Dombrowski Edits Book on Filmmaker Elia Kazan

Lisa Dombrowski, associate professor of film studies, is the editor of the book, Kazan Revisited, published by Wesleyan University Press in March 2011.

According to WUP: A groundbreaking filmmaker dogged by controversy in both his personal life and career, Elia Kazan was one of the most important directors of postwar American cinema. In landmark motion pictures such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and Splendor in the Grass, Kazan crafted an emotionally raw form of psychological realism.

Arriving in the wake of his centenary, Kazan Revisited engages and moves beyond existing debates regarding Kazan’s contributions to film, tackling the social, political, industrial, and aesthetic significance of his work from a range of critical perspectives.

In addition to editing the book, Dombrowski wrote the book’s introduction and a chapter on “Choreographing Emotions: Kazan’s CinemaScope Staging.” Jeanine Basinger, the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, chair of Film Studies and curator of the Cinema Archives, contributed a chapter on “On Kazan the Man.”