The Elia Kazan Collection

Fifty-eight years after Elia Kazan named eight former colleagues as members of the Communist Party to the House Un-American Activities Committee, the director who launched the careers of Marlon Brando, James Dean and Warren Beatty remains controversial. Which may be one of the reasons 20th Century Fox waited until seven years after his death to release a box set of his titles. On Tuesday 9, the 18-disc Elia Kazan Film Collection ($199.98) hits shelves. Containing 15 Kazan films—including staples like On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire—the set also houses four pictures that never made it to region-one DVD, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), the stridently anti-Communist Man on a Tightrope (1953), Wild River (1960) and America, America (1963), which Kazan called his favorite of his films. Aside from the never-before-released work, what’s most notable about the set is A Letter to Elia, a documentary on the director’s films and personal life by professed Kazan disciple Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones. Comprising interviews, film clips and pieces of Kazan’s autobiography, Letter looks at how Kazan’s HUAC testimony and subsequent ostracization by certain friends laid the groundwork for films with themes of alienation and moral dilemma.

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