Life imitating art or art imitating life?
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 know it.”
Like many other Hollywood notables, Kazan (like Malloy) initially resisted efforts to name names. However, also like many other Hollywood notables, Kazan was threatened with the ruination of his career if he testified (a typical story about this situation on film is The Way We Were). Eventually, Kazan would give in to pressure about the uncertain future of his career and name the names of those who he worked with and shared an ideology with. Howev...