In Hollywood there’s something worse than being a communist (or a child rapist) and that’s being an anti-communist. Kazan, a former member of the Communist Party of America, died a die-hard liberal but once he came to understand the crimes against humanity committed under Stalin he left the communist party and eventually went before HUAC where he named Stalinists, not innocent liberals. He also never apologized:

“I’d had every good reason to believe the party should be driven out of its many hiding places and into the light of scrutiny, but I’d never said anything because it would be called ‘red-baiting.’ [. . .] The `horrible, immoral thing’ that I did I did out of my own true self.”

In 1999, the director of more classic films than I can list was awarded a long overdue honorary Oscar, and this was how the Hollywood elite greeted this fellow artist: 

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In 2003 Roman Polanski, a then 25-year fugitive for the crime of raping a 13 year-old girl won the Oscar for Best Director. Here’s how the Hollywood elite greeted that fellow artist:

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“Artist” has got nothing to do with it.

5pm PST – Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A (1945) – A girl in the slums tries to find her way with the help of her devoted mother and alcoholic father. Cast: Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, James Dunn, Lloyd Nolan Dir: Elia Kazan BW-129 mins, TV-G

Watch in awe as you realize this lyrical, timeless family drama was Elia Kazan’s feature film directorial debut. There was nothing this extraordinary explorer of the human condition couldn’t do and his work will survive as long as there’s a civilization, and much longer than anything made by those who refused to stand when the 89 year-old was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999. Of course, that’s me being generous and assuming we haven’t already forgotten the classic canon of Nick Nolte and Amy Madigan.

A perfect triple feature would be today’s pick, “Life With Father” and “I Remember Mama.”  Nothing old-fashioned about any of these. Each is a complicated, thematically driven human drama that manages to tell many truths about life without resorting to cynicism or any of the other crutches used so often today.  The bitter and the sweet as opposed to the ironic and the pointless.