Elia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.04 You Save: $18.91 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.30 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Elia Kazan: A Life
Book Review: Excellent read for those aspiring in the arts
Summary: 5 Stars
I knew absolutely nothing about Elia Kazan prior to reading this book. He does a superb job of reconstructing his life from his early years learning theatre stage craft at Yale all the way through to his final years (he was 78 when he completed the book). He is seemingly forthwright about many of the tough decisions he faced throughout his career from the House of UnAmerican Activities revealing of many of his old 'comrades', which he does a decent job of articulating why he did whatthat, even if on the surface it seems lecherous.
What I was left with was the impression of a person who lived life to the absolute fullest, a person with conflicting and often questionable morals (particularly with women), and the thick skin you need to have to survive and thrive in the arts. A book like this far surpasses any 'how to' book for aspiring artists and is proof that there are no hard and fast rules other than perseverance, conviction, hard work, and individuality (finding your own voice).
Book Review: Great Book, Mixed Feelings
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazan didn't create the witch hunt, and he didn't create the blacklist. He's a brilliant film maker who made some of the most potent social commentary in all of film history. This book gets to the heart of his beliefs and his inspiration as a film maker. While it's sad that so many careers were ruined, the blame should be on the studios, not this individualBook Review: Kazan's life as written is a 20th-century masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read this book four times. I can't recall an autobiography of any century that is more candid, and is written with such extraordinary brio.Book Review: Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
This is simply one of the finest books I have ever read in any genre. Brutally honest, relentlessly engaging, furiously analytical without being pompously intellectual, stunningly written, Kazan tells his life story without pretense and with no holding back. His family origins, early years with the group theatre, breakthrough work on Broadway and Hollywood, gossip raised to the level of art, stories of the great theatrical and film figures of the second half of the twentieth century--it's all here. We get to know about Brando, Dean, Clift, Williams, Miller, Inge, Monroe, Beatty, and on and on, in ways we haven't before. His relationship with his wife, who is as rich a character as in a great novel, is told with such warmth and complexity, and his profound ambivalence about his relations with others, is also at the heart of this work and it fuels our interest in Kazan's private life as he weaves connections with his art and his public life. It's also as good a political and artistic portrait of the times as you could wish for. And it's all just so damn entertainingBook Review: More than politics, women seem to be Kazan's bete noire.
Summary: 5 Stars
Kazan has written a stunningly truthful autobiography that should be read and savored. Here is "Gadge" an icon of mid-century American theatre and film spilling it out all over the page. From his unfulfilled teenaged longings for blonde American girls, to his first marriage in which he felt trapped, but stayed on and on, to the many affairs he indulged in, all are chronicled almost too graphically, but from a distinctly detached (a writer's?) point of view. One doesn't feel that he loved or even liked any of them.But so what? Here's a man who could brilliantly direct both "Streetcar" and "Salesman" in the space of a few years and then go to Hollywood and deal successfully with the likes of Darryl Zanuck and the 20th Century Fox grind-them-out-fast film factory. The Hollywood stuff is both funny and refreshingly honest. Who else has dared to challenge the Spencer Tracy was and remains the greatest screen actor legend? And then there's the deadly little aside about Marilyn Monroe giving him a not-so-subtle look as she sat quietly beside her then mentor, Johnny Green. The sainted Tracy as an out of shape, lazy and not very dedicated actor, and the "vulnerable" Marilyn as a cunningly on-the-make tart who would have traded in her devoted agent for the famous director, given the slightest encouragement, are just two minor examples of the fascinating insights that appear on almost every page.
It's a very fat book. It had to be. Kazan was in his eighties when he wrote it and he's led an extremely full life. It was a long and winding road from the Group Theatre to that uncomfortable, halting appearance at the 1999 Academy Awards cermonies. They made him (and the latest wife) wait until almost the very end, but he made it through. And there was Nick Nolte remaining seated and staring mean and hard at this fragile old man. And there, too, was a smiling Warren Beatty rising graciously and applauding. He redeemed himself that night. I'm sure the old man noticed.