A Letter to Elia

Director Martin Scorsese speaks candidly and passionately about one of his formative filmmaking influences: the late Elia Kazan. Utilizing precisely chosen clips from Kazans signature films including On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gentlemans Agreement, Baby Doll, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Face in the Crowd, America, America, and The Last Tycoon, and interview footage of the director himself, co-directors Scorsese and Kent Jones recount the directors tumultuous journey from the Group Theatre to the Hollywood A-list to the thicket of the blacklist. But most of all, they make a powerful case for Kazan as a profoundly personal artist working in a famously impersonal industry.