The Front
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Movie Reviews of The Front
Movie Review: Just Say No!
Summary: 5 Stars
The various blanket infringements on the rights of American citizens and others since the criminal events of 9/11 hardly represent the first time that the American government has seen fit to curtail those rights. The Palmer Raids roundup of reds, radicals and foreigners in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution at the tail end of World War I comes to mind. As done the subject of this film, the red scare against communist and other labor radicals after World War II with the onset of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, a former ally. The name of this period narrowly is given in the history books as the McCarthy witch-hunt era, although that hardly dose justice to the widespread political paranoia, high and low, in America at that time. The signature event was the execution of the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. As this film points out as it unfolds that political perfect storm dragged in and ruined many people from many fields, probably none more publicized than in the entertainment industry especially film and the emerging television medium.
Woody Allen has performed many roles over the year from nerdy romantic lead to nerdy neurotic New York intellectual and social commentator but this is one of the few roles of his where the subject matter is more than just fodder for his sardonic writing or comedic talents. The story line here is rather simple, if the politics are rather more complex. Woody, a bright but underachieving New York bar cashier Howard Prince, as a favor (and to get some much needed cash as well) to his blacklisted lefty childhood television writer friend (played by Michael Murphy) agrees to "front" for him. This means that said friend does the writing and Woody gets the credit, the cash and off-handedly as is the case with many commercial productions the girl. In short order Woody gets to like the notoriety and the new lifestyle and agrees to front for other blacklisted writers. Then the real trouble starts.
During the early 1950's it was not enough to write sanitary material for the mass media (approved by outsiders with their own agendas), it was not enough to apologize to various Congressional committees and their cohorts for youthful, innocent and, frankly, acceptable leftist political beliefs in order to survive in the entertainment industry (the subject here but it could have been in the trade unions, education, governmental service or almost any other facet of American life at the time). One had to grovel and name names. And the bulk of those who were called before the committees or faced other types of pressure did do, with regret, with relish or with indifference. But they did it.
There is an incredibly poignant sub theme that runs throughout this film that details the pressures in the career-shattering of one of the "recanters", Hecky Brown (masterfully played by Zero Mostel, blacklisted in the 1950's himself as was the director Martin Ritt and some of the others involved in this production), who in the end gives up Woody to the committees- finks on him, in other words. However filled with remorse Hecky commits suicide. That was not common to be sure. Hell, those were desperate times and not everyone has the courage to say no. Woody's character, in the convoluted, Allen way does just that. Just says no. And pays the consequences. So in the end there were choices. For every Elia Kazan, Elizabeth Bentley and the like there was a Howard Fast, a Dashiell Hammett and the like who said no. As some recently released information has indicated the Rosenbergs paid the ultimate price for their refusal to name names. That, in the end, is what this film is all about and that is what should be honored.
Movie Review: "Take care of yourself. The water is full of sharks."
Summary: 5 Stars
The McCarthy-inspired Blacklist in the late 40s and 50s is such a shameful incident in America's history that film and TV has largely steered clear of the subject altogether: you can count the films dealing with it directly on the fingers of one hand, so it sounds like damning with faint praise to say that the rarely revived The Front is the best of them all. That it's the `Woody Allen film' that time forgot hasn't helped it's reputation, but in truth, although many regular Allen collaborators from co-star Michael Murphy to producers Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe are involved, this isn't an Allen film: some of the wisecracks may be tailor-made for him, but this is Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein's film and Allen's just playing a role, that of a cashier and small-time bookie who finds himself `fronting' for blacklisted writers for 10% of whatever they get for their scripts.
Kicking off with a superb scene-setting montage of the 50s at its best and worst, from baseball and apple pie to the Korean War and the execution of the Rosenbergs while Frank Sinatra sings Young at Heart on the soundtrack, it's a film that certainly speaks from personal experience. Along with writer Walter Bernstein and director Martin Ritt (who had both touched upon the blacklist more obliquely in 1970's The Molly Maguires) many of the cast - Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough, Joshua Shelley - were blacklisted, while the daughter of one of the blacklist's most tragic victims, John Garfield, also appears. Yet surprisingly it's not a whitewash: the blacklisted writers make it clear that they weren't put on the list by mistake but because they are communists, while Allen's front may start out on his new career as a favor to a friend but quickly shows his true opportunistic colors. No sooner has he seen how much money he can make than he's taking on more writers at higher rates, seducing Andrea Marcovicci's production assistant who is really in love with the words that aren't even his own rather than the man himself and getting ideas above his station, refusing to hand in scripts he thinks aren't up to his standards because "It's my name that goes on the script." In that he's really no different from anyone else in a world where club owners take advantage of the blacklist to get performers like Mostel's increasingly suicidal Hecky Green at bargain rates and then still knock them down even further after a sell-out show. But it's not long before he becomes a political suspect himself...
Set in the fledgling TV industry where gas company sponsors insisted on rewriting concentration camp dramas to avoid giving their product a bad image and where businessmen who only owned a couple of stores could demand - and get - the right of veto over any cast members they thought are `too red' for their customers' liking by threatening to withdraw a single commercial (both true incidents), it doesn't really need to resort to comic invention, but it's more of an absurd yet dry black comedy that's often too dark NOT to laugh at. The final scene where Allen comes up against the committee and tries to bluff his way out of a contempt charge is really just a piece of wish fulfilment, the kind of thing you wish you had said long after the moment has passed, but it's hard to begrudge Ritt and Bernstein their moment: they earned it. Running a tight hour-and-a-half and with great photography by Michael Chapman, it's well worth investigating.
Movie Review: See it now, before this exciting moment passes
Summary: 5 Stars
I had to see this movie because my real life was based on the idea that this kind of excitement is usually reserved for the experiences that money can't buy. I was surprised when the Secret Service was interested in having me sign a release to allow appropriate authorities to examine a photocopy of my 1989-1999 psychiatric files to determine if I needed to be on a list of dangerous persons that the government would be trying to prevent from flying or entering special safe zones for politicians who would like to stay far away from crazy people who could totally blow their cool. Since politics lately is like the idea that a Vietnam war hero is most likely to be treated like the oxymoron it always had the potential to become, I could even complain that this movie did not come close to the issues which make the current situation more like the movie `Fahrenheit 9/11.' But the people who made this movie knew what they were doing to protect their right to say whatever they wanted to say.
That Woody Allen and Zero Mostel managed to make a serious movie, `The Front,' which is based on the experiences of the blacklisted writers, actors, and the director that could give meaning to ideas like taking the fifth and naming names, still seems important, even though official investigation of subversive activities in the entertainment industry is hardly what it used to be. In the field of philosophy, Martin Heidegger retains a bad reputation among some people for terminating certain academic careers by calling certain people un-German or Jewish when that was his job and what his Fuhrer wanted, so some highly educated people are more sensitive to this kind of issue than others. Woody Allen has the ideal character from a modern American standpoint, able to play complete apathy, concerned that anyone should be in trouble, but hardly prone to accept the network's advice, `Name Hecky Brown. He's dead.' Sometimes death is more than just nature's way of telling certain people to slow down, and being an expert in this kind of death is not as comic as we keep pretending. In another context, Woody Allen said, `Intellectuals are like the mafia; they only kill their own.' This is one of the truer things he ever said, possibly the truest in my case. This film is like a layer of history in the crusade against godless Communism that the United States of America went through in the 1950's to get to the position it is in today, which is a different crusade in which comedy can hardly be faulted for failing to keep up with what is going on in reality.
Zero Mostel pretending to be a spy, knocking on a door saying, `Open up, this is the police!' is also the kind of behavior I observe in neighbors who are trying to participate in my form of paranoia. Anyone who has ever been to Harvard Law School should have some way to keep from sympathizing too much with the character that Zero Mostel plays in this movie, but I should save my sympathy for other people who already spent all the money they ever had. If comedy were an art form, I still wouldn't be funny, and that is what really hurts me, but this DVD is great either way.
Movie Review: WHEN WOODY DOESN'T DIRECT HIMSELF: AN IMPORTANT FILM FOR OUR AGE OF GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
Summary: 5 Stars
It is a joy to watch Woody free of directorial and writing tasks and just presenting a great part within an equally talented ensemble. Seeing him struggle to play second banana to the great Zero Mostel is to watch him take a back seat and get out of the way. Herschel Bernardi is also wonderful as a divided company man who wants to keep his job and his ideals under pressure.
This story would be no more popular today than the Dixie Chix. It recounts the rather amateur effort of the right wing in the fifties to take over our culture and our entertainment industries by throwing out anyone who might have marched leading with the left foot. In our current paranoid Patriot ACT age in which media monoploy by far right wingers like Rupert Murdoch assures we hear and view only a tiny slover of their "approved" perspective and that any other concept never reaches braodcast or film, and in which other perspectives and points of view wouldbe incomprehensible to the viewing public, this right wing Freedom Information agency looks like fools. Tight butt fools, but incompetent fools.
This movie is wonderful and poignant and telling from beginning to end. Supplement it with Good night and good luck as well as the Cradle will rock. Also see Chaplin's King in New York about the irony of a king being suspected a commie and brought under house investigation. Then read Cassell's take on AShcroft. And read Chomsky's Manufactured COnsent. Do your homework. Turn off that tv!
And then go watch ANYTHING other than USA and British monopolistic media to see there are whole other worlds of worldviews to consider carefully.
Movie Review: a chilling black comedy......
Summary: 5 Stars
THE FRONT, starring Woody Allen, Michael Murphy and Zero Mostel, is an engaging, brilliant, well-written piece that examines the plight of Blacklisted writers and other creative artists who were stifled and forbidden during the age of McCarthyism and the Witch Hunt. Many in their industry were forced and strongarmed to "name names" of people with supposed Communism and anti-American behavior (those who might pose a threat to this supposedly democratic nation of ours). There were numerous eloquent, intelligent and insightful people who were made "invisible" under the clause of this regimented attempt to stamp out those who were politically subversive.
Howard Prince (Allen) is a meak cashier who poses as a Blacklisted writer (Murphy) secretly passing on his work and acting as ghostwriter in a series of pieces that earn him critical acclaim. Though, this response proves quite seductive for Prince, who pockets the money to pay off gambling debts, he becomes aware of the great wrong and injustice being done to those targetted as subversives, and Howard feels he must take a stand. This film is seemingly humorous, at first, but then turns decidedly dark and unflinchingly brutal toward the end. You have to see this. It could quite possibly give you a very important perspective on the realities of censorship, political and creative suppression, as well as the underlying corruption that cost so many people their jobs during the 1940s and 1950s.