On Screen

...What is missing from movies like The Front and books like Lillian Hellman's best-selling Scoundrel Time, which covers much the same material in much the same fashion, is an awareness of anything beyond those two starkly conceived alternatives...

...Ritt and Bernstein do not acknowledge this tradition...

...eventually, sick with remorse, he commits suicide...

...This triumph of the aggrossive schlemiel Allen has created coincides with his own progress from standup comedian to actor to director to superstar...

...The "scoundrels" of Hellman's book are, for example, not the Mc-Carthyites, but the liberal intellectuals whose opposition to Communism, she claims, was "perverted in the Vietman war and then into the reign of Nixon, their unwanted but inevitable leader...

...He also wins the heart of a television studio's starry-eyed script editor, Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci), who is impressed by his "talent...

...All those Soviet concentration camps are conveniently forgotten or dismissed, except when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn provides an uncomfortable reminder...

...He gets the money he never got in Take the Money and Run, the girl he never won in Play It Again...

...Sam, and the cloak of virtue he never had anywhere...

...Because The Front has been turned into just another Woody Allen movie, it can give us a grossly simplified tale that approaches blatant propaganda in the guise of humor...

...The good guys?Florence, Miller, the other blacklisted writers and performers, the unfriendly witnesses—are virtuous, idealistic humanists...

...But why, considering the power of this peculiarly self-perpetuating persona to undermine any supposedly serious intentions, was Allen cast as the lead here...

...The plot climaxes when Howard is subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...Those caught in the middle—Hecky, the director who must fire him and, at first, Howard—are spineless cowards...

...Ironically, the New Left (under whose banner the revisionist historians first appeared), although no longer an active political force, may be exerting more real influence today than ever before...

...Disgusted by the hypocrisy and duplicity around her, Florence quits her job and begs Howard to join her protest...

...Bernstein has added, "While it has a good deal of comedy in it it is basically a very serious movie, a morality tale...

...what is more, they and other distorters present a genuine danger to it...

...Long-time readers of The New Leader scarcely need to be reminded that there was and is a liberal, Social Democratic strain of anti-Communism strongly opposed to both positions...

...No matter that the actual tragedy and complexity of the McCarthy era are completely obscured...

...Howard Prince is one more example of the wheedling and whining neurotic, the self-serving and self-mocking opportunist whose two imperatives are, in the words of Vivian Gornick...

...The bad guys —the studio bosses, the Committee, the investigators, the various pressure groups, the cooperative witnesses—are selfish, cold-blooded fanatics...

...It is irrelevant that those responsible for this skewed view of the past—William Appleton Williams, David Horowitz, Paul Baran, and others—have been discredited by many of their colleagues in the academic world, for their ideas have entered the popular consciousness...

...It is a hash of pathos and low humor that turns "the plague years" into a laughing matter: What comes off as ludicrous is the movie's own foolishness, not the time of the blacklist...

...Complications quickly arise, however...

...It corresponds still less to the real choices made by real people during the McCarthy madness, when refusing to testify did not automatically signify innocence and "friendly" witnesses were not necessarily craven grovelers...

...The single difference is that Howard makes out better than the Allen hero of the past...

...to "get laid and stay alive...

...The Front exploits more than its star's name and comedic talent, though...

...Meanwhile, Hecky consents to spy on Howard in exchange for being permitted to continue his acting career...

...Howard struggles with his own reluctance to jeopardize his wealth, but the memory of Hecky finally prompts him to tell off the Committee in no uncertain terms...

...Simple-minded anti-Communism is, of course, no better than the simple-mindedness of the revisionists...

...Ritt has described the movie as "filled with a bitterness and irony that reflect the ludicrousness of the time...

...The story is perfectly suited to the screen personality Allen has cultivated in his own cinematic efforts...

...nonetheless, he has won the respect of his friends, the love of his girl and even the enthusiastic support of a band of demonstrators...

...Yet The Front is not at all what its makers promise, and given the degree of personal experience that went into it, since both men were themselves blacklisted, this is surprising and disappointing...

...His struggle with that choice may make for some good jokes, but since the outcome is never really in doubt, it is hardly the stuff of genuine tragedy—or, for that matter, of serious comedy...

...By presenting the story of Howard Prince's innocence through a willful ignorance of political issues, and his redemption through the stand he takes, Ritt and Bernstein reveal some of the attitudes motivating The Front...

...Ritt, too, has claimed that anti-Communism "paved the way to Vietnam and to the political climate that led to Watergate...

...In the real world of the '70s, as in this very unreal movie about the '50's, making it consists largely of faking it...

...The studio urges him to cooperate, to be a "friendly witness" and "name names.' Florence and his sources plead with him to remain silent, to take the Fifth Amendment and risk a jail term...

...He begins to relish his newly acquired fame, to the point of demanding that his sources upgrade their material: "Blacklisted is not enough," he says...

...The ruse works beyond Howard's wildest and grubbiest expectations...

...Allen plays Howard Prince, a sometime bar cashier, small-time bookie and full-time hustler who mooches off his brother in the garment district to cool the creditors...

...The essence of the film's drama lies in Howard's movement from the last group to the first...

...It is providing an opportunity for the old Stalinists to come out of the closet as heroes...

...By giving free rein to the Allen character, Ritt and Bernstein have insured that audience sympathy will flow in the right direction (and the audience is amply rewarded by the magnitude of Howard's success—the money, the girl and the martyrdom...

...Instead of the mixture of tragedy and farce that would have been appropriate, the film offers empty moralism, the cheapest of ironies and little bitterness—or, indeed, any other genuine feeling...

...One day he is visited by an old friend, Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), once a highly successful television writer and now ostracized for his Left-wing sympathies...

...Ambition and egotistic cynicism were hardly confined to the bad guys: Many of the good guys were opportunistic martyrs...

...In the pattern best exemplified by the "message movies" of Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools), all politics is reduced to the strengths and failings of individuals...

...His mere presence in the film enabled the filmmakers to play it safe with a product that might otherwise have appeared too controversial to the studio: Everyone concerned could hedge his bets by subordinating earnestness to surefire laughs...

...In fact, The Front presents little more than the latest installment in the continuing Woody Allen saga, regardless of the superficially political and historical theme...

...This is an age of revisionist history: The Rosenberg case has been reopened, Alger Hiss has been readmitted to the Massachusetts bar, and the United States has been blamed for the Cold War...

...The sole decision he must make is whether to sacrifice his undeserved fame and fortune for friendship, love and honor...

...Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel, another blacklistee), a performer in some of Howard's dramas, is fired by the studio's director (Herschel Bernardi, still another real-life victim), under pressure from a vigilante group...

...It is unpleasant to have to say it—and painful to think of being misunderstood—but there were plenty of ethical cowards who deceived themselves and others about the horrors of Stalinism, who hid behind the very Constitution and system of laws they had previously regarded with contempt...

...The most obvious reason would seem to be his box-office appeal...

...Their current acceptance is no more authentic than Howard Prince's make-believe literary ability and melodramatic martyrdom...

...to guarantee the quality commensurate with his blossoming literary prestige...

...If The Front is successful at all, it is as a snidely ingratiating comic vehicle for its star, Woody Allen...

...Howard agrees to become a "front"—to allow his name to be used on all of Miller's manuscripts in exchange for receiving a 10 per cent commission...

...On Screen FAKING IT BY ROBERT ASAHINA In The Front, director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein join forces to bring us a new film about the entertainment industry's blacklist during the infamous McCarthy era of the late '40s and early '50s...

...Thus the moral scheme of the film resembles that of a comic book...

...In the last scene, he is led handcuffed to jail...

...He is soon living extravagantly and fronting for two more writers (one played by Lloyd Gough, who was a blacklisted actor...