America America

One of the great movie family sagas, a fascinating revelation of both the dark and bright sides of the American dream. [05 Mar 2000, p.24C]

Mr. Kazan catches the poetry of immigrants arriving in America. With some masterfully authentic staging and a fitly hard-focus camera, he gives us as fine an understanding of that drama as the screen has ever had.

Elia Kazan gives a penetrating, thorough and profoundly affecting account of the hardships endured and surmounted at the turn of the century by a young Greek lad in attempting to fulfill his cherished dream - getting to America from the old country.

Filmed with a cast of largely nonprofessional actors, America America immediately strives to impress its audience with the raw reality of its immigrant narrative.

It’s a crude, clunky piece of writing, hampered by variable performances and a leading man whose looks of silent resolve are more compelling than his line-readings. Yet the film has the elemental power of a classic immigrant story, revealing a young man’s single-minded, arduous journey to America through black-and-white images that evoke the country’s promise to the huddled masses.

The director's deepest instincts are less epic than dramatic, with the result that he gets sidetracked more often than his errant hero. The picturesque is gained too often at the expense of the picaresque, and the contour of a legend is obscured time and again by the pointless intimacy of a close-up. [09 Jan 1964, p.12]

A nicely told, occasionally highly emotional story, but the main purpose of the film seems to be to give writer-director Elia Kazan an excuse to pat himself on the back.