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Elia Kazan remains one of the few important directors of his generation who has yet to be discovered by auteurists. This indifference has led to the neglect of one of his most visually compelling and stylistically impressive films--East of Eden.

Elia Kazan remains one of the few important directors of his generation who has yet to be discovered by auteurists. Although many of Kazan's films continue to enjoy popular and critical attention, Kazan's contributions to those films have remained largely unnoticed. This critical indifference toward Kazan as auteur has unfortunately led to the neglect of one of his most visually compelling and stylistically impressive films - East of Eden.1 Like Kazan himself, East of Eden has never enjoyed widespread support among auteurists, and most influential critics have simply dismissed the film as a period piece unworthy of serious consideration for film study.2

The film has also been faulted for the discontinuity of its narrative, for an oppressive moral tone, and for conspicuous Biblical parallels, afflictions which are shared, to a large extent, by the Steinbeck novel. A cursory study of the film appears to justify and reinforce such criticisms, especially in the latter case: Adam and Eve are the obvious Biblical archetypes for Adam Trask and his wayward wife, Kate; CaI and Aaron are clearly patterned on their Biblical counterparts, Cain and Abel. The film's title is an undisguised reference to Scripture ("And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. . . ."), which one of the film's peripheral characters (Sam, the sheriff) quotes verbatim to CaI during the film.

On the surface, then, East of Eden appears to be little more than an outdated morality play. Its messages seem simplistic, its thematic structure obvious, its perceptions of human nature superficial, even naive. Closer inspection, however, reveals an entirely different film, a film thematically complex and rich in symbolism and visual metaphor. This undiscovered East of Eden reveals as well the single creative vision of a master director.

In imposing his personal vision on East of Eden, Kazan uses the physical placement of the characters, as well as those characters' symbolic associations with trees, water, and earth, as visual metaphors for the themes he explores. They become the cinematic mechanisms by which Kazan transforms simple props, scenic backgrounds, expository passages, and elements of staging into thematic, non-narrative motifs which render the film's narrative messages more cinematically complex and appealing. It is this least-appreciated aspect of East of Eden which should make the film worthy of reappraisal as a neglected classic and which should prompt us to reconsider Kazan's own genius in weaving such a complex symbolic tapestry.

The film opens as CaI Trask, seated on a curb, observes the movements of a mysterious elderly woman dressed in black. His eyes track her furtively as she passes him on the sidewalk. She is Kate, Cal's mother, who deserted her family years earlier and who now operates a pair of bordellos in the seedier part of Monterey. Her black attire signifies both a woman in mourning - regret for a failed marriage and a wasted life - and a corpse. Kate has been dead to her family, and they to her, since the day she deserted them.

In this opening sequence, Kazan presents a clear symbolic contrast between CaI and his mother. Kate's walk is assertive and arrogant; Cal's is uncertain and unbalanced, reflecting an inner turmoil. In contrast to Kate's somber black, which invokes death, CaI is dressed in light-colored clothing which seems almost too casual and contemporary for the film's 1917 setting. It is as if Kazan wished to give Cal a life beyond the limits of the film, a life imbued with the rebellious spirit of a much later generation: James Dean's generation.

Cal's youthful face is a mirror of his thoughts, revealing his openness to the world around him. Kate's face remains hidden behind a black veil. Her clothing is also her shroud, draping her in black. At one point in the sequence, Kazan frames CaI with a waving American flag in the background, suggesting not only a sense of allegiance within CaI - his role as a member of a family and a community - but also an essential goodness which has been repressed and which will reveal itself at the film's conclusion. Kate, however, has no allegiance, no human ties. Such symbolic contrasts are central to an understanding of East of Eden. Though CaI believes he is evil like his mother, he is in truth quite different. Kazan's objective symbolism contradicts Cal's subjective vision.

As Kate walks home from the bank, where she has made a substantial deposit, CaI follows at a respectful distance. He is clearly in awe of her and sees himself as subordinate to her. Kazan's physical placement of CaI and Kate within the frame serves as a visual metaphor of Kate's superior (and therefore intimidating) position. We recall that the first time Kate and CaI occupied the same frame, she was standing and he was seated, looking up at her. Kazan repeats and presents variations of this metaphor several times in the film and ultimately reverses it.

In this same sequence, Kazan continues a series of water images which began with the opening titles (the ocean waves crashing against the coastal rocks) and which reappear throughout the film. A watertower figures prominently in three shots in the sequence. The initial reference appears at first to lack a specific function in the scene. As Kate is depositing money in the bank, Kazan cuts away to CaI, who turns suddenly to look at the watertower, then exits the frame. As two women gossip about Kate from behind the bank window, the watertower appears again, reflected in the glass. As CaI follows his mother further up the street, the watertower dominates the left side of the frame. The conscious repetition of so imposing a structure connotes a symbolic significance. But to what purpose? Since the watertower appears so early in the film, and prior to Cal's actual discovery that Kate is his mother, it could stand for anything. Seen in the context of later water images, however, this image performs a specific metaphoric function. In East of Eden, Kazan equates two elements - earth and water - to human life and growth. The film's major (and even some minor) characters are metaphorically joined or allied with various aspects of these elements. For CaI, the surging ocean waves battering the rocks connote his struggle to find his identity; life for CaI has become a series of batterings. Yet, CaI wishes to embrace life, to calm the seas of jealousy and resentment which swirl in consternation within him. For Kate, life has become remote and inaccessible, like the water in the watertower. The watertower connotes also her womb, cold and empty of life. Adam, as we shall see, and Aaron, his son and protege, worship water in its frozen state. Ice becomes the literal preserver of Adam's lettuce crop and a symbol of his rejection of love, his inability to temper his stern moral code with humanity. For Abra, Aaron's betrothed and the object of Cal's jealousy, water becomes a purifying agent, the means by which she forgives her father's sin of remarriage.

When CaI arrives at Kate's "house," he observes it from across the street, pacing nervously beneath a tree. An obese black madam (seen earlier in the bank with Kate) laughs derisively at CaI from the porch of her own sporting house, her legs propped lewdly against a roof support. Kazan's placement of CaI beneath a tree is both deliberate and symbolic, and like the water images, it will be repeated several more times during the film, ultimately providing the visual centerpiece for the film's climactic scene. In East of Eden, Kazan uses trees to represent the desire for knowledge and experience, taking as his inspiration the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis. Eve's sin was one of disobedience, of rebellion; yet, her goal was not to become evil, but rather to gain a knowledge of worldly experience. Similarly, CaI is not an evil figure, as the film's first sequence clearly demonstrates. It is CaTs knowledge of the world, his own misperceptions, and his father's rejection of him in all comparisons with his favored son, Aaron, which causes CaI to seek his mother as his prototype.

When Kate enters the house, she tells the young servant girl, Ann, to fetch Joe, Kate's strong-arm and bouncer. In our first view of Ann, she is on her knees, washing the porch deck. Ann's association with water is one of toil, her servile pose defining her inferior status. She is a Cinderella without hope of rescue by a prince. Later, this water image recurs as Ann serves drinks in Kate's bar. Ann presages Abra as an innocent drawn to Cal's worldly experience; and though both are compelled by some inner drive to help CaI and ease his torment, only Abra will in turn be liberated by him.

Joe comes out to confront CaI, whose persistence in shadowing Kate has made her edgy. As Kate peers through the drawn curtains of her front parlor, the black madam across the street continues to pass her own judgment on events, her rude laughter punctuating and satirizing Cal's and Joe's confrontation like the commentary of a Greek chorus-of-one. Once again, Kazan elicits a metaphoric comparison from what appears to be a simple expository sequence. The madam on the porch represents the antithesis of Kate: brazen, rowdy and unashamed of her station in life. She moves in her own mainstream with no regrets and no past to hide.

When CaI returns from Monterey the next morning, he meets Aaron and Abra, who are on meir way to see the new ice house Adam Trask has just purchased. Kazan's tree imagery repeats: CaI skulks nearby, obscured by a grove of fruit trees. As Aaron and Abra skip innocently along the path, CaI follows, his stealth and erratic movements acting as a sinister counterpoint to the carefree lovers. Abra, however, is not as convinced of her righteousness as Aaron is of his own, and she looks over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of CaI through the trees. Somewhat frightened by him, she is also strangely attracted. There is something compelling about Cal's knowledge of the world - and women - that Aaron, in his innocence, is lacking.

In the ice house sequence, Kazan builds upon the themes and symbols he introduced earlier. As the sequence begins, Adam is discussing the advantages of refrigeration with a local businessman, Will Hamilton. Aaron and Abra arrive, and the prideful Adam gives them permission to inspect his new acquisition. When CaI shows up, Adam's buoyant mood changes. He demands to know where CaI has been, but gets no answer. CaI demonstrates one attribute shared by his mother, but not by Adam - good business sense - as he suggests that, with America's impending entrance into World War I, fortunes will be made selling beans, not lettuce. He tells Adam: "You don't need all this ice." Adam, reminded perhaps of his wife's own business acumen, curtly dismisses Cal's suggestion, turning his back to him. When CaI lights a cigarette at the top of the ice chute, Adam chastizes him again, fearing that CaI will set fire to the sawdust inside. After CaI enters, he eavesdrops on Aaron and Abra from the loft. As the two lovers plan a bright but improbable future, CaI grows increasingly resentful. He pulls an ice pick from one of the blocks and stabs at the ice with it, then hurls ice blocks down the chute.

Like all the major sequences in East of Eden, the ice house sequence operates on both a literal and figurative level. Adam's ice house is functional within the narrative as storage for the ice Adam needs to ship his lettuce to New York. Yet, it also symbolizes the coldness of Adam's own house, especially his emotional neglect of CaI. Cal's lighting of the cigarette is a manifestation of Cal's rebellion and his need for Adam's love. In addition to its phallic implications - Cal's desire to supersede his father's sexuality by a direct challenge - it signifies also Cal's desire to "melt the ice" which defines the nature of their relationship. Cal's act of pushing the ice down the chute has several symbolic implications: Cal's rage against his father's remoteness and an attack on the totem his father worships. More substantially, it signifies Cal's growing resentment of Aaron, who professes love for this wayward brother, but who remains in all respects his father's surrogate. When Aaron and Abra discuss their marriage plans, Cal's resentment is exacerbated. He desires Abra, but also hates her for threatening to take away, by marriage, the only person in his family who still expresses affection for him. When Cal removes the ice pick (the symbol of his brother's manhood) from the ice and strikes the ice repeatedly with it, he is, in fact, striking out at both his brother and Abra. By neutering Aaron, he supersedes him as Abra's mate; yet, CaI does not wish to make love to Abra as much as to violate and punish her for choosing Aaron instead of him. Cal's symbolic penetration of Abra presages the eventual outcome of the triangle, when Aaron, overwhelmed by the knowledge that Kate is his mother, exchanges his position as favored son for prodigal, departing on an army troop train for a likely death in the war.

In the next sequence - that same evening in the Trask home - Kazan's camera assumes a creative as well as a recording function. The frame tilts subjectively to present a point of view outside each of the characters, yet shared by them. Once again, the physical positioning of the characters in Kazan's perfectly arranged mise en scène acts as a visual metaphor for the nature of their relationship. The Trask family is clearly out of "balance" in the frame: CaI is seated across the table from his father, connoting emotional distance. The camera's tilt (upper right of the frame to lower left) emphasizes Cal's subordination. When CaI takes hold of the Bible, it seems to move with the force of gravity, pinning him against the chair. Sitting at Adam's right side, dutiful and aloof, is Aaron, while in me opposite corner, near CaI, the female housekeeper stands alone in the darkness, symbolizing the position of all women in the Trask house and echoing Kate.

In the next sequence - Kate's brothel in Monterey later that same evening - Kazan uses physical positioning of characters once again to reinforce the concept of subordination. CaI returns to confront Kate and confirm his suspicions about her. With the help of Ann, the servant girl, he gains access to her private room at the end of a dark corridor. The smoke from the barroom contributes to the satanic atmosphere; the corridor connotes both an entrance to hell and the vaginal canal. When CaI enters the room, Kate is asleep in a chair. CaI assumes a kneeling position, as if Kate were a deity to be worshipped. When she awakes, she stands up, startled, and calls for Joe. Cal, still on his knees, tries to talk to Kate, but she does not understand what he seeks. Joe pushes Cal to the floor and drags him from the room. Cal's movement from an erect to a prostrate figure is a direct consequence, literally and figuratively, of his first face-to-face meeting with Kate, re-emphasizing her dominion over him. Later that evening, Sam, the sheriff, confirms Cal's worst fears by showing him a wedding picture of Adam and Kate. When Sam takes CaI home, he reminds him of his father's goodness, calling Adam the kindest man Sam has ever known. Sam equates kindness with a sense of conscience. His argument omits Adam's inability to express love, but he makes enough of an impression on Cal to bring about a temporary change in Cal's attitude. As Adam admires his ice-preserved lettuce in the family kitchen, Cal watches with admiration through the window. This marks the beginning of Cal's self-deception, his belief that he can win his father's love by emulating Aaron. It is significant that, in the harvesting sequence that follows, Cal employs a coal chute to facilitate the transfer of the lettuce from the wagon to the train: it signifies Cal's new subservience as the ice chute signified his earlier rebellion.

In this harvesting sequence, Kazan presents an extended narrative passage in which CaI meets Abra alone for the first time in the film. The setting is idyllic: a field of flowers at the edge of Adam's lettuce crop. Abra uses this opportunity to explain to CaI her own need for love, a love she felt betrayed when her father remarried. She explains how she became jealous and resentful, like CaI, and how she struck back at her father by throwing her new mother's wedding ring into the river. Abra's confession to CaI reveals a kinship of spirit with him; her association with water - as a purifying agent and an expression of her struggle for her own father' s love - reflects Cal ' s as well

In the next scene, Adam contemplates buying an automobile as his lettuce crop moves by train to New York. Kazan builds the scene shrewdly, pumping up our expectations for Adam's success by allowing us to see Adam's lighter side, then dashing his hopes along with our own as the news of the disaster arrives: a snowslide in the mountains has blocked the tracks ahead of the train. The ice has turned to water, and the lettuce is rotting. The water imagery recurs: since Adam worships ice and hopes to be redeemed by it, then water itself (with which we identify CaI) must be Adam's foe. It is water that destroys Adam's hopes for success. Kazan adds further irony by making snow cause the train's delay.

Adam's defeat, however, provides CaI the opportunity to finally prove his worth to his father. His deal with Will Hamilton (made in a steamy, smoke-filled shower, evoking both Cal's association with water and the hellish, smoke-filled hallway in Kate's bar) requires a substantial investment - $5,000 - which, naturally, he seeks from Kate. As CaI waits for Kate to pass him on her way home, Kazan places him below a line of trees, reinforcing the earlier metaphor and reminding us of the bond of worldly experience they share. Kazan films their second meeting in soft focus, implying a dream fulfilled.

As CaI and Kate retire to her private room to discuss Cal's need for a loan, Kazan repeats his positioning metaphor, this time incorporating subtle changes which reveal a reversal of the subordination and dominance motif. When Kate sits at her desk, CaI remains standing. Since the desk connotes authority, their positioning - CaI erect, Kate behind the desk - implies an equality which contradicts Cal's earlier inferiority. When CaI sits across the desk from Kate, he shares a power which he will usurp completely later in the film. Kazan extends another metaphor - Cal's cigarette smoking - by having Kate smoke as she talks. In doing so, she mirrors not only CaI, but the third partner in their worldly enterprise - Will Hamilton - who was smoking a cigarette (shared surreptitiously by CaI) in the shower room.

When Kate gives CaI the check, he stands across the desk from her, now in the dominant position. By giving CaI "evil" money to save Cal's "good" father - an irony which is not lost on her - she acknowledges her own desire to make amends and abdicates her position as conventional villain.

In succeeding sequences, Kazan emphasizes the impact of the war in Europe on the film's principal characters. War is seen as a symbol of evil in the world, not as an objective historical event. CaI, Kate, and Will Hamilton profit from it; Adam sees it naively as the invention of city people ("What's a farmer got to do with war?"), and Aaron becomes depressed and sullen. During the parade, Kazan repeats the tree-of-knowledge metaphor, this time substituting the reality of war for worldly knowledge. As the parade passes by, Abra, dressed in a nurse's uniform, runs under a shady tree with Aaron. Aaron condemns the war as a monstrous evil, but Abra is in a festive mood. Soon, CaI joins them beneath the tree; Aaron insists he will never participate in such a war, while Abra's uniform and Cal's partnership with Will Hamilton in growing beans signify their acceptance of evil in the world. It is significant that Aaron's first association with trees coincides with his change from idealistic dreamer to sullen malcontent; similarly, Abra's first association with trees brings her closer to Cal, a closeness Kazan builds upon in the carnival sequence.

Before that sequence though, Kazan presents an exuberant CaI performing an im- promptu "dance" over his growing bean plants. Cal's association with earth in this scene echoes his earlier association with water and trees. It is Cal's knowledge of the world which allows him to be successful in exploiting the earth. Because CaI grows beans, he succeeds; because Adam freezes lettuce, he fails. Thus, the thematic dichotomy in East of Eden is not good vs. evil, but innocence and naivete vs. experience, illusion vs. reality. CaI is a realist, making him successful not only as a bean grower, but ultimately as a man. Adam and Aaron live in a world of illusions, a world from which Abra is desperate to escape. She declares this need openly for the first time at the carnival.

In the carnival sequence, Kazan equates Cal's worldly experience with the emotional freedom Abra needs to feel complete as a woman. The carnival becomes a metaphor for the real world, free of the illusions that blind both Aaron and his father. It is the ranch, not the carnival, which constitutes the realm of make-believe in East of Eden. In the mirror scene, where CaI and Abra watch their normal shapes distort, Kazan implies that the real world is itself only a distortion of what we imagine it to be. When CaI and Abra go on the Ferris wheel, high above the carnival and enveloped in darkness, Abra realizes her feelings for Aaron do not involve love at all. She admires Aaron's sense of morality and conscience, but she cannot equate it with love. She kisses CaI, who is himself still confused about his own identity. CaI realizes now that Abra desires him, but he cannot take her from Aaron. Since CaI hopes to win his father's love by replacing his father's losses in the lettuce business with his own earnings from beans, he does not wish to antagonize Adam by stealing Aaron's girl. When CaI strikes Aaron during the melee following the Hun-baiting of Mr. Albrecht, he jeopardizes their rapproachment once again. Now CaI feels compelled to terminate his arrangement with Will Hamilton on the eve of Adam's birthday. He enlists Abra's help, confiding in her to keep his secret about the money.

The film's climactic sequence begins with Adam's birthday party and concludes with Aaron's departure on a troop train. Here Kazan repeats two of the film's central metaphors - the concept of dominance and subordination and the use of trees as a metaphor for experience and knowledge - as the drama concludes. After Adam rejects Cal's money because it is tainted with the stigma of war profiteering (Adam works as a volunteer on the local draft board), CaI runs from the house. Abra follows, defying Aaron's command. She joins CaI beneath the willow tree in the Trasks' front yard, revealing not only a literal allegiance to CaI and renunciation of Aaron, but also a symbolic acceptance of the real world. Like Cal, Abra has chosen experience over innocence and reality instead of dreams. Aaron, who has just announced his engagement to Abra without her knowledge or prior consent, follows her outside and commands she come out from under the willow tree. Reluctantly, she complies, for CaI has not yet claimed her.

Aaron then lectures the dark figure of CaI, who is partly obscured by the willow's branches. Denouncing his brother openly, he forbids CaI ever to go near Abra again. Unable to tolerate his brother's abuse and high-mindedness any longer, CaI emerges, snakelike, from under the willow tree. He asks Aaron cynically, "What if our mother didn't die and go to heaven?" as the musical score adds an undertone of menace and apprehension. It is the opening salvo of Cal's vengeance and the beginning of Aaron's downfall. During the scene, Kazan is careful to place CaI close to the willow tree (and then to other trees in the yard), while Aaron remains on the periphery, resisting Cal's efforts to draw him in. Aaron does not wish to accept the real world, even though he claims, "I'm not afraid of anything that you can show me." Aaron's world rests on the faulty assumption, shared tragically by Adam, that some people are inherently good and others are inherently bad. He cannot accept the possibility of evil within himself, and so he is destroyed by the knowledge that his mother is the owner of a brothel. For CaI, who has always understood the real world, the knowledge of his mother's occupation comes as no surprise. Yet, Cal's mind harbors its own illusions: that he has no good within him. Since his mother cannot dispel his illusions the way she dispels Aaron's, it is up to Abra to point out the goodness that has been dormant in CaI for so long.

In the next sequence - Cal's and Aaron's visit to Kate's brothel - Kazan brings the subordination-dominance metaphor full circle. As CaI enters Kate's office, he sees her asleep in a chair. Kate is only half-conscious when she recognizes him, and her voice betrays a sentimentality (and therefore a weakness) for her son. Pulling Aaron into the room, CaI introduces him to Kate, who shows sadness and disappointment. Aaron tries to escape, but CaI grabs him and hurls him headlong into her; when Aaron tries to get up, CaI pushes him down again. As CaI leaves the room, closing the door behind him, Aaron is lying on top of his mother, as if in an incestuous embrace. Now it is CaI who assumes the superior position, towering above the debased figures on the floor. As Kazan himself describes the moment: "(CaI) not only showed his brother his mother, but he threw his brother at his mother. Now this was especially apropos because the brother was a puritan. So he says: 'Not only will I show you the shit you came from, but I'll rub your face in the shit you came from.' "3 Yet, CaI does not feel a moral superiority to either Aaron or Kate; he is not cleansed by making Aaron dirty, and thus when he returns to his father's house, he is still bitter. He even echoes his Biblical archetype, Cain, by responding to his father's worried enquiries about Aaron's whereabouts: "I don't know. I'm not my brother's keeper."

CaI plans to leave home, presaging Aaron's own departure and continuing the pattern of role-reversal which began with Cal's attempt to emulate his brother and Aaron's inability to accept the reality of war. When Aaron leaves on the troop train, however, CaI has his first and only chance for redemption and a reconciliation with Adam. Throughout the film, Abra has represented Kazan's (and, no doubt, Steinbeck's) ideal character: one initiated into the hard realities of the world (her father's remarriage, the acceptance of war and death, the suffering of CaI, Aaron's disillusionment), yet optimistic and willing to heal old wounds. In the film's most emotional sequence, Abra attempts to reestablish balance in the Trask family. Adam's stroke has made him helpless. As he lies dying in his bedroom, Abra and CaI assume superior positions. CaI has succeeded in superseding Adam as head of the Trask family, or at least that part which remains after Aaron's exile (when Aaron suffers a stroke at the train station, he falls at Cal's feet, recalling Kate and Aaron on the floor of Kate's office). Kazan employs this physical positioning of characters as well as a calculated use of color to symbolize the resolution of the characters' conflicts. After some prodding from Abra, Cal performs two tasks: he dismisses Adam's callous nurse and places a chair at his father's bedside, signifying both a volition to remove any remaining barriers between himself and Adam and a need to exist as his father's equal, not his superior. The effect is heightened as Kazan's camera pulls back to an extreme high shot. Though Adam is prone, CaI is seated, and Abra is standing, the high vantage point flattens the distinctions among them, leaving them as equals. Abra's sense of balance between hard reality and humane idealism has made both CaI and his father whole men. The image of the Garden, of life and growth and regeneration, is the final, compelling image of East of Eden. Kazan's use of color - a deep green for the walls and earth colors for Abra's and Cal's clothing and Adam's blanket - transforms Adam's deathbed-room into a microcosm of the natural world.4 Adam will die, but CaI and Abra will marry and regenerate life for the future.

This final scene also serves as a microcosm of Kazan's creative technique in East of Eden, incorporating both his use of natural symbols and his complex thematic structure developed through visual metaphor. This pattern clearly transcends the narrative flaws and thematic simplicities of both Steinbeck's novel and Paul Osborne's screenplay.

In addition, it demonstrates Kazan's indisputable position as the dominant creative force behind East of Eden. As even a cursory comparison between Kazan's film and Steinbeck's novel will show, much of the complex imagery and thematic content of the film is not generally evident in the novel. Where the visual imagery of Steinbeck's novel is random, incidental and even accidental, in Kazan's film it is deliberate, cumulative and orchestrated. Both the book and the film, for example, refer to the snowslide which stops Adam's New York-bound freight. Both describe the melting of Adam's ice and the destruction of his lettuce crop. In the novel, this event registers simply as an act of God or a stroke of bad luck, tinged with irony; yet in Kazan's film, it becomes a double-edged metaphor for Adam's and Cal's evolving relationship. Consistent with the pattern of natural imagery established earlier in the film, the melting ice represents not only the ascendency of CaI and Adam's decline, but also the genesis of their eventual reconciliation.5 For it is the loss of the lettuce crop which impels CaI to earn the money back, replace his father's losses, and thus regain his love.

It should be self-evident, then, that Kazan is as much the author oí East of Eden, the film, as Steinbeck is oí East of Eden, the novel. Kazan's film, in fact, deviates so frequently from its printed source that it should be considered as an independent and original work; and when one considers that the film encompasses only the last (and, according to Bosley Crowther, the least)6 third of Steinbeck's novel, Kazan's accomplishment appears all the more impressive, his contributions all the more seminal.7 Thus, if any film is able to redeem the auteur status of Elia Kazan, that film is East of Eden.