Word: kazan
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Splendor in the Grass (Warner). Director Elia Kazan, who for about 20 years has exerted a powerful but often Freudulent influence on the art and ethos of the U.S. stage and screen, is a man who believes that every slice of life is a Wiener Schnitzel. The theory works pretty well with the plays of Tennessee Williams, which Kazan perennially directs, because most of Williams' characters are merely engaged in a morbid game of tag your id. It works less well with the plays of William Inge, which Kazan occasionally directs, because most of Inge's characters have...
...this picture-which was written by Inge but heavily edited and then directed by Kazan-a relatively simple story of adolescent love and frustration in a small Midwestern town has been jargoned-up and chaptered-out till it sounds like an angry psychosociological monograph describing the sexual mores of the heartless heartland...
...show, of course, is slick, exciting, professional in every detail-trust coony old Kazan for that every time. Actress Wood is quietly adroit and appealing. And Actor Beatty, who at 24 is playing his first screen part of any account, should make the big time on the first bounce. In the matter of talent, Sister Shirley MacLaine can give him cards and spades, but he has a startling resemblance to the late James Dean, and he has that certain something Hollywood calls star quality...
Apparently, the temptation to be at once colorful and appealing not only led Kazan into cliches but also muddled his thinking. He couldn't seem to make up his mind about the American audience. Waxing eloquent, he praised the public as "hungry for culture." In another place, however, he called the theatre a place "where men sleep and women try to look pretty and hold on until it's over." The explanation of this paradox is that (as every trouper knows) there are good audiences and bad audiences, one for one kind of vague generalization and another for its opposite...
...most part, Kazan had nothing to say about Lincoln Center beyond what the press has already mentioned. Still, he did make a rather frightening statement about doing Shakespeare in a "vigorous, new style." If, by this, he meant transforming verse rhythms into "conversational" cadences a la Jason Robards, Jr., Lincoln Center's opening season may well turn out worse than the Loeb's. Whatever the future of Lincoln Center, and the American theatre, let us hope that it does not depend on the insight and vision of Elia the Prophet...