America America

The second film nominated for Best Picture in 1963 was America America, written and directed by Elia Kazan. It is a very personal film, as it documents (loosely) the experiences of his uncle, who was the first of his family to emigrate to the U.S.

Set in Turkey at the turn of the 20th century, the film begins in Anatolia, an area that was once populated by Greeks and Armenians, but ended being conquered by the Turks. By the time of the film, the Greeks and Armenians are an abused minority. We see the wounds of oppression, especially an Armenian church that is set on fire by Turkish authorities, even as women and children are inside.

Our hero is a Greek, Stavros (Stathis Giallelis), who chafes at the oppression and dreams of traveling to America, which he pronounces as if it were a magic word. He is ashamed of his father, a man who goes along to get along. Eventually his father realizes that Stavros must go to Constantinople, and the rest of the family will follow. They load Stavros up with everything of worth the family owns, so that Stavros can join a cousin in the rug business.

Almost immediately Stavros is beset by thieves. He ends up accompanied by a con man (Lou Antonio) who calls him brother, but actually has designs on all of Stavros' possessions. Empty-handed, he finally gets to the city. He gets a job as "hamal," a kind of porter who is looked down upon by many. He befriends his employer, John Marley, but again gets robbed, this time by a whore. He takes his cousin's advice and courts the plain daughter of a rich man. He asks for a dowry of 110 pounds--the exact cost of a ticket to America.

Eventually he breaks off the engagement, gets on the boat, and becomes the lover of an older American woman (Katherine Balfour), but her husband finds out and tells him that they will put him back on the first boat to Turkey. But an old acquaintance, who is on the same boat, has tuberculosis, and exchanges his identity with Stavros'.

Kazan has directed several important, famous films, but this one seems to have been lost in the shuffle. I had known it was nominated for Best Picture, but it never seems to be mentioned in Kazan's career highlights. Perhaps that's because it has a cast of unknowns, and was filmed in Turkey and Greece. It covers ancient grudges that don't resonate in America, though the spirit of immigration that it contains certainly is in the roots of almost all Americans, who have a similar story of their first ancestor who made it to Ellis Island.

The peripatetic journey of Stavros is very nicely rendered. Giallelis is an actor of limited range, but Marley, Antonio, Linda Marsh as his fiancee, and Paul Mann has his prospective father-in-law are all fine.