An Odyssey Retraced

America America is an affecting and dramatically dynamic idea that shapes up as one of 1963's more disappointing films. Director Elia Kazan, born in Turkey of Greek parents, wanted to tell the story of every immigrant who ever sought refuge from oppression on America's shores. With obvious sincerity, Kazan the writer-producer chose as his model a character he could warm to: his uncle Avraam Elia, who at 20 fought his way out of Anatolian Turkey onto a westbound ship. But Kazan the director--perhaps from habit--does his own script a disservice, rendering it in bravura theatrical style as though all the world were indeed a stage.

Shot on location in Greece and Turkey, the movie pays respectful tribute to those sere landscapes that feed souls but starve bellies. More eloquent than a land are the faces of its people. Kazan feelingly catches the poetry of peasants, which sometimes works against him because his native extras emanate an ancient sadness only hinted at by the professionals playing at stage center. Awkward dubbing mars the film too, for the disembodied voices on the sound track draw attention to themselves.

Leading a cast of Greek and American performers is Stathis Giallelis, an Athenian discovery who earns his billing on personality alone. As the would-be immigrant, Stavros, he is all boyish, self-effacing smiles when his father sends him off to Constantinople to invest his family's meager fortune and thereby save them from Turkish persecution. Everything goes wrong. Stavros is robbed and humiliated by a roguish Turk, whom he finally murders. He slaves as a hamal, hauling back-breaking burdens on the Constantinople waterfront, only to be robbed again by a prostitute. He is shot and left for dead after falling in with a band of insurrectionists. One compelling scene shows the rebels' bodies being flung into the sea, while their women, swathed in black, watch from the hillside. Here is the texture of tragedy. But too often Kazan seems so intent on making his movie move that he dissipates pity and terror in orgies of cinema technique, restlessly blurring the action with camera acrobatics.

Eventually Stavros, toughened by violence and more than ever obsessed with his American dream, learns to be cruel. In the film's most successful sequence, he courts a prosperous rug merchant's plain, pure daughter (Linda Marsh), planning to appropriate her dowry to buy a steamer ticket. He is tempted by the family's kindness until his prospective father-in-law (Paul Mann) describes the future: "You'll be old and I'll be old, and we'll sit here and drink and eat and undo the tops of our trousers and take a nap and the women will muzz-muzz in the kitchen." Having no taste for muzz-muzz, Stavros solves his problem another way: he becomes the boy lover of an American rug dealer's alcoholic wife. "In America," he says, "I will be washed clean." Kazan cuts to waves breaking over a ship's bow.

The fault is that the slow hardening and corruption of character never becomes organic drama. Whatever he does, Stavros remains Horatio Alger in Constantinople, and the narrative lacks conviction. This warm, winning, bright-eyed lad could never have entertained the temptation of cutting his grandmother's throat for a few coins, nor would he sell himself for passage to the promised land. When at last the Good Life lies within reach, he ruefully confides to a comrade: "The thing I'd like most is to start this journey all over again." But by then, after nearly three long hours of Kazan's idealized family album, the audience may well cry uncle.

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