An Analysis on Ambivalence in Cinema: “The Last Tycoon” Elia Kazan

Year 2019, , 220 - 235, 07.10.2019

Besna Ağın

https://doi.org/10.32739/etkilesim.2019.4.71

Abstract

Involved in filmmaking more than four decades, Elia Kazan had been a witness and an influence for significant change in the American film industry. His final phase includes four films, respectively, America America, The Arrangement, The Visitors and The Last Tycoon which are his most neglected films in film studies, compared to his previous successful films such as On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden and Splendor in the Grass. This study has focused on one of his late films for mainly two reasons; to fill the gap in the literature and present an analyses of Kazan’s most structurally different film regarding its narrative complexities with the concept of realism. Realism is one of the key concepts to study Kazan in the research field, but distinctively, I have tried to find the realism within the mise-en-scène and ambivalence in the narrative.

Keywords

Elia Kazan, realism, mise en scène, ambivalence, The Last Tycoon, cinematic analyses

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