A Letter to Elia 2010 Director Martin Scorsese speaks candidly and passionately about one of his formative filmmaking influences the late Elia Kazan Utilizing precisely chosen clips from Kazans signature films including On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gentlemans Agreement, Baby Doll, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Face in the Crowd, America, America, and The Last Tycoon, and interview footage of the director himself, co directors Scorsese and Kent Jones recount the directors tumultuous journey from the Group Theatre to the Hollywood A list to the thicket of the blacklist But most of all, they make a powerful case for Kazan as a profoundly personal artist working in a famously impersonal industry