Elia Kazan and James Dean

The eternal question Does life imitate art or art imitate life? more than applies to the film directed by Elia Kazan, On The Waterfront, and a film starring James Dean, Rebel Without A Cause. In fact, the lives of both Elia Kazan and James Dean demonstrate how quite often a film takes on an elevated level of power based on the real life experiences of those involved in its making. If we look at On The Waterfront, the story and dilemma of Terry Malloy are a cinematic metaphor for a similar dilemma director Kazan endured. In real life, Kazan was one Hollywood personality who did name names during the McCarthy witch hunt for Communists during the 1950s. As Kazan himself admitted in his autobiography, A Life, “When critics say I put my feelings on the screen to justify my informing, they are right” (Mr. 2). Kazan was a loyal and enthusiastic member of the Communist Party as well as a founding member of the extreme leftist Group Theatre of New York. The main difference between his outing of fellow Communist sympathizers and Terry Malloy’s informing on his Mafiosa friends is that Kazan’s friends were average human beings who believed in Communist ideology while Malloy’s were murdered, thieves, and thugs. In the film, a union boss yells at Malloy (played by Marlon Brando), “You ratted on is, Terry,” and Malloy yells back, “I’m standing over here now. I was rattin’ on myself all those years. I didn’t even

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se who refused to comply but enjoyed career success nonetheless, like Humphrey Bogart. This is why at last year’s Academy Awards ceremony, when Kazan was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award, more than a few individuals in the audience saw red for real, including notables such as Steven Spielberg who did not clap and Nick Nolte whose facial reaction was less than one of enthusiasm. Therefore, we can certainly understand how much more powerful On The Waterfront is, despite its being an exceptionally made film, when one understands the life experiences responsible for its shaping. Kazan is a pugnacious man like many Golden Era Hollywood directors and producers, and his reaction to On The Waterfront winning eight Academy Awards (as retold in his autobiography) is typical of his unapologetic stance regarding his HUAC testimony, “I was tasting vengeance that night and enjoying it. ‘On the Waterfront’ is my own story; every day I worked on that film, I was telling the world where I stood and my critics to go and - - - - themselves” (Mr. 1). If we examine Rebel Without A Cause, we see that James Dean’s own personality and life experiences added power to that film. Someone once said of Alan Ladd that he was a little boy’s
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Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)