In 1963, Elia Kazan directed his most personal film, America, America, a true masterpiece that tells the story of his uncle’s difficult odyssey to find freedom from Turkish oppression in his native Anatolia. Like those who seek life-saving refuge today, the young protagonist of America, America finds at the end of his journey a gated paradise where he is not wanted but at least nobody wants to kill him.
Drama from within: ‘America, America’ Enric Sòria
Elia Kazan was born in 1909 in Istanbul to a Greek family from Kayseri, in Anatolian Cappadoci and he arrived in the United States with his family at the age of four. His whole career took place in the United States and many of his films in the Forties and early Fifties are characterised by a progressive tone and social commentary, in particular addressing themes such as racism in Pinky, anti-Semitism in the excellent Gentleman’s Agreement, and poverty and despotism, the triggers for the uprising in one of the great films of Hollywood’s golden era, Viva Zapata! He was questioned during the witchhunt and the critical ingredient in his film-making diminished somewhat but did not disappear entirely. This is demonstrated by the strikingly modern film A Face in the Crowd, probably the most incisive challenge to the perverse effect of the manipulation of mass media by populist fanatics ever filmed. Armenian genocide
In 1963, Kazan recoevered, and even increased his critical insight, in a film of outstanding depth and visual power, America, America, where he presents a subject with which he had a personal involvement. The film tells in minute detail the story of how his uncle, as a young man, successfully escaped Turkish oppression, arrived in America and later managed to bring over all of his relatives. This makes it the most realistic and moving film in all his long and brilliant moviemaking career and it is also the director’s own personal favourite. As Kazan himself said, it is the only film that he felt was completely his from beginning to end. The action begins in the late 19th century during the so-called Hamidian massacres which lasted from 1894 to 1897, a series of lethal attacks by the Turkish
police and army against Armenians and, to a lesser extent, Greeks and Assyrians in Asia Minor which were the prelude to the Armenian genocide perpetrated during the First World War. At the time, Christian minorities were much more receptive to the democratic revolutionary ideas spreading across Europe and the increasingly nationalistic Young Turks found this a danger that had to be eradicated and they whipped up interethnic hatred within the Muslim majority. This situation became more and more threatenting and the protagonists of the film, a family of traditional fabric traders, are afraid that the atmosphere would become even more hostile in future. When their Armenian neighbours are killed, the head of the family gives all his savings to his first-born son, a young man enthralled by America, telling him to go there and take all the other family members across later. The film tells the story of the difficult journey of the young man, Elia Kazan’s uncle, to freedom and adulthood. An illuminating film
The whole film is an extended bildungsroman combining travel, epic, fable, struggle, love, fluctuating hope and desperation, renunciation and learning, in a profound and disturbing reflection. It also has outstanding photography by Haskell Wexler and music from the great Manos Hadjidakis and many of the most intense, lyrical and striking moments American filmmaking has ever produced. There is a continuous outpouring of ominous sequences: the dance by the protagonist’s Armenian friend in the tavern, as an assertion of identity before the moment of death; the massacre of the Armenian community inside the church; the youngster’s journey through Anatolia, lea-