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Elia Kazan’s art is compromised by his politics

A new documentary by Martin Scorsese, A Letter to Elia, has once again drawn attention to the great controversy of director Elia Kazan’s career: his decision to testify to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952. Kazan had been a member of the American Communist party in New York for two years during the 1930s. During his appearance in front of the Committee, he outed eight former colleagues as Communists, effectively destroying their careers.

His collaboration with the McCarthyite purges dogged Kazan up until his death in 2003, although he insisted that the Committee’s subpoena presented him with an impossible choice between two evils. When he won a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1999, many in the audience refused to applaud him.

Yet Kazan’s films – notably On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire – have provided solace and inspiration to many, not least Scorsese himself. Does Kazan’s treachery overshadow his art, or can we, like Scorsese, still appreciate the work of a director who put his career before his comrades?