# What is the best Elia Kazan film of all time?

> A reputation that still splits rooms, and nineteen features to argue over: Broadway adaptations, studio message pictures, two Brando landmarks.

*By YPB Team · Published September 4, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-elia-kazan-film-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **A Streetcar Named Desire** — score 1000/1000
   Kazan's 1951 film of the Tennessee Williams play, with Brando and Vivien Leigh.
2. **On the Waterfront** — score 970/1000
   The 1954 dockworkers drama that won eight Oscars and gave Marlon Brando his 'I coulda been a contender' scene.
3. **Boomerang!** — score 694/1000
   A 1947 semi-documentary courtroom thriller based on an unsolved Connecticut murder.
4. **The Arrangement** — score 582/1000
   A 1969 drama of an advertising executive's breakdown, adapted from Kazan's own novel.
5. **Gentleman's Agreement** — score 582/1000
   The 1947 Best Picture winner in which a reporter poses as Jewish to report on antisemitism.
6. **Panic in the Streets** — score 582/1000
   A 1950 noir manhunt through New Orleans for a plague carrier.
7. **Man on a Tightrope** — score 513/1000
   A 1953 drama about a Czech circus troupe planning an escape across the border.
8. **Wild River** — score 513/1000
   A 1960 drama of a TVA official evicting a widow from her Tennessee island.
9. **A Face in the Crowd** — score 434/1000
   A 1957 satire in which a drifter played by Andy Griffith becomes a demagogue of live television.
10. **The Sea of Grass** — score 434/1000
   A 1947 western melodrama with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn on the New Mexico range.
11. **Viva Zapata!** — score 434/1000
   The 1952 biopic of Emiliano Zapata, written by John Steinbeck and starring Marlon Brando.
12. **America America** — score 434/1000
   Kazan's 1963 film of his uncle's journey from Anatolia to the United States.
13. **A Tree Grows in Brooklyn** — score 342/1000
   Kazan's 1945 debut, a tenement family saga adapted from Betty Smith's novel.
14. **Pinky** — score 342/1000
   A 1949 drama about a light-skinned Black nurse passing for white in the South.
15. **The Last Tycoon** — score 342/1000
   Kazan's 1976 farewell, a Fitzgerald adaptation with Robert De Niro as a studio boss.
16. **Baby Doll** — score 233/1000
   The 1956 Tennessee Williams black comedy condemned by the Legion of Decency on release.
17. **The Visitors** — score 233/1000
   A 1972 low-budget drama about two Vietnam veterans visiting the man who testified against them.
18. **Splendor in the Grass** — score 233/1000
   A 1961 drama of thwarted teenage love in 1920s Kansas, with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty.
19. **East of Eden** — score 103/1000
   The 1955 Steinbeck adaptation that made James Dean a star in his first leading role.

Tags: movies, directors, usa, classics