We (Nous)

 

Director Alice Diop

WE (Nous)        B                                                                                                                        France  (115 mi)  2021  d: Alice Diop

I will love whoever hears that I am screaming.                                                                      —Marguerite Duras from her short film Les Mains Negatives (The Negative Hands), 1978

Inspired by Les Passagers du Roissy Express by François Maspero, published in 1990, which was awarded the Prix Décembre, one of France’s premiere literary awards, where Maspero, a member of the French Communist Party and an influential publisher of radical works in the 70’s, chronicled his experiences along the RER express subway (Réseau Express Régional), the rail network linking Paris to its suburbs, known as the banlieues, which are far more diverse than the urban ghettos of American cities, yet Diop was particularly impressed that the author took the time to observe the people who live there, preserving their dignity.  Yet what stood out in her memory is an accompanying photograph of an eight-year-old black girl that was taken near the shopping mall she grew up next to, with Maspero photographing and talking to people she knew, quite literally transposing her life into the book.  A former bastion of leftist communists working in the factories, the de-industrialization of the 1970’s was catastrophic for this region, leading to rampant unemployment in the 80’s, voter indifference, and the implosion of communism and the radical left during the François Mitterrand years, replaced by a growing support for the far-right National Rally, also known as the National Front.  Presenting a picture of daily life seldom seen by tourists, with immigrants living in cement blocks of run-down housing projects that resemble the faceless style of Soviet architecture, yet there are also vivid memories of the Drancy internment camp when Vichy government officials cooperated with the Gestapo and sent nearly a hundred thousand Jews to Auschwitz, where social problems and the collapsed political horizons are balanced against the backdrop of China’s brutal suppression of the pro-democracy protests and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  Influenced by the Claire Denis film 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 35 Shots of Rum (2008), featuring a protagonist who drives the RER trains, Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alice Diop, who is from an Aulnay-sous-Bois housing project in the northeast suburbs of Paris, returns fifteen years after she left and journeyed on the RER Line B to document the changes in this region 30 years later, expanding a theme she began with an earlier 2017 short, Les minutes du GREC - RER B d'Alice Diop - Vidéo Dailymotion YouTube (1:15).  Presented as a series of disconnected encounters, the railway line cuts through the city from north to south and is itself a featured component, much like Ozu shots of trains are an identifying signature of Japanese identity, yet what immediately stands out is a working class reliance on mass transit, as we see hordes of mostly black people standing en masse awaiting these trains to go to work, cloaked in a cloud of invisibility, recalling similar scenes in Akerman’s D'Est (1993) observing life behind the Iron Curtain, providing a stark image that differentiates a class division, already suggesting a landscape of exclusion.  While France applauds multiculturalism, yet under the microscope a different reality exists beneath the slogans, as the diversity of stories and memories have really been negated, with the film exposing invisible lives that remain outside the purview of traditional prototypes.  Born out of the November 2015 Paris attacks that shocked Paris, signaling a newly fractured French society, where the terrorists were descendants of postcolonial immigration, growing up in the same banlieue neighborhoods, so there was something about them Diop could recognize, a theme that also prevails in Saint Omer (2022).  The director’s voice can be heard asking questions from behind the camera, yet in this search to forge a new French identity, there is no attempt to provide a commentary that links these various segments together, with no single experience holding a special privilege, as they are all part of the same fabric.  Little by little, however, under these seemingly innocuous images, links are made, always observed discreetly, without necessarily asking for clear explanations, becoming a cinematic representation of diversity and memory, gradually becoming an essay on the social realities of life in postcolonial France.  Opening and closing in the Fontainebleau Forests 35 miles south of Paris, known for the opulent Château de Fontainebleau built by French royalty dating back to the 1100’s, a favorite residence and hunting lodge of the Kings of France because of the abundant game in the surrounding forest, we see images of an exclusive all-white hunting club dressed in antiquated attire and blowing hunting horns on horses, indicative of a leisurely activity for aristocrats, with some following on foot, bicycles, and cars, resembling the fox hunt scenes in Jean Renoir’s RULES OF THE GAME (1939), as hounds and horns announce their presence in the woods as they terrify roaming deer, with the dogs chasing them down into exhaustion before closing in for the kill.  Hunting with dogs is a barbaric practice outlawed in Germany in 1936, Belgium in 1995, and Great Britain in 2005, yet it’s an age-old practice that still exists in France, inherited from the days of a monarchy, with hundreds of cars following on weekends, where hunting tours are organized like safari adventures in Africa.    

Today the term banlieue has become a euphemism for the “racial other,” or the “Other Paris,” as it’s often referred to by journalists, carrying with it a social stigma, embodying stereotypes that plague their residents, many of whom are working class immigrants of Middle Eastern and North African descent.  In France, as it is elsewhere, it becomes a political issue when deciding whose story we tell, whose story gets to be told, with Diop imprinting these images onscreen to suggest a vastly enlarged canvas.  Stringing together a kaleidoscopic portrait of largely black and immigrant communities, intermingled with aging white residents who rely upon their services, we are introduced to Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko, a car mechanic from Mali living in his beat-up truck, listening to the music of Ivory Coast reggae singer Alpha Blondy - Cocody Rock YouTube (4:47), hooking up a television screen to the car battery, and speaking to his mother back home as he works under the hood, informing her “They’re mean to us,” also suggesting it’s too cold, indicating he’d like to go home after spending 20 years working in France.  Diop accompanies her own sister, Ndeye Sighane Diop, a geriatric nurse, as she makes various house calls to the aging, mostly white clientele living in working class neighborhoods.  One elderly woman from Brittany recalls how she met her husband, as she was very depressed at the time, determined to jump off a bridge into the Seine River, but he grabbed her, insisting that he walk her safely home, a practice that continued each night after work, eventually going to the cinema together until they got married.  She recalls how they never had money, as he sent nearly all his earnings to his family back home in Italy, yet this is a common practice for immigrants working abroad.  Diop interjects her own family history through low-grade home videos, with her parents offering her a life they never had, as her father came to France from Dakar in 1966, claiming he was never out of work for 40 years, and she can be heard accompanying him on visits to nearby Sausset Park where they would watch the birds in a tranquil setting, though she’s frustrated that so little evidence of her mother remains, always appearing on the edge of the frame, wishing there was more, as memories of her are fading.  As she expounds on her reflections, adding a narration only for her own personal experiences, she poignantly adds, “I regret all that is vanished, all that has been erased,” which segues to 1950’s images of Marlon Brando as the leader of a motorcycle gang in THE WILD ONE (1953), a cultural icon synonymous with the 1950’s, presumably the movie playing which was taped over by the family videos.  Going even further back in time, an all-white Catholic congregation in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, where French royalty is buried, listens to a royalist ceremony reading the prison testament of Louis XVI, the last King in France, proclaiming his innocence in 1792 (The Last Will and Testament of Louis XVI | andrewcusack.com), knowing his end is near, as he attempts to frame his place in history before they abolish the monarchy and execute him by guillotine during the French Revolution.  It’s curious to hear the words of a monarch in the hallowed grounds of a church, where he is viewed as a religious figure, a heroic Catholic King who came face to face with the wickedness of his subjects who sought to overthrow the Catholic Church and everything it stood for, as Roman Catholicism was the official state religion of France.  When news of his death reached Rome, Pope Pius VI condemned the Revolution and shared his view that Louis was indeed among the blessed martyrs in heaven, with a modern era church service centuries later still having the power to move many to tears, suggesting this was the beginning of a rejection of God and His Church, leading to mass secularization.  This is an astoundingly revisionist view that could only happen in France, where the Church, aligned with the monarchy, are viewed as united in Christ, claiming to be the victim of a historical blunder that somehow opened the doors to freedom and democracy.  One could say the same about Charlemagne, who was engaged in almost constant warfare throughout his 40-year reign, yet was revered as a saint and anointed Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. with his royal ordinances quoted by generations of future Popes.  Diop captures this with no editorializing, utilizing a verité approach where viewers are empowered to make their own judgments and assessments. 

The camera shifts its attention to the Shoah Memorial in Drancy, with an authentic boxcar on display, taking us inside the empty hall with a video installation revealing constantly shifting faces, wordless images selected at random, with names, images, and lifespan listed, including many children, where around 10,000 children were interned in the Drancy camp before being deported, writing letters that were never delivered, some thrown out of the train windows, expressing an evocative requiem for the dead, offering a solemn remembrance that has a prayer-like reverence.  France has a real problem with historical memory, as the Drancy camp was turned into a low-income housing project immediately after the war, eventually building the museum, but it’s poorly attended, mostly by tourists, primarily Americans.  While France can celebrate the memory of Louis XVI for 250 years, the complicity of the French government in the Holocaust just 70 years ago has nearly been erased.  In contrast to the quiet, what follows are lively images of neighborhood kids playing, with the banlieue project towers looming behind them, as boys can be seen sliding down a short hill on cutout cardboard while a group of high school girls are playing cards.  Young men appear in lawn chairs or lying in the grass along a riverbank, drinking beer and listening to music, dancing in a comical manner, mimicking the old-time music of Édith Piaf, Édith Piaf - La Foule (''Que nadie sepa mi sufrir'') YouTube (3:09).  Recalling a similar scene with philosopher Brice Parain in Godard’s My Life to Live (Vivre Sa Vie: Film en douze tableaux) (1962), Diop also appears before the cameras in a conversation with French writer/philosopher Pierre Bergounioux, living in one of the poorest regions in France, as he reads aloud from his diaries.  As they discuss Molière, Rousseau, and the functions of an artist, both acknowledge how entire groups of humanity have been excluded in the past from the world of literature, film, and art, expounding upon centuries of French history and inequity, as only the dominant classes are represented, while ordinary people go unrecognized.  Diop explains that part of her purpose is “to conserve the existence of ordinary lives,” providing a voice for the underrepresented in the maligned outskirts of Paris.  Diop noted in an interview that Libération, the daily newspaper, had run a headline, “We are one people,” asking herself “who this ‘we’ was for them … What ‘people’ was the newspaper talking about?”  The whole film recontextualizes this question, making herself part of the “we” in question, with Diop revealing the aim of the film is “to right the wrong done to all the people who have been overlooked, and to give voice to ‘small lives.’  Lives that have disappeared without a trace, as my parents’ did.”  She alluded to her “obsessive need to collect and preserve the traces of all these lives, to prevent them from disappearing and to archive them in French history.  To send a strong, and political, message that they are part of it.”  The personal and the collective are woven together in this film, providing a tapestry of experiences, where the filming is an act of remembrance.  With an influx of black and African immigrants, residents are regarded as aimless delinquents at best, and imminent terrorists at worst, where the high-density pockets of public housing have become islands of social exclusion.   Being from the banlieues is a serious impediment to employability, as nearly every resident has a story about discrimination, as it prevents residents from getting jobs and getting into good schools, often complaining that journalists drop in only to report on car burnings and drug shootings.  The implication is that people with darker skin are not fully French, which is especially true for Muslims.  It speaks to the neo-colonial attitude, as the legacy of colonialism and slavery persist in the way these urban spaces are policed today, requiring a stricter presence.  The least digestible aspect of France’s colonial past is Algeria, fighting an 8-year war where 700,000 people died.  One cannot overstate how heavily this history has been repressed.  Gillo Pontecorvo’s neo-realist The Battle of Algiers (1965) was banned in France for five years after its release, still remaining a touchy subject.  During pro-independent celebrations in 1961, French police killed some two hundred people, throwing their bodies off bridges into the Seine. It took forty years for France to acknowledge that this massacre had occurred, and the incident is barely mentioned in schools.  According to young people in the banlieues, colonial history is scarcely taught, and literature from former colonies is almost completely ignored.  France is a country ruled by graduates of the prestigious École nationale d'administration in Strasbourg, training heads of state and industry leaders, creating a tier system that largely excludes anyone from the banlieues.  A resurgence of anti-Semitism and anti-immigration has fueled the politics of the far-right National Rally, becoming so pervasive that it’s now part of the popular culture.  Part of this was inflamed by the French law declaring it illegal to wear Muslim face-covering veils in public, prohibiting girls from wearing a hijab while playing sports, with the far-right advocating a ban on Muslim women wearing head scarves in public.  The intimacy of the film is startling, with a handheld camera and a distinct subtlety of direction, but what makes this film special is the sensitivity and empathy it encompasses towards all Parisians, from children, senior citizens, to the upper echelon of French society, with Jean Ferrat’s song Jean Ferrat - Ma France - YouTube (3:49) playing over the closing credits. 

The Front

 

Director Martin Ritt

Writer Walter Bernstein with Woody Allen

Walter Bernstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FRONT         B+                                                                                                             USA  (95 mi)  1976  d: Martin Ritt

What if there were a list?  A list that said: Our finest actors weren’t allowed to act.  Our best writers weren’t allowed to write.  Our funniest comedians weren’t allowed to make us laugh.  What would it be like if there were such a list?  It would be like America in 1953.             —movie poster

Among the only films to deal honestly with the Hollywood Blacklist, with Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul (1947) being made by the very people who were eventually blacklisted, while Red Hollywood (1996) is more of a documentary film, yet this film is distinguished by the fact it carries a certain credibility, having also been written and performed by people who were themselves blacklisted, each one identified in the end credits, including the year they were blacklisted.  The script is written by Walter Bernstein, a legendary screenwriter who lived to be over 100 and may be remembered for his longevity in the industry, as his screenplays have covered the period from the 1940’s to the 2000’s, where he may be the longest-working writer of produced films and television programs in history.  Bernstein got his start in the late 40’s working with Robert Rossen shortly before the House Un-American Activities Committee conducted hearings on the alleged Communist influence in the motion picture industry, with an intent to purge the subversive elements through blacklists, a devastating abuse of power that prevented targeted individuals from ever working again for nearly a decade because of alleged Communist or subversive ties, where people were hauled before the committee to name names, badgered and humiliated into taking a pledge of loyalty that was little more than a publicity stunt before television cameras, as the committee already had all the names.  Yet this was part of the postwar patriotic fervor that led to the paranoid overreach of McCarthyism, aka the Red Scare, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s name became synonymous with Red-baiting political extremism, portraying freedom versus Communism as a life or death matter in the most apocalyptic of terms, where every Communist was viewed as a Soviet agent infiltrating the fabric of American society, reaching a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, characterized by playwright Lillian Hellman, integral in the fight against fascism both at home and abroad, and twice the recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best play of the year, yet she was blacklisted in 1949, describing this era as “the time of scoundrels.”  Anyone thought to have radical political views in general was investigated, arrested, imprisoned, fined, fired from their jobs, and barred from future employment in their fields, as people lost their careers, their friends, and sometimes even their families.  Ordinary people were encouraged to spy on their friends and neighbors, like going to actor’s union meetings, writing down the names of everybody there and turning them in, reporting any suspicions of “subversive” activity.  It was a terrible time, with plenty of hatred developing, leading to family divisions, and in some instances to suicide.  Bernstein was blacklisted in 1950, and was not credited with any work again until 1958, reportedly sleeping on director Martin Ritt’s couch during the McCarthy era, yet throughout the 1950’s he managed to continue writing for television, both under pseudonyms (Paul Bauman) and through the use of fronts, non-affected individuals who allowed their names to appear on his work, with the producer typically having to explain to his bosses that the author was a literary hermit and recluse who shied away from being seen in public, which would explain why you never saw them.  Bernstein unapologetically joined the Communist Party in 1939 as a college student at Dartmouth, a time when roughly half of the Communist Party members in America were Jewish, an extension of Yiddish culture, the labor movement, and the Jewish Left, extremely popular with newly arriving Jewish immigrants, coming from a long history of fleeing persecution, and part of a burgeoning socialist movement from the Great Depression to the war.  Many forget that McCarthyism targeted education as well, as it’s important to remember that 90% of the teachers blacklisted from working in public schools due to alleged subversive activities were Jewish, as were six of the original Hollywood Ten.  Bernstein served in the Army during the war, writing dispatches as a war correspondent from multiple war fronts that he compiled into his first published book in 1945, Keep Your Head Down.  After the war, however, what had formerly been tolerated was suddenly criminalized, writing his published memoirs years afterwards in 1996, Inside Out, A Memoir of the Blacklist, Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist - Google Books, providing his own perspective on the so-called menace of the Communist Party in America, which was, by that time, a small and beleaguered organization wielding little influence, where the only time most citizens even became aware of their existence was viewing Presidential candidates on the ballot every four years, never once becoming a factor or posing a threat to democracy.

Hollywood was a company town.  The cold war was starting, and with it the blacklist, but it was not affecting me and, secure in wish fulfillment, I did not really believe it would.  Winston Churchill had made his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri.  The Hollywood Ten were summoned before the House committee, but the committee members seemed only stupid; I understood their bigotry but not their power.  Who, really, could be on their side?  I also knew the Communist Party was no menace. After all, I belonged to it.  The charge that we wanted to overthrow the government by force and violence was ludicrous.  Nothing I had ever done or intended or even thought was designed for that.  No one I knew in the Party even dreamed of it.  Our meetings might have been less boring if they had.  I took for granted that I could be both radical and accepted, since that had always been the case.

Made by the director of Edge of the City (1957) and Hud (1963), Martin Ritt was known for making socially conscious films, and was himself blacklisted in 1951, largely for his connection to the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal theater company that provided jobs for struggling artists during the Great Depression, hardly a threat to anyone, nonetheless the blacklist forced him to earn a living as an acting instructor until he could find work again.  Some of those blacklisted chose exile in Europe as the only way to avoid a subpoena.  In Paris, directors Jules Dassin, John Berry, Ben and Norma Barzman, and screenwriter Lee Gold, among others, made films for television, allowing them to earn a livelihood, though they were exploited by producers, paying rock-bottom prices for uncredited work.  Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo won Academy Awards under a pseudonym for ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953) and THE BRAVE ONE (1956), while Michael Wilson did the same for THE BRIDGE OVER RIVER KWAI (1957), making a mockery of the blacklist, with Trumbo receiving official credit for EXODUS (1960) and Spartacus (1960), officially breaking the blacklist.  Of unique interest here is the casting of Woody Allen as Howard Prince, aka “the Front,” one of the rare instances when Allen worked in a film that wasn’t his own, but he had only made a handful of movies at that time and was still a relative unknown, coming after LOVE AND DEATH (1975) and a year before his breakthrough film Annie Hall (1977), featuring the same squirrely, anxiety-ridden character that appears in his own films.  What he brings is a comedic element, very funny, especially early in the film, but as his character grows inherently more aware of the circumstances surrounding the blacklist and the impact this is having on some of his friends, he grows more serious, having a terrific punchline near the end of the film, literally coming out of nowhere, changing the entire perspective of the film, like something only Billy Wilder would write.  But it’s extremely hard to balance comedy with such a serious subject, something only a few films can do, overshadowed that same year by Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), which drew all the attention and critical praise, especially the Oscar-winning Paddy Chayefsky script.  Unfortunately, this film has faded from the public consciousness, with many in the younger generation who have never even heard of the blacklist, as it’s not something taught in schools, and is instead something of an embarrassment in our nation’s history, a stain on our legacy, supposedly promoting freedom and democracy, yet, as this film shows, the government can also wrongly target innocent people with impunity.  The Hollywood blacklist ruined the lives of thousands, destroying their careers and livelihood, often without proof, or just based on rumors, turning friends and colleagues against each other.  Despite a lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2000 government employees, mostly black postal workers, and nearly 3800 seaman and dockworkers, also mostly black, lost their jobs as “poor security risks” during the government crackdown, left in an absurdly Kafkaesque limbo having no legal recourse, never informed why they lost their jobs, as blacklists were never officially acknowledged, with apologists, Ronald Reagan among them, who continued to proclaim the blacklist never happened.  It even drove Charlie Chaplin into exile, the iconic Little Tramp, who was responsible for founding the same motion picture industry that ultimately rejected him, moving his family to Switzerland where he remained until his death, accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being a Communist, informed in 1952 after a promotional tour in England that he would be arrested if he ever returned, only setting foot in America 20 years later to accept an honorary lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards in 1972.  You can’t make this stuff up, as it’s too absurd to believe, where the investigatory hearings, working closely with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, ultimately uncovered nothing, as there never was any Communist infiltration, only innocent lives destroyed, yet it actually happened, and this is one of the rare films to take the subject seriously – with Woody Allen, of all people, who has ironically suffered his own brand of blacklisting, accused of sexually molesting an adopted 7-year old daughter, charges he has vociferously denied from the outset thirty years ago, and was never charged, as evidence was inconclusive, but eventually the #MeToo Generation caught up to him, unable to work in the industry anymore, as potential sponsors bolted out of fear.      

The first Hollywood film to tackle the blacklist, made just a year after HUAC was abolished in 1975, the dreamlike opening features Frank Sinatra singing "Young At Heart" 💖Frank Sinatra YouTube (2:36), a million-selling hit in 1953 that includes clips of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s wedding, bombing raids on Korea, a family entering a backyard air raid shelter, with other noted dignitaries, including General Douglas MacArthur, Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, Rocky Marciano, Miss America 1952 (Colleen Kay Hutchins), and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  This eloquently sets the stage for where we are, a period when artists, writers, directors, and others were rendered unemployable, with Allen as Howard Prince starring as an ordinary diner cashier who moonlights as a bookie for extra cash, seemingly always in debt, until he’s visited by an old friend, left-leaning television writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), who has just lost his job due to Communist sympathies that he openly acknowledges in a meeting with Howard, which was a Hollywood first, like a punch to the gut, never before having the audacity to be up front and open about it.  Bernstein acknowledged in interviews (4_books - QC) that he wasn’t blacklisted for nothing, as it wasn’t an accident.  Together they concoct a plan for Howard to put his name on Miller’s scripts for 10 percent of the selling price, becoming the blacklisted writer’s “front.”  While Miller is concerned about Howard’s naïveté, that he doesn’t really know what he’s getting himself into, he’s nonetheless a well-meaning friend, attracted to a steady source of income, claiming how hard can it be?  Miller has been the hugely successful writer of a dramatic anthology series entitled Grand Central, produced by Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi, blacklisted in 1953) and hosted by former vaudeville comedian Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel, blacklisted in 1950).  Yet the storyline veers elsewhere, with Howard having a roving eye for the ladies, in particular Sussman’s idealistic script editor, Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci), a Connecticut girl who judges him by the quality of his work, overwhelmed by his principles and human insight, claiming “In my family the biggest sin was to raise your voice.” Howard’s immediate retort, “In my family the biggest sin was to buy retail.”  Howard immediately develops a swelled head, basking in the glory of this newfound sense of importance, seeing dollar signs in his future, broadening his enterprise to include fronting two more of Miller’s friends, Delaney and Phelps (Lloyd Gough, blacklisted in 1952, and David Margulies), who in reality represent blacklisted writers Walter Bernstein, Abraham Polonsky, and Arnold Manoff, yet foolishly he begins to believe he’s actually part of the creative process.  Never taken seriously before by such important and influential people, always relegated to the economic fringe, much like the imposter Sabzian in Kiarostami’s Close-Up (Nemaye Nazdik) (1990), this gives him a newfound sense of power and authority that he never dreamed possible, suddenly paying off all his debts, buying new clothes, and moving into an upscale apartment.  This inflated cachet works wonders with Florence, dropping her old boyfriend for him, where his sense of importance on the set is staggering, with people constantly referring to his judgment, as there are times they need an immediate rewrite, but instead of getting to work, he mysteriously disappears (meeting secretly with Miller), only to return with the precise changes needed.  It’s like a fairy tale life, where he’s suddenly the golden boy, a position only made available because he’s not on a blacklist.  Ritt very calculatingly reveals what’s going on behind the scenes in the offices of the Freedom Information Services, a supposedly patriotic, right-wing organization working for the networks that spies upon and does background checks on everyone in the industry, like a detective agency, run by a team of investigators led by Francis X. Hennessey (Remak Ramsay), with portraits of J. Edgar Hoover and Chiang Kai-shek on the walls, where anyone not given a clean bill of health is instantly fired.  It’s astounding the amount of power and influence they hold within the industry, especially for a relatively small operation, working completely behind the scenes, accountable to no one except the industry moguls, skewed by extremist political views that were hardly reflective of the viewing television audience.  

The tone of the film shifts considerably, growing much darker with a renewed focus on Hecky, already under investigation by the committee, where in a desperate act to save himself he’ll agree to anything, with Hennessey instructing him to name names and to spy on Howard, bringing the quietly introspective Woody Allen and larger than life Zero Mostel together in the same scenes, which are positively riveting, and historical, as both share similar backgrounds, Borscht Belt comedians who became much bigger stars, with Mostel’s performance the real stand-out of the film.  The heartbreaking aspect is that as much as Howard’s career trajectory took off, Hecky’s started to tumble, as he is quietly removed from his job by the network and forced to capitulate to Hennessey in order to survive.  He invites Howard along for a job back in the Catskills where he got his start, hoping to extract some useful information, but comes up empty, and is instead exploited by a resort owner (Joshua Shelley, blacklisted in 1952) to work for a pittance, knowing he has no other options, and then cheats him out of half his fee, where in the ensuing argument the owner kicks him out, calling him a “commie son of a bitch!”  This humiliation takes its toll, with Howard growing more serious, developing a conscience about what’s going on around him, with the film exploring the real impact, illuminating the terrible personal tragedies experienced by those who were blacklisted, not only robbed of their livelihood, but their dignity as well.  In a perfectly executed single shot, the most heartbreakingly tender moment of the film reveals Hecky in his darkest hour, one of the many souls crushed under the weight of a manufactured threat.  This would end up being Mostel’s final onscreen performance, where much of his story is borrowed from actor Philip Loeb, a friend of both Zero Mostel and Walter Bernstein, who was labeled a communist for his union activities, dropped from the cast of an enormously popular TV show, The Goldbergs (1949-57), driven to debt and despondency, and committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills in a room at New York’s Taft Hotel.  His suffering is made all the more poignant by the knowledge that much of what Hecky goes through was drawn directly from Mostel’s own experience.  Woody Allen is also most convincing watching from a distance as events take a darker turn, becoming painfully real in ways that feel unimaginable.  When Howard is himself hauled before the committee, supposedly a mere formality, never expecting difficulties, yet when he’s asked to name Hecky as a subversive collaborator, the moral dilemma is written all over his face, where the impact of the finale is an absurd twist into the surreal, reminiscent of the final turn of Kubrick’s black comedy DR. STRANGELOVE OR: WHY I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), with black and white  newsreel footage both opening and closing the film to the same Sinatra tune, creating a wonderland fantasia fused with real events that actually happened.  For those who think the concept of blacklists is a thing of the past, it’s worth noting that governments and police authorities use cameras to identify subjects of political rallies and demonstrations, while also singling out journalists, where the Attorney General can compile a data base of subversive organizations and oppositional views, once again placing names on lists.  Employers also target union activities, discharging employees for activism while hiding their real intentions, also singling out those who dare speak up over safety issues, not only discharging them, but actively making sure they would never find similar work elsewhere (On the blacklist: how did the UK's top building firms get secret ...).  In the NFL, after being singled out by President Trump, the billionaire owners conspired to prevent social activist quarterback Colin Kaepernick from ever playing in the league again (for kneeling during the national anthem), effectively blacklisting him from future employment.  In a hyper-suspicious Cold War atmosphere of allegiance and loyalty oaths, it was a particularly shameful and ugly time in our country, when insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans of a sinister plot infiltrating the country, allowing narrow-minded politicians to become fear mongers preaching hate and fear, reaching out to blind followers – mirroring what we’re seeing on the American political landscape today.   

The Front, by Martin Ritt (1976)  entire film on YouTube (1:34:46)