Militant/Harry Ring America is not one of mass struggie bur or peopie tninking and questioning things resuit ot the deeo crisis We will be building a national CandIC! against US involvement in South Africa: nationTO REMIND uS writers, THEODORE SORENSON us?
enusted mme alo ne30 must have activities and Americanthat witch-hunts, managed trials and landers are nothing new to the western democratic way of life, Martin Ritt's film The Front has just opened in London and will be on general release shortly. The film is set in the Hollywood of the early 1950s, when countless actresses and directors were blacklisted for alleged communist sympathies. Among the vietims were Ritt himself, the film's co-star Zero Mostel, its writer, and others who contributed to the making of this fine movie.
They have chosen to look back through black comedy. While ilustrating the human tragedies of the witch-hunts, The Front concentrates on ridiculing and satirising the accusers. There is a scene, for instance, when Zero Mostel is charged with having communist sympathies for contributing to the Russian War Refugee Fund. He asks quizzically, "But weren't they on the same side as The point about that partieular "accusation', which obviously the film cannot explain, is that many Americans were actually charged with this heinous crime. Indeed Richard Nixon himself, as a lieutenant to McCarthy, is on tape asking that very question of one of his earlier victims. It may all seem ridiculous now, but many of the incidents, scenes and banalities in the film actually stageSHR KES SLANE wagging could be. they think it makes gas look bad'.
attempt to 'interpret' McCarthyism.
uses, its final effect is very moving and funny. vision networks. Woody Allen plays the front man in question: an innocent who has 'always danced in the middle of the floor' and sees the blacklist as a way of paying off gambling debts. The film traces how Allen eventually loses his innocence and, in his own distinet way, himally Because the events depicted in the film are seen through the eyes of the character Allen plays, it dees not set out to give a thorough explanation of how and why the witch-hunts arose. But at times the humour is more savage than any fingerThere is the occasion when Allen ponders the possibility of bribing The House of Unamerican Activities: 'Pay them off. How much would it cost? They're only Congressmen'. Or when his producer explains a problem with a script on the Nazi gas chambers: *The oil industry don't like it;
These and other gems are almost thrown away, but they hit home with more effect than would any didactic And while contempt is the medium The Fron - both sad Allen's playing and Ritt's directio make The Front very special, but its real triump is to show the madness of capitalism and th human dignity of those who oppose it and attack it by one of the most telling weapons of