The Front (1976)

It's important to tell the story of the blacklist of the 1950s. It may slow down a recurrence, although Donald Trump is showing how effective it is to play on fears and hatred, and a repeat of the Red Scare can easily show up again as a Muslim Scare.However, I was disappointed to see a ridiculous love story being added to the mix for no particular reason. It added nothing, distracted from the theme, and seemed to exist only to appease the popcorn-chewing part of the audience. Woody Allen playing the romantic lead was completely nuts. A beautiful girl would never show interest in him, not only because of his looks but also because of his nervous, semi-spastic demeanour, his lack of confidence, his whiny voice, his patent cowardice. To see the girl turning to kiss him was slightly disgusting but mostly preposterous. Not in one scene, not in one moment, did he seem like she would find him attractive. (Don't give me that, "She was attracted to what she thought was his brilliance as a writer." She would also want him to be charming or appealing in some way on a personal level. On a personal level he doesn't even show a sign of the brilliance that is supposed to be in his writing.)Zero Mostel showed an unexpected weakness. He is brilliant in exaggeratedly insincere emotions, as in the manipulative slave in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In this movie, when he was pleading with the agent responsible for checking his "reliability," begging not to be put on a black list, showing photos of his children, saying he was on his hands and knees, and so on, none of it sounded sincere. It all sounded like a schtick that he would soon pull out of, only to fall into a different one.

Everyone in the Liberal film community is on board. Surprised? Not me. I've studied Left wingers--Right Wingers--Middle of the road noonie-nannies. Most are all the same. They don't think for themselves--they have to be spoon fed their thoughts and opinions. Okay let's get down to brass tacks. The Communist Party of the USSR was a war with the U.S.--just like the Nazis were at war with the U.S.-- only in a hotter war. If you were a dunce--as are most actors--and you had no concept of what the U.S. stood for it was understandable. But what about writers as depicted in The Front. They were supposed to be halfway intelligent. This sympathetic script--maybe to those that did not want to come clean--tries to say it was not their fault they were dupes to Uncle Joe's plans to convert the U.S. to a Communist state. These infantile minds and morals did not want to take their medicine. They wanted to palm off the responsibility to the adults-- those who were trying to protect their country. True these adults were not always as clean as the driven snow, but what about your parents. I'm sure as a teenager you did not understand why they told you not to associate with certain other kids. The Front--full of misunderstood actors and writers--Oh woe is me! They probably would still do the same things today--and still blame the same people for their distaste of their own Nation--for making them take responsibility for their mistakes.

Watching this movie without knowing who's the director I could bet this is an Allen's movie, although it means not that the Woody Allen's performance hasn't brought the movie his best. The point is that we couldn't see how Ritt led this movie since most of the elements (funny situations, the coadjutor features, the Gran finale) seem like the Allen's movies. I had already seen them in Bananas and What's up Tiger Lily. In an era that communists were chased by authorities and media, the latter used to blacklist writers who were communists sympathizers. However, most of them defended the left-wing side and it resulted in a lack of non-communists available writers able to write a plot for broadcasting and writers facing financial problems due to lack of opportunities to write. One of them was Alfred Miller, played by Michael Murphy, a brilliant and tactful writer who has been fired for this political ideology. He had the idea of having a front for him to keep on writing and paying his bills. The one called for this duty was Howard Prince (Woody Allen), a grocery clerk who wanted to get a better-financed life got the chance. There came Woody Allen playing with extreme awesomeness bringing his usual clumsiness and conceitedness. As all his former movies, Allen plays a character in the same frame as Bananas, Everything you need to know about sex but you were afraid to ask and the others Take the money and run and Love and death that still hadn't been released: a shorty clumsy regular man who wants to date gorgeous women usually taller than him resulting funny moments of self-controversy and no-way-out situations. Both Prince and Hecky Green (Zero Mostel) play comic role in the movie being incapable to work even as a paperback writer. The movie is a must-see for those in literature, politics and media. Besides comicality, Ritt points out the dark ages of censorship and political persecution that the writers and another revoked by the current government. Still, the film regards how authorities handle with dissidents in a truculent and unconstitutional way in along the centuries,making The Front a movie for all generations.

It's not his movie, though Woody Allen agreed to appear in this story about a group of writers and performers who become blacklisted in the early 1950's for being communist sympathizers. As the lowly cashier of a small restaurant, Howard Prince (Allen) is approached by his good friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), who is a talented TV writer but has found himself out of work, rejected due to his communist leanings. Miller wants to hand off his scripts to Prince, using Howard as a front to pass them off as his own, and letting him take a percentage of the profits. Since Howard is in debt up to his eyeballs he accepts, and business becomes even more lucrative as other blacklisted talents request his services too. But things come to a head when Howard becomes confronted by a committee for UnAmerican Activities.I don't usually care about politics one way or the other, but this was a rather strange and effective film, as it begins with a touch of comedy but eventually delves into more serious territory. Woody Allen has never been a great actor, but I liked watching him in what was something of a more dramatic departure for him. This also features Zero Mostel as a tragic actor who faces the wrath of the Red Scare himself, and Andrea Marcovicci as Allen's girl who falls for him when she thinks he's an actual writer. At the end of the film it is revealed that many of the cast and crew themselves had been blacklisted in the '50s. *** out of ****