My Life as a Blog: Elia Kazan & Roman Polanski: Two Moral Tales

by Reid Rosefelt | Published April 11, 2011

A few months ago I wrote a post about Elia Kazan and the blacklist and discovered that I had hit a raw nerve. Some people felt that I had let Kazan off the hook for some terrible crimes, while others were filled with rage that I would take it upon myself to judge Kazan. A long-time friend took her name off my mailing list. A respected critic wrote only three words (“Who are you?”) followed by a list of all the books he’d written, the festival juries he’d served on, etc. His point, as I understood it, was this: Where did I, a total nobody, get off making a judgment on Kazan, one of the greatest film artists in history?

After reading my post, the Artistic Director of the Sarasota Film Festival, Tom Hall, invited me to serve on the panel “Censorship and Cinema: The Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist” alongside Peter Askin (who directed Trumbo, a documentary on blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) and actor Robert Vaughn (Bullitt, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”), author of Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting. While Tom recognized that I wasn’t an expert, based on my blog he felt I had something to contribute. As the panel is coming up soon (it takes place this Sunday, April 17th, at 3PM in the Sarasota Opera House), I’ve been thinking about what my contribution might be.

Rightly or wrongly, Kazan is the epic face of collaboration during the blacklist in the same way that Trumbo is the monolith of righteousness. As Kazan was a successful director on Broadway as well as in Hollywood, it was felt that Kazan had little to lose by defying the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), because even if they blacklisted him from working on movies, he could still keep working in theater. When Kazan chose to cooperate he was judged as a greedy opportunist who had sold out his friends for riches. While many were wracked with internal conflict about their appearances before the committee, Kazan paid for a full page ad in the New York Times explaining why he did the right thing. There was a tone-deaf, Marie Antoinette quality to the way Kazan presented himself in the midst of all the broken lives, lost marriages and suicides wrought by the blacklist.

On the other hand, what was Kazan’s crime? Was he the only one who named names or behaved dishonorably? What about the grandstanding congressmen like J. Parnell Thomas who started the mess? What about the studio executives who actually created the blacklist? It wasn’t Kazan’s fault that he had to choose between losing his career or giving names to the committee. And as Richard Schickel wrote in Elia Kazan: A Biography, there is a very solid argument that the 1950’s leftist movement can be strongly condemned for ignoring and/or defending Stalin, who had already killed almost a million people through his purges and cleansings and had sent fourteen million people to the Gulags by the time Kazan gave his testimony in 1952. Why stand up for people who were defending one of the worst butchers in history?
Things are never as simple as people would like to make them.

There are many things you can say in defense of Kazan’s actions, but there is no getting away from the fact that Kazan will always remain a very potent symbol. Those for whom the blacklist is still a living thing will never forgive him. Shortly before Kazan was presented with his honorary Oscar in 1999, blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky told Entertainment Weekly that he was hoping Kazan would be shot while onstage, saying “it would no doubt be a thrill on an otherwise dull evening.” That kind of hateful talk is of course unacceptable.

On the other hand, there are people who aren’t curious about what Kazan did--they simply support him unconditionally because of his talent. I’m not at all comfortable with that. Should geniuses get a free pass? Do they live outside morality?

And this leads me to Roman Polanski. Is it okay to drug a 13-year-old girl and have anal sex with her against her will? And then leave her crying in your car, waiting for you to drive her home? And then say that the judge was just jealous—he would have liked to do the same thing? And never apologize?

Here are a few of the people who think that is fine and dandy: Martin Scorsese, Natalie Portman, Tilda Swinton, Jeanne Moreau, Jonathan Demme, Pedro Almodovar, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Paul Auster, the Dardennes Brothers, Wim Wenders, David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, Wes Anderson, Mike Nichols and Darren Aronofsky.

Would these people want somebody to drug and anally rape their own 13-year-old child? Of course not, they simply feel that great artists must be defended at all times, no matter what they do. And it is this lazy, knee-jerk response that troubles me.

The blacklist was a nasty, cruel, ugly, disgusting, vicious and appalling time. Just as Polanski should not get a free pass for what he did, neither should Kazan for the role he played in the blacklist. We need to think these things through and not let extraordinary talent blind us to larger issues. I believe that how honorably we live means as much as the way we tell our stories. Which is not to suggest that I think “good” behavior bears any connection to better art—I far prefer Kazan’s movies to Dalton Trumbo’s scripts—just that how one lives one’s life matters.

Kazan’s films were always praised, but he was often denied awards, including the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, and prizes from the San Francisco Film Festival and LA Film Critics. There were too many people on the juries who remembered the evils of the blacklist for Kazan to get the votes required to receive their awards. It took nine years for Karl Malden to talk the Academy into giving Kazan an honorary Oscar, and when he finally succeeded, it set off a firestorm. There was a movement to get people to not applaud, which at the end of the day proved unsuccessful. The 90-year-old Kazan got a standing ovation, with only a few, including Nick Nolte, sitting on their hands. If I had been there, I know I would have been with the people standing up and applauding.

But would I stand up and cheer for Roman Polanski? No, I would not.

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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT

Comment by tanner on 4/11/11 at 6:40 pm

You leave an awful lot of your claim.As wrong as it was,Polanski has said the sex was consensual and the ‘victim’ has said many times she never felt comfortable with the word rape.My boss is a rape victim and swears no one who was raped would forgive or be so casual as Polanski’s ‘victim’ has. Also, the judge was obsessed with famous people and fought for this case. He shared private information with members at his country club just to impress them.You has the ‘victim’ and her lawyer and the DA at the time asking for the judge to removed. You know nothing about the case yet you shoot your mouth off like you know everything. You are a moron and there is a reason no one takes you seriously.Mia Farrow,an advocate for women’s rights has praised Polanski. The victim has said the judge and the media did far worse things to her than Polanski. Are you aware that according to the police transcripts that the drugs were the ‘victims’? What Polanski did was wrong but the judge was planning on backing out on a plea deal and was gonna sentence Polanski to 50 years. Meanwhile, a murder case in another courtroom was sentencing the murderer of 2 to 17 years in jail. Murder is worse than sex with a minor?PUH-LEASE! Do some research and know what you are blabbing about next time!

Comment by silkroad on 4/11/11 at 7:52 pm

“Is it okay to drug a 13-year-old girl and have anal sex with her against her will? And then leave her crying in your car, waiting for you to drive her home?”

None of this happened. Do your f**king research.

Comment by T on 5/05/11 at 11:51 am

What a shock. Here are 2 guys already chomping at the bit to tear anyone up who condemns Polanski. As for “none of that happened”....seriously? Polanski confessed to drugging a tween and sodomizimg her. That’s not in dispute. And what if the judge had jacked up the sentence? Do you really think that would have held up on appeal? Nope. He would’ve been right out. We’ll of course never know as polanski jumped on a plane like a coward. The kind of coward who sodomizes an underage girl and then walk the earth like some poor beaten martyr. Chinatown’s a good movie though.

Comment by TV on 5/08/11 at 12:18 pm

The Hollywood Communists of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s were not nice people. At all. I don’t know much about Trumbo’s post blacklist life, but his behavior before and during was anything but honorable. The way Hollywood has written this history as good vs evil, honorable vs dishonorable is manipulative, untruthful junk.

It was not an easy time. To give up your career to protect people you thought were dangerous, whose destructiveness you witnessed firsthand, who defended and promoted a scourge that killed millions, is anything but an easy choice. What Kazan did was far less hateful, dishonorable and downright dangerous than what the Hollywood Communist did and were trying to do.

As far as I’m concerned the horrible people on the HUAC and many of the selfish, horrible leaders with the Hollywood Communist Party deserved each other.

It was a bad time for everyone. To signal our Kazan and leave Trumbo and the others unscathed is either deceitful or ignorant.