Repost from thefilmfoundation_official • Elia Kazan was so mighty a force in American theatre, acting and cinema that it’s possible to feel and benefit from the effects of his work and his practice without even realizing it. He’s also known for his second appearance before the terror-inducing House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, when he named the names of many of his fellow Group Theatre members. Any attempt to reduce or simplify the relationship between Kazan’s art and this action is ultimately doomed to failure, no matter what the intention or political motivation. It’s incontestable that the power of Kazan’s artistry and the thematic scope of his work intensified after his second HUAC appearance. But what seems truly remarkable now is the way that, in film after film and in a variety of forms, he meticulously and painstakingly dramatized the gut-wrenching feeling of being torn in two directions—as Kazan put it in his autobiography, “That’s what a difficult decision means:...