JACOB FEUER

To understand what these three films have to say about the Second Red Scare, one must understand the history of it and it’s connection to Hollywood. The causes for the Second Red Scare date back the early 1900’s and the rise of organized labor and immigration which caused xenophobia and fear of a collapse of American capitalism and individualism. These uneasy feelings toward Communists subsided with entry of USSR to WWII on the Allied Side, but both the Government and the American public never completely lost their distrust of the Communist cause. Soon after WWII ended, fear of Communism spread like wildfire due to the sensationalist stories of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were accused of being Communist spies and were executed on July 19th, 1953 (1) and Elizabeth Bentley, who testified that she was a Soviet spy and that were many others out in America (2) . Disturbed by the communist threat, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, also known as the Loyalty Oath, on March 21st, 1947 (3). This created the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which focused his witch-hunts on Hollywood screenwriters, actors, and directors, as he felt that they were putting subliminal messages in their films and because of the fact that it would get them publicity (4) . Although many people believe that the HUAC was spearheaded by a Republican senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy, it wasn’t, although it should be noted that he did give them his approval and helped them out. As many of them have been members of the American Communist Party in the past, McCarthy felt it was important to go after them. The members of the “Hollywood Ten” were blacklisted from work if they did not name people they knew who went to Communist meetings. Some of the people on the blacklist included: Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Gun Crazy [1950], Spartacus [1960], and Johnny Got His Gun [1971] (5) ), Screenwriter Abraham Polonsky (Body and Soul [1947], Force of Evil [1948], and the un-credited first draft of Guilty By Suspicion (6)), actor John Garfield (Body and Soul[1947], Gentleman’s Agreement [1947], and The Postman Always Rings Twice [1946] (7)), director Jules Dassin (Brute Force [1947], Night and the City [1950] and the French language film Rififi [1955]), and actor Philip Loeb (The Goldbergs [1949](8)) among many others. The blacklist was particularly hard on Garfield, who died of a heart-attack in 1952 due to the stress caused by not being able to find work, Dassin, who did not want to incriminate anyone had to go to France to make films, hence Rififi, and Loeb who committed suicide on September 1st, 1955. However, not all people on the list decided to not “name names” and some told on their friends and co-workers. One of the most notable people to do this is director Elia Kazan (Gentlemen’s Agreement and On the Waterfront [1954]). It is interesting to note that Kazan was involved in production for On the Waterfront; a film many feel is a symbolic response to the people who were outraged at the aspect of Kazan as an HUAC “friendly.” McCarthy’s downfall (and in a larger extent the Communist witch-hunts) began with a damning report by Edward R. Murrow on March 9th, 1954 and the final death-throws of McCarthy’s witch-hunt took place on a national stage with the airings of the Army-McCarthy hearings. A congressional committee was formed and McCarthy was officially censured on December 12th, 1954. McCarthy died of hepatitis due to acute alcoholism on May 2nd, 1957. With McCarthy’s death the blacklist ended but the American public and Government was still fearful of Communism until the end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s.

Unlike Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Bad Day at Black Rock, Guilty By Suspicion focuses directly on the Hollywood blacklist by telling the tale of a fictional blacklisted director. As it deals with the blacklist but tells a fictional story many different blacklisted actors, screenwriter, directors, and even defense attorneys make of different aspects of different characters. For example, David Merrill’s climactic courtroom speech is lifted almost directly from defense attorney Jack Welch, who dared to defy McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings. Other examples include the character of Joe Lesser, who is seen leaving the country rather then testify against his friends. Lesser is based on real life director Jules Dassin. Lastly, the tragic death of Dorothy Nolan can be seen as a reference to the untimely death of actor John Garfield and more explicitly, the death of Philip Loeb. This stunning use of reflexivity is affective as it makes the drama more powerful and gives a importance to story that many people might ignore if the characters completely fictional. References to real life Hollywood giants Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hawks, Darryl Zanuck, Howard Da Silva, and Sterling Hayden are made throughout the film as well. The mise-en-scene and the reality codes the film contains harkens back to classic Film Noirs. Characters are seen in darkly lit smoke-filled backrooms, The F.B.I. is seen wearing trench coats and wide-brimmed fedoras, the set décor is mute and the colors of brown and black are seen throughout. Not the mention the evocative and ominous film score, which contains a trumpet throughout, the signature instrument of Film Noir. The soundtrack also does an interesting thing by using happy, upbeat songs when showing an intense emotional scene. This creates a powerful juxtaposition between these tow conflicting things, causing the emotional impact of the film to be heightened. The attitude of the main character; a lonely, melancholy but strong-willed man up against a corrupt world that wants to crush his code of honor, is another aspect of Film Noir that is referenced. The use of such conventions of Film Noir might be a sly use of reflexivity as many directors on the blacklist directed many Film Noirs (ex. Dassin’s Brute Force, Night and the City, and Rififi, Polonsky’s Force of Evil and Body and Soul, and Trumbo’s Gun Crazy). It is quite fitting that Guilty By Suspicion is considered a Film Noir as it shares the same theme of fear of the unknown and a corrupt world that is trying to bring down a righteous but, flawed man.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is interesting as it does not focus directly on the blacklist or McCarthyism but instead takes in all the paranoia and fear the American public was feeling and transplants it into a Sci-fi plotline. An important concept is that of the Pod People in the film. Many pieces of anti-Communist propaganda compared Communist subversion to a widespread epidemic that can affect anyone, anywhere. This is the same way the fear of the Pod People works and how the Pod People themselves operate. The mise-en-scene of this film is interesting in particular. It has a B-movie schlock feel, mainly because it is a B-movie and was advertised as such. Yet, some camera techniques seen in film are inspired by cinema verite, giving the film a quasi-documentary feel. Some examples of this can be seen with the early town sequences, which were shot in broad daylight, in long takes, and with eye-level camera angles. This is a particularly effective technique used in thriller and horror films to give a sense of normality while, building up the suspense for the horrific outcome. It is the calm before the storm. However, things get darker when the pods are discovered and the use of Dutch camera angles is employed and the lighting and set design become more Expressionistic. This adds a sense of suspense and paranoia in the film. The dialogue is also quite pulpy causing an interesting juxtaposition between the naturalistic camera techniques (at least in the first half of film) and the decidedly campy dialogue that was popular at the time the film was made. The music is melodramatic as well, being joyous when the scene playing out is happy and ominous when the scene playing out is suspenseful. Yet, despite Invasion of the Body Snatchers obviously being “low brow” entertainment, it has something very important to say about fear and the Red Scare. Invasion of the Body Snatchers plays on one of human beings oldest and, ironically, least spoken about fears, which is the loss of personal identity. As I had said before America was founded on individualism and fear of losing that to Communism’s collectivism was an unspoken fear in the 50’s yet, on the other hand, many American communist thought that America capitalism was crushing there first amendment rights. The Pod People in Invasion of the Body Snatchers represent the groupthink that was prevalent during the Red Scare on both sides. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a rare film in that it has been both interpreted as being as anti-McCarthyism and anti-Communism.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a sparse, tense, and suspenseful Western-cum-Film Noir. Again, Bad Day at Black Rock does not focus directly on the Red Scare but focuses on the fear it caused. The mise-en-scene in the film is accordingly tense and vast. The Cinemascope process the film went through makes it tough to consider the movie to be a Film Noir and, indeed it seems to be more like a Western due to the film being set in a sun-drenched rural town and by shooting the film mostly in sunlight using the Eastman Color process to produce vivid colors, a direct contradiction of classic Film Noir principals. However, one must realize the conventions of both genres overlap. Both have a flawed, emotionless, and self-disciplined man who has a unique code of honor, trying to protect that code and whatever mission or dilemma that comes up while having to fight off a corrupt world that not always looks like it seems, by any means necessary, even it involves killing another human being (which is what he exactly does at the end). It even has it’s own femme fatale character in of Liz Wirth and a double cross that is oh-so-common in Film Noir. Bad Day at Black Rock 's basic plot line follows this to a T and proves that a Film Noir has to be set in a big city to follow genre principals. Also, the use of powerful visuals to tell what the audience what to feel and the laconic dialogue to the characters speak is directly related to Noir. Just by coincidence, the same genre conventions I described before also relates to the Western. Lastly, the music in the film helps the movie by using a recognizable motif that tells the audience when an important event is going to happen by use of foreshadowing. This technique is taken from melodrama and is commonly used in both Westerns and Film Noirs. When one boils it down, they will realize that both genres deal with different types of fear. Bad Day at Black Rock focuses mainly on the fear of outsiders. Right away the film establishes the character of John J. Macreedy as the “other” by having him simply arriving at Black Rock on train, making him their first visitor in years, and by explicitly showing him as dressing differently than the townsfolk and by explicitly making the point that Macreedy has one arm, already causing tension that the audience knows will be resolved, possibly violently, at the end. The townsfolk hatred of Japanese people is also related to fear of outsiders, as well, even if they were American-born. The racism that the town hides represents America and the fear the American public had with the Communist. The racial edge that is played in this movie is also not far from the mark of the Red Scare metaphor as there was some subtitle xenophobia during the Communist witch-hunts that remains rarely spoken about to this day. Many of the people accused, both famous and not famous, were of Jewish ethnicity. This is important to note as this kind of xenophobia was represented in the film by the way the townsfolk treat the Japanese. This fear of the “other” is what drove the Red Scare, and the people in charge of it, to become as powerful as it did.

The Red Scare was a scary period in American history. Lives were ruined by nothing but whispers and innuendos and many of the actors, directors, and screenwriters’ accused of being Communists never recovered from it. Many people feel that it is the place of the artist to comment on what is going on in society at the time they are living in and many in the entertainment industry realized that when it came time for the Red Scare. They realized that the greatest weapon against unwarranted fear was not the sword but the pen. Watching Guilty By Suspicion, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Bad Day at Black Rock proves that the old proverbial saying is true, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

Works Cited

(1) Radosh, Ronald and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth, Henry Holt (1983)

(2) Olmsted, Kathryn S. Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley, The University of North Carolina Press (2006)

(3) Goldstein, Robert Justin. "Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist," Prologue, Fall 2006, Vol. 38, No. 3, U.S. National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/publications/2006/fall/agloso.html

(4) Ibid.

(5) "Dalton Trumbo Filmography," IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0874308/

(6) "Abraham Polonsky Filmography," IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0689796/

(7) "John Garfield Filmography," IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002092/

(8) "Philip Loeb Filmography, IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0517222/