I've been meaning to write about film for a while but haven't gotten around to it. For me, like most of us I guess, writing well requires both knowledge and passion about a topic and a sense that I have something unique to add. Lots of times, I have one or two but not all three. In late Spring 2011, I wrote a brief article entitled The San Francisco Giants have the Best Pitching Staff in Baseball. I wrote it because I was watching or listening to every Giants' game with great attention (knowledge), I loved the team (passion), and the consensus among commentators was that while the Giants' pitchers were outstanding the Phillies' were better (unique take).

I generally don't write about economics because Paul Krugman is better at it than I am – he knows more about the subject and may care more – plus my takes are usually pretty close to his. So, why spend time and energy to set them out on a computer screen? At some point, I will write about the critical importance of taxing carbon if we want complex organisms to have a future over a few decades long but I haven't gotten around to it quite yet.

I love movies – especially ones that were produced before 1980. I like to think I know a lot about certain genres but generally don't disagree with the critical consensus on the best movies, directors, and actors. For example, my favorite films in various genres include: The Rules of the Game, Casabalanca, and John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. My favorite actors include: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. Actresses I love include: Jean Arthur, Ginger Rogers, and Barbara Stanwyck. And, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood are on my short list of top directors. So, basically, my tastes are the same as lots of other people's.

Except when it comes to Elia Kazan. The anti-communist director was lionized in the 40s, 50s, and 60s for such “classics” as Gentleman's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and Splendor in the Grass. His reputation as a great filmmaker continues to this day. In 1999, he received a lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards. The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made Revised Edition (2004) includes five Kazan movies. In 2010, Susan King in the LA Times said he was “one of the consummate filmmakers of the 20^th century.” Late last year, Robert Osborne and Alec Baldwin on TCM called Splendor in the Grass one of the “essentials.”

The problem is Kazan's movies basically suck. Compare the cramped sets, portentous overacting, glacial plot development, and overt moralizing that characterize 1947's Gentleman's Agreement, and the early 50's movies - A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden, with Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950)or even 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives.

In The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler takes a basically trite conceit – the struggles of four archetypical WW II veterans to reintegrate into a changed world for which military service left them unprepared – and elicits real empathy and recognition from the viewer. Four years later, Billy Wilder made the definitive Hollywood movie wherein the monstrous long-forgotten screen queen Norma Desmond takes justifiable revenge on the modern film industry, embodied in scriptwriter Joe Gillis, that has passed her by.  Both movies are fast-paced with believable and fully human characters.

Interestingly, both Wyler and Wilder used understated actors to make their films with Dana Andrews, Fredric March, and Myrna Loy, among others, in Lives, and William Holden in Sunset Boulevard playing it straight. The one “big” performance in these movies is Gloria Swanson's Desmond and of course her over-the-top emoting is designed both to evoke nostalgia for as well as poke gentle fun at the long dead silent era.

Kazan's great “strength” has always been considered his ability to draw out definitive acting performances. Susan King quotes film historian and Brooklyn College professor Foster Hirsch as saying: "I think [Kazan's] films from the 1950s, the good ones, are the best-acted films I have ever seen," said Hirsch. "I don't think there is an expiration date on this great acting. 'Baby Doll' and 'On the Waterfront' are like the best-acted films ever made." Ironically, Kazan's actors are often all but unwatchable. James Dean starred in three movies made by three very well-know directors. First came Kazan's East of Eden, then Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a Cause and finally George Stevens' Giant. Of the three directors, Stevens probably has the least cachet today as his films are wrongly in my view considered static. Yet, Dean's performance in Giant is easily the best of his career.

In East of Eden, Dean mumbles, speaks in a monotone, and is altogether uninteresting. In his many scenes, he is filmed either as the dominant figure or facing father Raymond Massey as an equal. Despite, Dean's good looks, Kazan cannot make him compelling and only Massey's failure to engage the camera prevents him from completely overwhelming Dean. In the end, we simply don't care about the young star. Dean doesn't really overact in East of Eden. In fact, he hardly acts at all. Fortunately, Julie Harris serves as the requisite Kazan scenery chewer explaining in her big scene why her dad named her Abra with momentousness befitting the signing of a major peace treaty.

In Giant, George Stevens used Dean far more effectively. His bursts of energy when wild-catting contrasted with pictures of him leaning back motionless in a wooden chair with a Stetson covering his eyes portray a young man desperate to achieve business success and Elizabeth Taylor but otherwise uninterested in life. Stevens also employed the vast empty Texas landscape as an important character shaper. Stagey Kazan with his dependence on dialogue is incapable of such directorial virtuosity.

When Kazan's films don't suck, it's because the scripts are so good that he couldn't quite ruin them. Essentially, a filmer of plays, if the screenplay and actors are good enough, even Kazan's uninspired direction may not be fatal. There are some powerful scenes in On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd, both scripted by Budd Schulberg. Waterfront works best when inspired actors Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, or Karl Malden are on screen. The famous scene in the back of the car with Cobb, Steiger, and Marlon Brandon and when Brando tells Steiger he "couldda been a contender" are memorable.

Likewise, Schulberg's portrayal of an amoral television star using and being used by political opportunists in 1957's A Face in the Crowd, is truly prophetic and Walter Matthau's world-weary cynicism seems authentic. Unfortunately, the movie is marred by Andy Griffith's and Patricia Neal's overacting – almost certainly at Kazan's instigation. In fact, in a supplement on the recently issued DVD, Griffith describes how Kazan got him to leer at co-star Lee Remick.

Kazan is a controversial figure because the director appeared as a friendly witness before the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee in 1952. He is an example some say of a great artist but a flawed man. The reality is far less romantic. Kazan exemplified mediocrity (or worse) both in his work and political actions.