FILM CRITICISM, THE COLD WAR, AND THE BLACKLIST: Reading the Hollywood Reds/HOLLYWOOD EXILES IN EUROPE: The Blacklist and Cold War Culture
2015; American studies; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2153-6856
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoFILM CRITICISM, THE COLD WAR, AND THE BLACKLIST: Reading the Hollywood Reds. By Jeff Smith. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2014. HOLLYWOOD EXILES IN EUROPE: The Blacklist and Cold War Culture. By Rebecca Prime. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2014.Hollywood Exiles merits a special place in the literature of the blacklist, spawned by the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation into the socalled communist subversion of the movie industry. While other studies have focused on the publicity-seeking committee-whose chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, was later convicted of embezzlement-the First Amendment stand of the Hollywood Ten, the testimonies of the friendly and unfriendly witnesses, and the careers that were derailed or destroyed, Prime concentrates on the screenwriters and directors who preferred expatriation to remaining in an America where a subpoena would bring them before a tribunal that would demand an answer to the question, Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? Refusing to answer could result in a charge of contempt of Congress; taking the Fifth would make one unemployable.The European exiles were a mixed group-e.g., directors (Jules Dassin, John Berry, Joseph Losey) and writers (Michael Wilson, Paul Jarrico, Cy Endfield, Carl Foreman) who chose to work abroad, mostly in London and Paris. The author has woven a compelling narrative, starting with the emigres' arrival in an alien environment and concluding with the end of the blacklist that left some with better resumes than they would have had in Hollywood; and others with little to show for their time of exile. It is one thing to take a sabbatical abroad. It is quite another to relocate because a committee is running roughshod over the First Amendment. Culture shock is common, but even abroad the exiles were under continual FBI surveillance; some had their passports confiscated and were required to renew their residency permits to prove they had landed a job, while knowing their name might not appear in the credits unless they used a pseudonym.Some of the exiles did extraordinary work during the diaspora. For example, Jules Dassin, who added American grit to French film noir in Rififi (1954), with its thirty-three minute jewel heist done entirely without sound. American audiences were mesmerized by Rififi because it was a unique kind of movie: a Franco-American gangster film. Expatriation gave director Joseph Losey the freedom that he never enjoyed in Hollywood, where he could not have made such films as The Servant (1963) and King and Country (1964). Others like Paul Jarrico and Cy Endfield fared less well. But that is Prime's point: Some exiles found their niche; others did not. Talent obviously mattered, as the author implies. But so did luck, which eluded some.Indirectly, the blacklist backfired on a Hollywood in decline as the studio system began to crumble with independent production companies rising from the ruins, which, like the exiles, left the sound stage for the world stage as filmmaking became truly global. Hollywood Exiles is an engrossing story with an ending more ironic than upbeat. …
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