Elia Kazan: Top Oscar Directors for Actors

Elia Kazan is best remembered today for two things: His association with Marlon Brando during the first half of the 1950s, and the fact that he claimed to be unrepentant about naming names, and ruining careers and lives during the Red-baiting hysteria of the post-World War II years.
Kazan’s 19 feature films are wildly uneven — for every great A Streetcar Named Desire there is a dreadful America, America, plus everything in between. Yet, probably because of his Broadway training, Kazan was definitely an outstanding actors’ director.
Tough-guy Brando, irritating mannerisms and all, remains the best-remembered Kazan star, even though the director coaxed superb performances from a wide range of players, ranging from child actress Peggy Ann Garner, who [...]

Best Films – 1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
FILM
Blithe Spirit
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
d: Christian-Jaque; scr: Henri Jeanson
Brief Encounter
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Dead of Night
d: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer; scr: John Baines, Angus MacPhail
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Prévert
Leave Her to Heaven
d: John M. Stahl; scr: Jo Swerling
Love Letters
d: William Dieterle; scr: Ayn Rand
Mildred Pierce
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Ranald McDougall, Catherine Turney
A Royal Scandal
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer
State Fair
d: Walter Lang; scr: Paul Green, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
d: Elia Kazan; scr: Tess Slesinger, Frank [...]