Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 21: Sat Jan 21

America, America (Kazan, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 1.50pm


This 35mm screening is part of the 'Martin Scorsese Curates' season at BFI Southbank. The film is also being shown at the cinema on January 30th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Shot by Haskell Wexler in a stark black-and-white deliberately designed to lend the film the feel of documentary, Elia Kazan's epic was based on his own novel, and inspired by the journey his uncle made from a Turkish peasant village, via Istanbul, to New York. For once in his career, the director employed little-known actors, with a welcome loss of theatricality; indeed, the entire movie benefits from its authenticity, geographical, historical and emotional, and may be seen as one of the peaks of Kazan's career. Certainly, it is one of the finest movies to deal with the plight of those thousands of immigrants who travelled in steerage to Ellis Island at the turn of the century.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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