RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The retrospective at this year's Locarno Film Festival feels particularly timely, maybe even scarily so. Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist promises to put the spotlight on "one of the most turbulent and politically charged periods in the history of American cinema," including the "Red Scare" and the infamous Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era.
After all, during the period from 1947 to the early 1960s, Hollywood professionals suspected of communist ties faced a crackdown. The Swiss festival's cinematic look back will provide "a complex portrait of an era in which creatives were confronted by unprecedented abuse of state and industry power and which they met, courageously, with fierce artistic resistance," Locarno highlighted. Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist will "re-examine this repressive yet defiantly creative era, which mirrors the political attacks on free speech and artistic freedom seen again today." Related Stories Movies 'Pachinko' Star Kim Minha to Host Busan Film Festival's Opening Ceremony Business Europe to Boycott World Cup in FIFA Protest
Produced in partnership with the Cinémathèque Suisse and with the support of UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Locarno retrospective was once again curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht . He has compiled a program of more than 50 films – fiction, documentaries, and shorts – and newsreels featuring such directors, writers, and stars as John Garfield, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo , Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright, and Charlie Chaplin . It will explore various works to shine a spotlight on a time of polarized politics, allegations of communist infiltration of Hollywood in the Cold War, and the Hollywood blacklist that upended careers and forced artists to adopt pseudonyms or go into exile overseas. Among the films featured in the retrospective are the likes of Lewis Milestone's The North Star (1943), None But the Lonely Heart (1944), directed by Clifford Odets, Crossfire (1947) from director Edward Dmytryk, Bernard Vorhaus' Amazing Mr X (1948), Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil (1948), The Sound of Fury (1950), directed by Cy Endfield, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York (1957), Hollywood on Trial (1976) by David Helpern, Martin Ritt's The Front (1976) with Woody Allen, and 1996's Red Hollywood , directed by Thom Andersen and Noël Burch. The 79th Locarno Film Festival runs Aug. 5-15.
Khoshbakht talked to THR about Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist , why it is "the timeliest" retrospective he has ever worked on, Hollywood's role today, and the role of Charlie Chaplin and other stars in the showcase.
Have you been working on this retrospective for Locarno for a long time, and how easy was the decision that the time was ripe for it? I had this project lined up for the future because it needed some proper research, but all of a sudden, I thought it was for now, because it's about what's happening right now. Even some of the terminology from back then is back in use. For instance, if you see press releases from the White House, there are some headlines with phrases that come right out of the McCarthy playbook, which is quite astonishing. They mention "the radical Left" and "radical propaganda," among other things.
But what is so interesting is that now both Left and Right, and the Center, have appropriated the terminology of that era to their own advantage. For instance, there was this Wall Street Journal headline saying basically: "McCarthyism is back – this time it's woke." So you can define McCarthyism as well, either as woke or anti-woke is McCarthyism. It's just this confusion about the meaning of words and phrases that, back in the day, at least had some clear meaning – most of it completely wrong, but they were used in a very specific way.
Curating retrospectives takes a lot of work and research. Can you share some insight into how long you researched this topic and these films?
I had seen almost all of the films, so I knew my films, and that's the most important part. But this is one of those subjects that comes with hundreds of books, and new books are being published every year. So, you want to catch up with the literature. There is also some other really interesting stuff, such as the declassified FBI files. That makes it far more exciting to dive into this episode in the history of American cinema.
There are also the oral histories and books that the victims of the blacklist, especially The Hollywood Ten, wrote from the late '70s onwards about their own experience. There are contradictions, there are paradoxes, I guess a bit of egocentrism, but when you put them together with the rest, it gives you a relatively accurate picture of how things unfolded from '47 onwards.
I love the title you guys picked for the retrospective, Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist . How long did you think about what to call this showcase?
Many good titles have been used by writers of books. One of those titles I love very much is Tender Comrades [: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist ]. I thought the title should make clear that this is about not one subject, but actually two subjects. One is red, and one is black. Red is a reference to the Hollywood Left, which was active before the blacklist was introduced in 1947, and then black is for the blacklist. This is a program that actually studies the journey of the Hollywood Left from the early '40s until the late '60s.
When Locarno unveiled this latest retrospective, you said this is the most timely retrospective you have put together. This is your third one for the Locarno festival, but you have done so much other work. How is this one different?
It is my most timely retrospective so far, and it is something very special. The fact that we are talking about this is also special, because, sadly, The Hollywood Reporter was one of the key players in the blacklist episode, playing the role of a chee...
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