Wednesday, February 22, 2006
yes, please, do front
Maybe the best movie I have ever seen on the Hollywood Blacklisting of the early fifties is "The Front" starring Woody Allen. It is funny, warm, heartbreaking and the hero gets to tell the Committee to 'go fuck yourselves'. It is so well done without being heavy handed. Zero Mostel, who was blacklisted in the 1950s gives an amazing performance as an old comic who has his career ruined by the committee.
From Vincent Canby's review in 1976:
From Vincent Canby's review in 1976:
As much as an entertainment film can be, "The Front" is about what it was like when to be a member of the Communist Party, or to have been a member at some earlier time, or to have associated with people who might have been members, or to have had left-wing sympathies, or to have been sympathetic to people who might have had such sympathies, was enough to destroy one's career, to turn old friends into stool pigeons, to humiliate the codes by which men professed to live morally.The film was a nice surprise.
