Art of the Real previews; Jarmusch retrospective, FSLC

[Chris Knipp]

THOM ANDERSEN, NOËL BURCH: RED HOLLYWOOD (1996)



Reissuing a reassessment of communists in Hollywood

In his original review. film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described Red Hollywood as "A highly illuminating, groundbreaking, and entertaining video documentary that defies a major taboo in most mainstream writing about current movies.” This film in its remastered and reedited form was shown at the Disney Theater in Los Angeles in January 2014. Thom Anderson is the CalArts film professor known for Los Angeles Plays Itself. He can be counted on for deep knowledge of period Hollywood and an independent point of view. What he and Rosenbaum have in mind is that our perspective on the Hollywood "Red" (Communist) artists blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee is inaccurate, because many of the films they made from the Thirties to the Fifties are denigrated or just forgotten. Film scholars and writers Andersen and Burch, whose documentary is narrated by Billy Woodberry, seek to counter the glib view that of the Hollywood Ten only two had talent and the rest were just unlikeable. To know the forgotten films revisited here is to rethink Hollywood films and perhaps America. These films in a variety of genres raise leading questions about social issues, labor, race, and the Hollywood studio system itself. For students of film and Hollywood an the Forties and Fifties, Red Hollywood is a must-see and contains some invaluable, thought-provoking material. That's not to say it's perfect. It's organization is sometimes puzzling. Sometimes it's hard to see what point is being made.

Red Hollywood is a combination of voiceover narration, talking heads, and film clips from 53 mostly little known films. The speakers included blacklisted writer-filmwriters -- Paul Jarrico, Ring Lardner Jr., Alfred Levitt, and Abraham Polonsky (Polonsky has the last word). The film begins by explaining the historical background, the post-war period, pro-American and pro-Russian propaganda like Paul Jarrico's Song of Russia, the function of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the Hollywood establishment's cooperation with HUAAC, to ban the Hollywood Ten and others who stood up to the committee's witch hunting. Those who refused to name names or testify to HUAAC were blacklisted; some where able to work again in the Sixties. A lot of clips of Thirties and Forties movies written by communists follow, showing that they didn't mind doing pro-war propaganda, and that Hollywood usually opposed workers' strikes no matter who was writing. It's hard to see what some of these clips add up to, except to a reflection of the times with an American touch, like the family learning about Pearl Harbor and the US delcaring war on Japan while the wife urges her men to come to table "or the roast will get cold." There is typical sentimentalism in the little boy who tells his uncle who's newly out of work that he can "feed" him like his out of work father by asking the butcher for a bone for his dog, then turning it over to him mom to make soup.

The review of films through clips is organized not chronologically but by topics, "myths," "war," "class," "sexes," "hate," "crime," and "death." This doesn't seem the best system. With each new topic there is a return to the Thirties and then the Forties, and some directors and writers are revisited, but no one figure is focused on at length or in depth. Sometimes the point is how communists in film were able to present their own ideas. At other times it seems they did not, or embraced a mainstream view, like opposition to workers' strikes during the War, or pursuit of the War itself. Many of the clips are moments that are very preachy, because they're chosen because they express ideas -- explicitly. Such moments are often the ones that seem the most dated in Hollywood films. It's not so clear that these clips show the Hollywood communist writers had "talent" in a cinematic sense. What is clear is that they may have injected "ideas" into their writing a lot. Perhaps these are intellectual films. But sometimes the "ideas" seem simplistic and crude. And of course, that goes for Hollywood as a whole. In the light of these clips, it seems pushing it on Rosenbaum's part to suggest the films referenced in Red Hollywood may be ground fof constructing "new canons" of cinema, but they do add to our sense of what Thirties and Forties Hollywood movies were like.

Things look up a bit when the documentary switches to the topic of "Sex," showing a teasing scene between a glamorous woman and what seems to be an advertising writer who's turned on by her in John Howard Lawson's Success at Any Price, which the narration says is a writer who was to become a communist willing to indicate the role of class and money in sexual transactions. It's clear the man doesn't think he can afford the woman and she says "I could use you." Whether she actually has a financial advantage over him, however, isn't so clear, from this excerpt anyway.

The film ends with Polansky's reading a climactic scene from Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), which he co-wrote and directed. It was one of only three films he made, and the first he made after being blacklisted in the late Forties. "Indians don't last in prison. They weren't born for it like the whites..." It's fascinating to see the aging Polansky read the scene, than watch Robert Blake perform it in a clip (one of the few in color). The dialogue may sound artificial, Forties. But how Blake brings it to life! At the end, Polansky declares that the only causes worth fighting for are the lost ones.

Red Hollywood, 120 mins., remastered and reedited, has been shown at a number of venues since its rerelease in 2013. It was screened for this review as part of the Art of the Real series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It will be shown in the series Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 6:30pm and Sunday, April 13 at 2pm at Lincoln Center. Filmmaker Thom Andersen in person for Q&A on April 12.

In its earlier form this film is available in it entirety on YouTube.