Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're talking about one of our favorite rats ever to direct some movies.

Yes, the great Elia Kazan. Listen, he had to name names. Yeah, they were

corrupt. They were the totalitarian left. What are we talking about right from the get-go? People

may be wondering. Anyone who follows Zoe Kazan on Twitter knows. Elya Kazan, in 1952, named

names for the House un-American activities, ratting out former comrades that he knew in the 1930s New York theater.

Kazan himself, for a year, was a member of the Communist Party, didn't last very long in it.

And then he heroically, you know, to save his own career, named the names of some, I don't know,

frickin' playwrights, you know, Clifford Odette's and some other guys like that, some,

you know, some real dangers to this country. And we should say that Kazan, he wasn't just a

member of the Communist Party for a year. The plays that he made were all socially liberal.

They were all about what should be good for society. And he kind of tackled that in his movies as well afterwards

and before. But that thing stained his entire career and also the way that he acted behind

the scenes, which was as a real garbage monster as well. And can I just say

the movies that he made after naming names, much better. Yeah, you know what? I would agree as well.

I mean, that's where all of his classics come from. I mean, I know we didn't watch it for this podcast.

On the waterfront, amazing movie. It's, you know, it's a masterpiece. I think Ilya Kazan has made several

solid gold masterpieces. I think a face in the crowd is also wonderful. He's also made a lot of,

you know, pretty good weepies and melodramas, some, you know, kind of normal and not all that

interesting movies and some movies that don't have much impact anymore.

So it's a checkered career, I would say.

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