It is impossible to watch a film like America America with modern eyes and not think of the turmoil going on in the United States right now over immigration. There is just so much hostility right now towards immigrants that we can easily forget that these people are humans too, trying to find a better life for themselves and their families. This was the exact same thing that our own ancestors were doing when they left Europe or Asia and came to the new land. Now, in the 21st Century, the term “immigrant” seems to be used synonymously with “free-loader” or “lower-class citizen”, someone to persecute or suspect.
Filmmaker Elia Kazan was the product of immigrants, as were most of us. When he set out to make America America, he was inspired by the struggles of his uncle, Avraam Elia Kazantzoglou, who worked his way to America and then brought his family over to join him. Elia put this story in book form in 1962, then adapted it into a film the following year. By doing so, it lends a personal touch to what we are seeing on screen. It also allows him to be brutally honest in his depiction of the stand-in for his uncle, Stavros Topouzoglou (Stathis Giallelis). This is not a glamorous depiction of the noble efforts of a determined young man traveling to America. Stavros makes many dumb mistakes along the way, causing his journey to be far more difficult than it could have been. He’s human, after all, and has weaknesses of character that we can all relate to.
Elia makes sure that you understand his personal connection with this story by providing an opening narration, recorded by himself, giving audiences a bit of historical background. He also carefully and skillfully crafts a film that has little interest in the final destination but instead focuses on the journey there, spending nearly three hours of runtime with barely a few minutes at the end in America. The new land is not the important factor here but what it took to get there. In this way, it shares some DNA with the 1971 film The Emigrants and could have easily had a second film to carry on that story like we got with the sequel The New Land. But Elia was not interested in continuing that story and relegates it to a simple voice-over before the credits roll, wrapping up three hours in a matter of seconds.
To start the film, he wants to make sure we truly understand why the Topouzoglou family needs to immigrate to America. The setting is 1890s Ottoman Turkey. We get a clear sense of just how subjugated the lives of the Cappadocian Greeks and Armenians of Kayseri are. Violent attacks are common, and it becomes obvious that the Greeks won’t remain safe from the violence forever. The family determines that their best option then is to send Stavros to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, to eventually settle the family there. He is entrusted with the entire family wealth that is transportable, including the family donkey, with the hopes of gaining prosperity in the city and sending for the rest of the family.
To aid in this, he is to contact his father’s cousin Odysseus (Salem Ludwig), and invest the family fortune in his carpet business. Along the way, though, he is latched onto by a scheming vagabond who succeeds in taking Stavros for all he has, leaving him desolate. When he arrives in Constantinople, he discovers that Odysseus has misrepresented the situation and was relying on the family wealth to bolster his floundering business. Odysseus, still seeing an opportunity with Stavros, tries to get him to marry the plain and needy daughter of a wealthy family, Thomna (Linda Marsh). But Stavros dreams of America and refuses the offer, electing instead to live in the streets and try and save up the money needed for passage to America.
More misadventures befall him, including having his money stolen, being severely beaten, even returning to court Thomna with the intent of taking her dowry to fund his journey to America, and getting involved in a wealthy, though unhappily married, woman. The end result is what many immigrants faced in these days: years of indentured servitude to pay for passage to America. It’s a story familiar to a lot of people who are the progeny of immigrants from this time period.
America represents to Stavros an opportunity to escape the harsh realities of life in Ottoman Turkey at that time. These promises are enough to prevent him from taking a life of luxury marrying into a very wealthy family in Constantinople, even though that would be a cushy lifestyle at the time that would even afford him to quickly move his family away from the harsh environment they are currently in. His choice to pursue America instead does eventually pay off, though it is explicitly mentioned that his father didn’t survive long enough to make that journey along with the rest of the family.
That makes Stavros an interesting character to follow. It would be all too easy to take the easy route and marry into the money. Instead, he makes the much harder decision and sticks with it, at least until a major setback forces him to reconsider the other option. That setback comes from a bad decision on his part, too, rather than merely happenstance. He gives in to the temptations of the flesh and had nine months of savings stolen from him by a prostitute, leaving him broke.
Losing the family fortune also comes partly because of poor decisions. The vagabond that latches onto him presents himself as a friendly traveling companion, but it quickly becomes obvious that he is a leech. Stavros comes to this conclusion early on but cannot extricate himself from the situation until it is far too late. His only recourse by that point is to kill the leech, but by then everything that he set out with is gone.
Most distressing, though, is the situation with Thomna. When Stavros accepts his fate for a bit, intending to marry her for her dowry, we see just how happy she is at first. But that all ends when, in guilt, he confesses to her his true intentions, and she goes from being so radiant and happy to distressed and willing to do anything to try and please him and keep him with her. This represents perhaps her last chance at real happiness, and we see her heart break right before our eyes. We see a lot of cruelty and violence in this film, but watching the light going out in Thomna’s eyes is by far the most upsetting.
The ending of the film does get a bit convoluted, though, once Stavros gets on the boat headed for the States. There are just too many twists in this final bit of the journey, and it becomes a bit too convenient how it all wraps up. I won’t spoil all the last-minute setbacks, but I will say that a situation arises, once again by his own actions, that threatens to get him sent back to Turkey, and how that is wrapped up is simultaneously poignant and convoluted. It feels like Kazan reaching for one last obstacle to add a little suspense to the finale.
America America feels exactly like what it is: a personal film with a story near and dear to the writer/director’s heart. Often, these kinds of passion projects fail to find an audience, meaning nothing to anyone save the one behind the camera putting it all together. In this case, the opposite is true. There is a lot of heart, and quite a bit of heartache, on screen, and that is translated well. It also happens to be topical, again. This is a long film, and a lot of things happen during that time that help move that runtime along. It’s a beautiful film, too, that is aided by a competent director with a passion for the project and a cast of relative unknowns selling the authenticity.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Elia Kazan
Best Director: Elia Kazan
Best Original Screenplay: Elia Kazan
Best Art Direction: Gene Callahan (won)
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Release Date: December 15, 1963
Running Time: 174 minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Stathis Giallelis
Directed by: Elia Kazan
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