Elia Kazan, the prolific, brilliant director, turned 100 this year. Although the Wesleyan Cinema Archives’ authoritative collection of materials related to the director’s life and work is well known, few students are aware that during the early 1970s, Kazan was a fixture on campus, with his own office at Olin Library. 

“He loved the students at Wesleyan,” says Jeanine Basinger, Chair of Film Studies, who became friends with the director at about the same time Wesleyan acquired his papers. He spent time talking with students at both Basinger’s home and around campus, and was attracted to their youth and energy. In short, says Basinger, Kazan was a “keen observer”, a trait she’s observed in every famous film director she’s ever known. 

While Kazan remains an incredibly famous film director, his critical reputation has been tarnished by the testimony he gave before Joseph McCarhy’s House Un-American activities in 1952, where he named of his associates as Communist sympathizers.

“It is a key issue to his career and one of the reasons why we feel examining his work is significant because you’re dealing with the role of art and politics,” Basinger said of the controversy. “[Film is] a very powerful art form with propagandistic qualities and that people who use it as an art form cannot forget that what they’re doing and saying has an effect on the viewer.” 

Whatever their thoughts on Kazan’s politics, students and members of the Middletown community will get a uncommonly close look at his life and work this fall. he Film Department’s program includes public access to and presentation of archival materials, as well as  talks by Wesleyan faculty accompanying screenings of 35 mm prints of Kazan’s most famous work as well as more obscure gems.

This closer look a Elia Kazan will extend into the classroom. Students under the instruction of Marc Longenecker, the Center for Film Studies’ programming and technical manager, will be involved in semester-long research projects in the Film Center’s archive. Beginning with next Thursday’s screening of Panic In The Streets, they will also be responsible for writing program notes for the remainder of the films in the Series. 

Longenecker describes how his appreciation for Kazan developed through his process of preparation for the course, as Kazan is not a director he naturally gravitates toward. 

“His films are all meant to be challenging in some way and are meant for each person to have a kind of personalized reaction to the work,” said Longenecker.  

“[Kazan is} different from a director like Capra who’s really intending for the entire audience to be laughing at exactly the right time,” 

Comparing Kazan’s work to Elvis Costello albums, Longernecker says the unpredictable, varying reactions that each film provokes are why it is interesting and rewarding to teach this material. 

Kazan’s work encourages these dynamix reactions through his ability to routinely cull intense performances from actors and actresses, including screen legends like James Dean and Marlon Brando. 

“Throughout Kazan’s work you can see his commitment to have his actors reach deep to pull out emotionally powerful performances, and you can also see his directorial hand putting those emotions in the service of key themes,” says President Michael Roth, who remarks in particular upon a “career-long interest in accusation, betrayal and corruption — all themes that became famously controversial in his political life during the McCarthy period as well.”

It is no doubt critics’ and scholars’ desire to thematically connect Kazan’s life and work, along with his critical standing, that make the Kazan Collection at Wesleyan the most heavily-used of the fifty-two collections housed at the Cinema Archives. Joan Miller, head archivist, is presenting a chronological experience of these materials this semester at the Rick Nicita Galley at Wesleyan’s Center for Film Studies in conjunction with the Series. She recommends that attendees of the Kazan Centennial visit the gallery each week in order to review a key artifact related to the screening at hand, materials that include pages from the director’s notebook, an annotated script and photographs of Kazan directing. Photographs related to the screenings will also be projected for patrons on screen, all a part of efforts by the Film Studies Department to put these films in their proper context.

Over thirty years ago, Wesleyan hosted its first critical retrospective of Kazan’s work in 1973, at which point he was still considered a working director. Now, at the centennial of the director’s birth, it is far easier for viewers to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the Kazan’s work and life. And there is no more comprehensive collection outside of Wesleyan’s Cinema Archives, where thousands of photographs, personal scrapbooks, annotated director’s scripts, journals, personal and professional correspondence, rare film and theater posters, and even Tony and Golden Globe awards have been carefully preserved. 

Wesleyan is therefore in a unique and privileged position to present such exhibitions, as Kazan has become a part of Wesleyan history itself. At one time the director thought of the campus as a kind of second home. At the conclusion of the first retrospective of Kazan’s work, in a speech that Jeanine Basinger calls “a kind of Gettysburg address for film directing,” Kazan told the story of his reasoning for choosing Wesleyan as the repository for what would later become the Kazan Collection:

“A reporter from your campus paper, The Argus, asked me why I’d given my papers to this university,” said Kazan. “I gave a superficial answer. I said Wesleyan is close to where I live, so my things would be available to me after an hour’s drive. I added that the authorities here had been generous, eager and accommodating. All true. But the real reason was that for years I’ve been thinking it was about time our institutions of learning became involved in film as the subject of formal courses of study both for themselves as pieces of art and for what they say as witnesses to their day. I saw an opportunity here to progress this cause.” 

In that speech Kazan explained how important it is for film directors to gain experiences in a wide range of subjects from Psychology to what he terms the “erotic arts,” fluencies he saw as crucial for the multiple processes of film directing. And Wesleyan, with its liberal arts approach to Film Studies, appeared well suited to the director’s challenge. 

According to Jeanine Basinger, Kazan saw Wesleyan as a “paradise of teaching and learning” even then. Sadly Kazan did not live to see the growth of Wesleyan’s film department or his own granddaughter, Maya Kazan’s, graduation from the program in 2009. 

Wesleyan students have plenty of opportunities to honor Kazan as he has honored Wesleyan with his gifts and presence, by attending screenings and visiting the Rick Nicita Gallery, or dropping by the location of his office late some night at Olin. And those who want to experience Middletown as Kazan did can always visit his favorite local haunt, The Pizza Palace on 725 South Main Street.

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The Kazan Centennial has been brought to Wesleyan with support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Screenings will begin promptly at 8 PM on Thursdays. The Rick Nicita Gallery, showcasing archival materials from the Kazan Collection will be open an hour before each screening, in addition to 12 – 4 PM on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.