--- title: "America America" year: 1963 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/america-america" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 77 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-20T04:13:51.045553+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T04:14:07.823632+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # America America (1963) Directed by Elia Kazan · 2h 54m · MPA PG · Drama, History **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 77 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* Two hundred miles, one donkey, a fortune in rugs and a country he has never seen; the rugs go first > Elia Kazan’s account of his uncle’s journey from Anatolia to New York is long, plain and hard, and Haskell Wexler shoots it as reportage rather than staging. One of the peaks of Kazan’s career, and it would be better twenty minutes shorter. ## Synopsis Anatolia, under Ottoman rule, in the last years of the nineteenth century. Stavros Topouzoglou (Stathis Giallelis), a young Greek, hauls ice down a mountain with his Armenian friend Vartan Damadian (Frank Wolff), who talks of nothing but America. When Turkish troops turn on the town’s Armenians and burn the church with people inside, Vartan is caught up in it, and Stavros’s father Isaac (Harry Davis) decides the family must get out one at a time. He sews the family’s money into his son’s coat, loads a donkey with rugs and sends Stavros to Constantinople to join cousin Odysseus (Salem Ludwig) in the carpet trade. On the road Stavros falls in with Osman (Lou Antonio), a Turk who calls him friend, and with Hohannes Gardashian (Gregory Rozakis), a sick boy walking towards the same country. ## Review Elia Kazan opens the film in his own voice, telling us he is Greek by blood, Turkish by birth and an American because his uncle made a journey. The film is that journey, adapted by Kazan from his own novel, and he wrote, produced and directed it himself. It runs 174 minutes. For most of them a young man called Stavros wants to get to America, and everyone he meets wants the thing that would get him there. Haskell Wexler shoots it in black and white with no softening anywhere, and the faces look as though they have been found rather than cast. The town at the start is dust, whitewash and shadow. When the Turkish soldiers herd the Armenians into the church and set light to it, Wexler stays outside with the crowd, on the doors and on the people watching, and we were horrified in a way that most films about atrocity do not manage. Nothing is shown that could be called a spectacle. We hear it, we see the smoke, and we see Stavros’s face deciding something. Frank Wolff, as Vartan, has perhaps a quarter of an hour on screen and leaves a hole the rest of the film keeps stepping round. Stathis Giallelis was unknown when Kazan cast him, and it shows, and it works. He is stiff in places, his mouth set, his eyes fixed a little past the person talking to him, and there are scenes where a trained actor would have given us more. But a trained actor would have let us like Stavros, and Kazan does not want that. The long stretch on the road with Lou Antonio’s Osman, a Turk who adopts him, eats his food, prays beside him and lifts his belongings one piece at a time while smiling, is the best-sustained thing in the film. We watched it with our jaw clenched, waiting for Stavros to notice, and when he does notice the film refuses to let him be the hero of the moment. Constantinople is Gene Callahan’s, and he builds it as quays, warehouses, stairwells and a rug merchant’s cool dark shop where money is counted twice. Anna Hill Johnstone’s costumes tell the story on their own: the good coat Stavros leaves home in comes apart by degrees until he is dressed like the hamals he ends up working beside, men who carry other men’s goods on their backs for coins. John Marley plays Garabet, the porter who tries to make an anarchist of him, and Joanna Frank’s Vartuhi gives the film its one flash of tenderness in that part of town. Dede Allen cuts the labour into short, repeated blows, the same stairs, the same load, so that the work gets into the body of the film. Manos Hatzidakis scores it with Greek melodies played sparely and mostly held back for the road. The middle section moves into the household of Aleko Sinnikoglou (Paul Mann), a rug merchant with a daughter to marry off. Mann plays him as a man who has been generous so long he has forgotten it is a tactic. Linda Marsh, as Thomna, is the best thing in this stretch. She is the one person in the film who asks Stavros what he is thinking about, and his answer is a country, and she does not pretend to be surprised. We will not describe what follows, except to say it is where Kazan is most honest about the price of wanting one thing. It is too long. Bosley Crowther said so on release and he was right; the second hour repeats its lesson, that the road robs you and you rob back, three times where twice would have done. Kazan also cannot resist having people say the theme aloud, and a film this good at showing does not need the telling. Most critics have come round to the view that this is one of his best, and we agree, but the faults are real and they are all faults of length. What stays with us is a farewell at the start, Elena Karam as the mother and Estelle Hemsley as the grandmother sending a boy off with everything they own sewn into his clothes, and the knowledge that the family is betting on him. It moved us more than we expected because nobody weeps. They count the money again. Watch it in one sitting, in the evening, and do not expect to feel proud of anyone by the end. *Fi1m score 84, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 5 reviews in so far, the lean is firmly positive. Most critics respond to the film as a raw, unsentimental account of the immigrant journey, drawn from Kazan’s own family history, and praise Haskell Wexler’s black-and-white photography and a cast of unknowns, led by a debut performance, for giving it a documentary feel. The one reservation comes from The New York Times, which finds the picture overlong and at times repetitive, while Film Comment is more interested in the film as the point where Kazan’s turn to personal work cost him his mass audience. ### Reviews we read (5) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The review calls the film a penetrating, thorough and profoundly affecting account of a young Greek's hardships and determination to reach America. It singles out the incredibly good acting, especially the debut of the lead and several memorable supporting performances. [Read](https://variety.com/1962/film/reviews/america-america-1200420447/) - **Slant Magazine**, Simon Abrams (80/100, inferred): The critic sees the film as a harrowing vision of the American dream as a painful, seemingly never-ending process of self-imposed exile and personal sacrifice rather than a noble enterprise. They single out the raw, realistic immigrant narrative and the lead performance for making the grueling journey emotionally shattering. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/america-america/) - **Time Out**, GA (80/100, inferred): The critic highlights the film's stark black-and-white photography by Haskell Wexler, which gives it a documentary feel, and notes its basis in Kazan's own novel about his uncle's immigrant journey. It praises the use of unknown actors for authenticity and calls the film one of the peaks of Kazan's career and among the finest on early 20th-century immigration to America. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/america-america) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a splendid tribute and ringing ode to the great immigrant wave, highlighting its epic lyric quality and strong performances across the cast. The main complaint is that the picture is overly long and occasionally redundant. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1963/12/16/archives/screen-a-tribute-to-the-great-immigrant-waveelia-kazans-america.html) - **Film Comment**, Estelle Changas (65/100, inferred): The critic traces Elia Kazan's commercial decline to the release of America America, noting it marked a shift to more personal filmmaking that lost mass audiences. She highlights the film's autobiographical roots and its cynical view of success and the American Dream. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/elia-kazans-america/) ## Details - **Director:** Elia Kazan - **Director:** Elia Kazan - **Writer:** Elia Kazan - **Cinematography:** Haskell Wexler - **Editor:** Dede Allen - **Music:** Manos Hatzidakis - **Production design:** Gene Callahan - **Costume design:** Anna Hill Johnstone - **Producer:** Elia Kazan - **Cast:** Stathis Giallelis as Stavros Topouzoglou; Frank Wolff as Vartan Damadian; Harry Davis as Isaac Topouzoglou; Elena Karam as Vasso Topouzoglou; Estelle Hemsley as Grandmother Topouzoglou; Gregory Rozakis as Hohannes Gardashian; Lou Antonio as Osman; Salem Ludwig as Odysseus Topouzoglou - **Runtime:** 2h 54m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 15 December 1963 - **Genres:** Drama, History - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84SUVEOAyeg ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: DK, GB, NO, RO. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1964: Best Director (nominated); Best Art Direction, Black and White (won) - Golden Globes 1964: Best Film Promoting International Understanding (nominated) ## If you liked this - *The Emigrants* (1971), Fi1m 85: Jan Troell’s Swedes leave for Minnesota; the same patience, the same refusal to hurry the crossing. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-emigrants.md) - *El Norte* (1983): A Guatemalan brother and sister walk north; the road takes its cut here too. - *Hester Street* (1975): What happens after the boat: Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, small and exact. - *Rocco and His Brothers* (1960): Visconti’s southern family arrives in Milan and the city sets about undoing them. - *The Godfather Part II* (1974), Fi1m 92: Young Vito’s Ellis Island strand is the immigrant story America America refuses to romanticise. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-godfather-part-ii.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/america-america