In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • None Without Sin:Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist
  • Michael Wakeford
None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist (2003) Directed by Michael EpsteinAmerican Masters (www.pbs.org) 120 min.

The political life of a democracy is, by its very nature, grand theater. But theatricalized politics often take the form of tragedy. None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist, a documentary in the American Masters PBS series, is [End Page 87] a powerful portrait of one such episode. In revisiting the familiar mid-century terrain of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the movie industry's crackdown on communist sympathizers in Hollywood, however, the film brings fresh focus to the moral dilemmas faced by two giants of American art who were swept onto this public stage.

Director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller met in 1947, when Kazan directed a Miller script (All My Sons) on Broadway. Fast friends, their collaborations brought both acclaim—Kazan earned a Tony for All My Sons, while Miller garnered the 1949 Pulitzer for the next play they brought to the stage, Death of a Salesman. On the heels of these successes, the two looked to take their partnership to Hollywood. But in departing the confines of the theater, Miller and Kazan were stepping on to a bigger stage and into a personal and political drama that would destroy their friendship and bring American culture into painful confrontation with itself.

HUAC had eyed Hollywood with suspicion for years, motivated by a mix of old-fashioned anti-Semitism and growing fears of domestic subversives. Matters intensified in 1947 when HUAC brought contempt charges against a group of studio employees, the "Hollywood Ten," which refused to cooperate with their investigations. The movie industry surrendered, agreeing in 1948 to fire the ten and actively purge itself of suspected Communists. The age of "the blacklist" had arrived.

Kazan and Miller sat atop the entertainment world as they began peddling a screenplay for "The Hook" to major studio executives. One by one, studios turned them away – the screenplay's narrative of unionized dockworkers fighting off the encroach of organized crime was politically untouchable. Both men's pasts also contributed to these reactions: Kazan, like so many of his generation devastated by economic calamity and enamored of Soviet antifascism, had briefly joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. Miller, while never a party member, sympathized openly with the American left.

But when HUAC brought Kazan to testify in 1952 about his knowledge of Communist agents in the industry, it was pure stagecraft. By then, Kazan was a committed anti-Communist. Unlike contemporaries who had disavowed the party in light of the USSR's repressive and anti-Semitic practices, Kazan's disillusionment dated to an episode when party officials had pressured him to organize a party "cell" within his New York theater group, which he saw as a violation of the intimate confines of his creative practice.

Kazan was as disdainful of the committee's demagoguery as he was of Communism, and at first refused to cooperate, but the prospect of the blacklist left him with a stark choice. The film portrays him as a man authentically torn. Called again, however, he publicly identified the names of old acting friends and others who he knew to have been Communists. Kazan had saved his career, but lost his friendships, including his almost brotherly bond with Miller, who himself would defy HUAC in 1954. They would not speak again for a decade.

The documentary's real contribution is in revisiting how Kazan, through his artwork, and Miller through his, engaged in a pointed dialogue about the moral implications of Kazan's testimony. Miller condemned Kazan with the Broadway debut of The Crucible (1953). The documentary's extended treatment of the play, which took the Salem witchhunts as its historical setting, constitutes the program's emotional center. With a series of stunning black & white stills overlaid by audio excerpts of the play, we begin to understand how Miller was addressing not just red-baiting tactics of HUAC, but what he judged to be Kazan's profound moral failing. Kazan shot back on film with On the Waterfront...

pdf

Share