Bernstein, veterans of the blacklist are not interested in subtleties. It may be faulted for oversimplification. In 1976, reviewing it for The New York Times, Vincent Canby acknowledged the film's lack of direct political commentary: " The Front is not the whole story of an especially unpleasant piece of American history. The film's screenwriter, Walter Bernstein (right), during a June 2016 Q&A with Sony Pictures Classics co-founder Michael Barker (left) at the SVA Theater in Manhattan, which followed a screening of the film Critical response Ĭritical reception of The Front was divided between those who thought it effectively and amusingly dealt with the topic of McCarthyism and those who thought it a superficial gloss instead of a pithy statement about the McCarthy era. The film ends as Howard is taken away in handcuffs, with Florence kissing him good-bye and many protesters cheering him on. After briefly enduring the HUAC questioning – including being asked to speak ill of the dead Hecky Brown, and being threatened with legal consequences for his admission of having placed bets in his capacity as a bookie (which is illegal), Howard takes a stand, telling the Committee that he does not recognize their authority to ask him such questions, and telling them to "go fuck yourselves" before leaving the interrogation room. Howard decides that he will respond to the Committee's questions evasively, enabling him to neither admit nor deny anything. He privately tells Florence that he is not a writer, just a humble cashier. Suspicion is cast his way, and he is called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Howard witnesses other harsh results of the investigative actions of the communist-hunting "Freedom Information Services" on the network's programming.
#WATCH THE MESSAGE MOVIE 1976 PROFESSIONAL#
The professional humiliation and the inability to provide for his wife and children take their toll on Hecky and he kills himself by jumping out of a hotel window. The club owner short-changes Hecky on his promised salary, and when Hecky confronts him, the club owner fires him, denouncing him as a "communist son of a bitch". In order to clear his name from the blacklist, Hecky is instructed to find out more about Howard Prince's involvement with the Communist Party, so he invites him to the Catskills, where Hecky is booked to perform on stage. Howard begins dating her but changes the subject whenever she wants to discuss his work.Īs investigators expose and blacklist Communists in the entertainment industry, Hecky Brown is fired from the show because six years earlier he marched in a May Day parade and subscribed to The Daily Worker, although he tells the investigators he did it merely to impress a woman he wanted to have sex with. The quality of the scripts and Howard's ability to write so many impresses Florence Barrett, Sussman's idealistic script editor, who mistakes him for a principled artist. Howard becomes such a success that Miller's two fellow screenwriter friends hire him to be their front as well. Howard's script also offers a plum role for Hecky Brown, one of Sussman's top actors. The scripts are submitted to network producer Phil Sussman, who is pleased to have a writer not on the television blacklist. Howard agrees out of friendship and because he needs the money. He asks his friend Howard Prince, a restaurant cashier and small-time bookie, to sign his name to Miller's television scripts in exchange for ten percent of the money Miller makes from them, i.e. In New York City, 1953, at the height of the anti-Communist investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), television screenwriter Alfred Miller is blacklisted and cannot get work.
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