What is meant by "the Anatolian smile"? Kazan's Uncle Joe.

The Anatolian smile

Is it a hypocritical smile, an almost manic or semi-permanent smile of ingratiation, or a way of masking true feelings?

Elias Kazan made an unforgettable black and white film of that title (1963; known as "America, America" in the USA). Although his own favourite from among his films, he says it was a financial disaster (Elia Kazan, A Life, 1988).

"The story of director Kazan's uncle, who grew up in a small village as a member of the Greek minority in Turkey in the end of the 19th century. When the oppression by the Turks increases, his father provides the young man with the family treasures and sends him to Constantinople. There he is supposed to make money and get the family to join him. But his own dream is different: America" (Short summary)

Kazan (A Life): "For years I'd been thinking there might be a fine film, and one I had to make, in the story of my uncle Avraam Elia Kazanjioglou, known in the rug trade as A.E, ("Joe") Kazan, who managed to come to this country at the age of twenty, put together some dollars, and in time brought his brother, my father, across the water, then, one after the other, the rest of the family...I had the image of my uncle in mind, a colorful rascal who, after he'd prospered in business here, betrayed his partner, my father. I didn't scrub the character clean; I was looking for a ferret, not a lion, someone who had what was my boy's single redeeming quality, devotion to his father and family".

See also this summary.

The film is based on the story of his paternal uncle (YouTube)

Final scene


The New York Times (1 May, 1988):

"Mr. Kazan was born in Constantinople in 1909 to an Anatolian Greek family living under harsh Turkish rule in the Ottoman Empire. His father, a rug merchant, brought the family to America shortly before World War I. Elia Kazan attributes much to his Anatolian origins, especially his desire to ingratiate and his capacity to dissemble - ''the Anatolian Smile'' he so disliked in his father, ''the smile that covers resentment''."

S.N.Behrman, in his introduction to America, America, the 1963 novel/novelization of the film, both by Elias Kazan (the film was entitled The Anatolian Smile in the UK), writes:

"When I first read America, America it was called The Anatolian Smile. It related to the smile with which Stavros confronts an inimical world; the smile of deference, the smile of conciliation, the smile to ward off a blow...his "I-ain't-done-nothin'" smile, to ingratiate the enemy, as in Kafka, for an undefined crime. The crime of any minority under any tyranny is the crime of being there instead of somewhere else, or of anywhere, of living. Stavros' perpetual smile is an apology for being alive."

Kazan, America, America, p 27:

"The officer looks at him. Stavros quickly retreats behind a smile. This smile, the most characteristic thing about the boy, has a strong element of anxiety. It is so often the unhappy brand of the minority person...the only way he has found to face his oppressor, a mask to conceal the hostility he dares not show, and at the same time an escape for the shame he feels as he violates his true feelings."

On p. 47:

Grandmother: "You're lying. My God, I hope you're not going to be like your father. You already have his smile. Well! What can you do?! All the men in our family lie now. The Turks spit in their face and they say it's raining."

On p. 80

Abdul: "We Turks are primitive, while you Greeks are civilised. I envy you. You have learned how to bear misfortune, swallow insult and indignity, and still smile. I truly envy you".


Was Kazan himself wearing the Anatolian smile when he turned informer and named names of Communists, in testimony before Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, leading to the blacklisting of colleagues in the film industry?

For his own explanations for his actions, see Kazan, A Life, pages 456-472.