‘Red Hollywood’ Looks at Work by Blacklisted Filmmakers
“Red Hollywood”
may suggest the rivers of blood that flood our screens. But the red in
the title of this fascinating essaylike movie refers to the home-front
Communists and other American radicals — actual and accused — who once
upon a Hollywood time made socially conscious movies that took on the
world and its woes. These were true believers, like the fiery Abraham
Polonsky who, with films like “Force of Evil”
(1948), challenged reigning ideologies and at times cast pitch-black
shadows over the scene to make class, race and sexual inequality all
part of the big picture.
Generously
packed with film clips and interviews with three other prominent
blacklisted names — Paul Jarrico, Ring Lardner Jr. and Alfred Levitt —
“Red Hollywood” is an intellectual tour through some of American
cinema’s most politically idealistic moments and some of its most
pessimistic. It was directed by Thom Andersen and Noël Burch, and is
something of a companion piece to a 1985 article by Mr. Andersen in
which he argued that those who were blacklisted were actually doing what
the House Un-American Activities Committee accused them of doing —
subverting Hollywood. As Mr. Andersen wryly wrote and, as he and Mr.
Burch argue on screen, “It would be an injustice to those who were
blacklisted to say they did nothing to deserve it.”
“Red
Hollywood” doesn’t delve deeply into the history of McCarthyism; to an
extent it assumes its audience already knows that story and can jump
right in. So, instead of the usual historical preamble, it opens with a
slavering, juicy clip from “Johnny Guitar,”
the delirious 1954 western starring a gun-toting Joan Crawford as a
saloonkeeper with an insanely troubled personal life. Directed by
Nicholas Ray, the movie was credited to the screenwriter Philip Yordan, who may have been a front for the blacklisted Ben Maddow.
It gets thornier. After years of silence, Maddow apparently did name
names. Another blacklisted screenwriter, Walter Bernstein, wrote
that Maddow’s testimony had nothing to do with politics, money or fear:
“He simply could no longer stand living in the shadows.”
Mr.
Andersen and Mr. Burch, who have remastered and re-edited their 1996
video version of “Red Hollywood” for this iteration, register as less
interested in memorializing the blacklisted as victims than in making an
argument for the worth of their films. (Mr. Andersen’s other movies
include “Los Angeles Plays Itself,”
about that city and its cinematic representations. Mr. Burch is also
known for his book on Japanese cinema, “To the Distant Observer.”) One
jumping off point for “Red Hollywood” is Billy Wilder’s widely repeated
quip about the so-called Hollywood 10,
or Unfriendly 10, who appeared before the House committee: “Only two of
them have talent. The rest are just unfriendly.” Methodically, movie by
movie, Mr. Andersen and Mr. Burch demolish that gibe, as in a section
on the heartbreaking John Garfield, who worked with Mr. Polonsky.
Garfield
was never a Communist but was forced to testify; he died from a heart
attack at 39 in 1952 and is often cast as a blacklist martyr. Years
later, Mr. Polonsky (who died in 1999), wrote of that fallen star: The
Group Theater “trained him, the movies made him, and the blacklist
killed him.” In contrast to a lot of surveys of Hollywood and
McCarthyism, however, Mr. Andersen and Mr. Burch keep their focus on the
films in question instead of personalities, advancing their argument in
sections — the movie is narrated by the director Billy Woodberry —
titled war, class, sexes, and the like. Insistently cinematic and
dialectical, “Red Hollywood” has another virtue: It doesn’t toss
everyone into a single leftist lump. Differences are articulated and
illustrated, as individual voices rise and fall, fade and endure.
“All
films about crime are about capitalism,” Mr. Polonsky says, eyes
shining and dukes forever raised, “because capitalism is about crime. I
mean ‘quote unquote,’ morally speaking. At least that’s what I used to
think. Now I’m convinced.”
