"... This epic, physical, elemental, almost monomaniacal film is an important touchstone for [Martin] Scorsese, a talisman of the passage from and between the old world of Classical Hollywood and the new, more distinctly personal and modern cinema of such directors as John Cassavetes, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Scorsese’s varied contemporaries in the soon to emerge New Hollywood. Kazan’s film is also a driven tale of the passage from the old world of Europe and Asia Minor to the new, ambivalently cleansing world of America. Kazan’s film itself sits between these opposed and entwined worlds. Its extensive use of European locations in Greece and Turkey (mostly the former due to the Turkish authorities’ objections to Kazan’s choice of locations and subjects), deployment of modish techniques associated with the new waves of Europe such as the jump cut and a more episodic, novelistic narrative structure, dexterous deployment of Haskell Wexler’s lucid and fluid hand-held camera, and reliance on non-professional actors and less well-known faces, all combine to grant the film both a freshness and a sense of grounded authenticity. ..."
sensesofcinema - “People are waiting”: Elia Kazan and America America
W - America America
MoMA
amazon
YouTube: America America, America America - Elia Kazan, The Dance of Vartan
