to screen.)
Without debate the primary importer of the Stanislavsky method to the Hollywood screen, Kazan brought a new realism to film acting, a school that arguably reached its zenith with the character-actor stars of the '60s and '70s - Hoffman, Nicholson, Pacino, Streep - and appears to be falling out of favor with today's reversion to externalism (J-Lo, Vin Diesel, Sandra Bullock...)
Most of the book, inevitably, centers around the ambiguous aura created by Kazan's HUAC experience (for the uninitiated, Kazan named names before the infamous McCarthy committee.) In a show of that aforementioned favoritism, Shickel goes to great lengths to defend Kazan, trivializing the importance of those he named. To be fair, however, it is a case presented with intelligence, sincerity, and a definite sensitivity toward the accused, deserving, with a modicum of reservation, to be taken seriously.
On trial, too, are Kazan's films of lesser repute - the ones that won't illicit a response if reduced to a buzzword - and here, as a long time fan of such supposedly minor works as Baby Doll and A Face in The Crowd, I throw my support wholeheartedly behind Shickel.
Most importantly, Shickel achieves the biographical ultimate: he gets to the essence of the man. Within these 456 pages is Kazan in every complication, a man who lived a life of continual divide: struggling foreigner and darling of America's most exclusive set; longtime husband and shameless philanderer; card carrying Communist and capitalist success story.
Skip Kazan's fatuous 1988 autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life. Shickel's book is slimmer, better paced, and more revealing.
