Anyone that consumed with success cannot have room for artistic concerns of a higher order. The bestowing of the honorary award on Elia Kazan certainly represented the moral pivot of the ceremony. Outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion a crowd of perhaps 500 people opposed to the award noisily expressed their displeasure. The presentation of the award had a shamefaced character, as if it were being done with a guilty conscience. Despite all their protestations, those involved in honoring Kazan know, or at least sense, that his capitulation to the McCarthyites was a craven act.
Nothing can wipe away the stain.
The clips from his films were also brief and told little. Kazan himself, a man of 89, had nothing much to say. Thank you very much. A far cry from Charlie Chaplin's triumphant appearance in 1972, upon which occasion Chaplin's moral superiority over his persecutors in Hollywood and Washington was palpably felt. It seems certain that the Academy seriously underestimated the degree of opposition to the Kazan award, not merely from the victims of the blacklist, but also from those in the current film industry.