Scorsese’s ‘Letter to Elia’: Tonight on PBS

Sorry for the late notice — I nearly forgot and missed it myself. Tonight on PBS American Masters is a 90-minute documentary about director Elia Kazan produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese.

Not at all a conventional biographical documentary, Martin Scorsese’s and Kent Jones’s “A Letter to Elia” is instead an intensely personal and deep exploration of the essence of one major filmmaker by another. Keenly analytical in its appreciation of how Elia Kazan achieved such dramatic power in his best work, the hour-long piece movingly achieves special status in the way Scorsese uses the occasion to offer a penetrating slice of emotional autobiography, one man revealing much about himself through his affinity for another man’s cinema. Launched at the Venice and Telluride film festivals, this singular film will be shown as part of PBS’s “American Masters” series on Oct. 4. (IndieWire)

On the East coast it’s already started (9-10:30 p.m.) but on many PBS networks it will be repeated later tonight around midnight — so, “check your local listings.” West Coast viewer still have time to get ready for the early evening broadcast at 9 PT (I think). Apologies again for the last-minute alert. I hope lots of you are able to tune in. It’s a very special event.