PERSONAL AND INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING: ELIA KAZAN’S AMERICA AMERICA

Abstract

As the independent production increased and factory-like production receded in 1950s, filmmakers were soon in greater control. The studios could no longer dictate all the terms and were forced to meet halfway so that both sides could profit. However, filmmakers were still dependent on the studios when it came to finance and distribution. Elia Kazan, being a former Hollywood contract director, became one of those independent filmmakers and established his own production company. By the time he first got to Hollywood in the mid-1940s, producers were already dominating the film industry. Kazan, believing the director should come first and be independent in financial, politic and aesthetic terms at all costs, refused to be a studio-contract worker. He started writing, and molding scripts do the casting and costuming, directing and producing. Kazan was determined to assert greater control over the films he made, and his way of filmmaking would be less about profits and more about gaining artistic freedom. He produced and directed all his subsequent films of the 1950s and 1960s. In this study, one of these films, America America will be analyzed.