Le prête-nom

In the 50's, in New York City, the screenplay writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) meets his apolitical friend, the cashier of restaurant and smalltime bookmaker Howard Prince (Woody Allen) and tells him that he can not work anymore since he is blacklisted. Prince offers to sell his scripts to the producer of a TV station using his own name and Alfred offers a 10% commission to Prince.

Prince uses the money to pay his debts and improve his life and soon he offers his name to two other blacklisted writers. Meanwhile he dates the TV screenplay editor Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). When the veteran actor Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel) is blacklisted and fired by the producer Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi), the idealistic Florence quits her job. But when Hecky Brown commits suicide, Prince takes a stand against the unjust system.

Today I have just watched "The Front" on VHS maybe for the third or fourth time (last time was on 31 May 2002). This fairytale about the dark period of the North America history known as McCarthyism is wrongly categorized as "comedy" and is actually one of the most important and a serious movie by Woody Allen that perfectly works with the situation of a figurehead that realizes the damage caused by the Powers that Be to the careers and lives of his compatriots and decides to react against them.

Another attraction is that the director Martin Ritt; the writer Walter Bernstein and the stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi and Lloyd Gough had been blacklisted in the 50's. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Testa de Ferro por Acaso" ("Figurehead by Chance")

Woody Allen is "The Front" for blacklisted television writers in the 1950s in a film also starring Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Andrea Marcovicci, and Michael Murphy. Several of the film's participants - director Ritt, writer Bernstein, actors Bernardi and Mostel, were themselves blacklisted.

Woody's character, Howard Prince, has moments of humor, but "The Front" is a drama, and a very good one. Prince agrees to front for a writer-friend and later takes on other blacklisted writers for money. Then comes the day that Prince himself is subpoenaed by the committee, and he has to make a decision about where he stands.

Along the way, Howard falls in love with a principled woman, Marcovicci, who becomes disgusted with the blacklist and quits her television job, and a pathetic comedian, Zero Mostel, who claims to have marched in a May Day parade and subscribed to a communist newspaper because he had a crush on a girl. Then he watches his career shrivel up.

I grew up in the '50s and remember the Red Scare very well, as in school we were always told that the Communists were coming. In Hollywood and Washington, it was believed that the Communists were here infiltrating our government, films, and television. Whether it was true or not is a separate issue from the persecution and hysteria that took place. Actress Lee Grant, for instance, was blacklisted because she went to a funeral of someone who had been accused of being a Communist. John Garfield, Kim Hunter, Gale Sondergaard, Mady Christians, Larry Parks - just a few of the actors blacklisted. There are many examples of people whose careers and lives were ruined because they had once attended a meeting to see what this political ideology was all about, or had a friend who was a Communist. Land of the free indeed.

This film is directed by Martin Ritt from a screenplay by Walter Bernstein. Both director and writer, along with several members of the cast, were blacklisted during the 1950s. Woody Allen stars as Howard Prince a good-for-nothing restaurant cashier and part-time bookmaker. At the start of this film, Allen has the total schmuck persona that he used in many of his earlier films but as the film progresses he gradually develops a conscience until the ‘happy' ending when he performs an honorable act and is led away to prison. Ritt and Bernstein are highlighting the idiocy of the blacklist by having as their hero the money-grabbing, self-serving Prince. Eventually, even he cannot stomach what is going on in the name of decency and freedom. The film is darkly humorous and chilling in its depiction of an era when the owner of a small grocery store could dictate to a national network who it could and could not employ. At one point Prince has to rewrite a script about the holocaust because the programme sponsor is a gas company.

The film is a real achievement being both funny and a savage indictment of a crazy era, told with feeling by people who lived through it and suffered under it. The only misjudged performance is Zero Mostel's maudlin comedian. Michael Murphy turns up again as he does in many of Allen's early films. Andrea Marcovicci is effective as the beautiful and cerebral script editor who falls for Prince. Prince agonises over whether she loves the man or the artist, surely the inspiration for Allen's own exploration of the same theme in Bullets over Broadway nearly 20 years later.

I don't profess to know anything more about 'the McCarthy era' than any other non-American that wasn't around in the fifties, but this film serves as both a great slice of entertainment; and something of a history lesson. The film is said to be a comedy, although it would seem to be played out more for the drama side as aside from Woody Allen's usual neurotic quips; there aren't actually any jokes in the film. That certainly doesn't harm it, however, as Martin Ritt's film has more than enough in reserve, as the story is interesting enough on it's own; and themes of 'the witch-hunt', as well as the idea of being guilty until proved innocent shine through. The story follows Howard Prince (Woody Allen) a cashier who, when asked by his friend who is on the 'blacklist', poses as a TV writer so the blacklisted writer can still work. The film takes place in the time when paranoia over communism was rife in America, and anyone that is suspected of associating with communists was no longer allowed to work. The scam goes on, but the more Prince is dragged into it, the harder it is for him to get out.

Like I say, I didn't know much about the era before going into the film; but I'm sure it's an important part of American history; if only for the fact that it's inspired a lot of great films, including the great original version of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. I've been a big fan of Woody Allen ever since I first saw one of his films, and his performance here takes in all the best elements of his persona. The character; a talentless man garnering praise for someone else's work, suits Allen's personality like a glove, as the paranoid actor gets to show us how neurotic he can be. Support comes by way of the likes of Zero Mostel, Michael Murphy and Andrea Marcovicci; and all give nice supporting performances. Director Michael Ritt ensures that the themes of the story are always rife, as the film presents a great sense of foreboding, and scenes such as the one that see an innocent writer told that he can't be got off the hook because he hasn't done anything help to ensure this. On the whole, The Front is a great classic film, and sees Allen in one of his best roles.

The screen time may belong to Woody Allen, but the movie belongs to Zero Mostel. Few actors are more improbable than the artfully bulky Mostel, whose round head, tiny snub nose and large expressive eyes resemble a cartoon more than an actual person. Yet his range is phenomenal. Watch the breadth as he slyly tries to work around head witch-hunter Francis Hennesee, or comically greets the diminutive Allen, or explodes in eye-popping rage at the Borscht-belt proprietor who cheats him. His metaphorical loss in the film mirrors the very real loss film-goers suffered during his years of blacklist. And it's to Allen's credit that he generously showcases this prodigious talent in what would be Mostel's last film.

The movie itself handles the blacklist of the 1950's with a congenial light touch. Allen is perfect as the nebbish who fronts for his screenwriter pals, and it's fun to watch him puff up and fluff out as the spotlight shifts abruptly his way. As expected, there are many amusing Allen bits scattered throughout. Even the romantic angle with Marcovicci works nicely into Allen's character as he evolves through the story-line, ending in a perceptive example of the old "worm turns" plot twist. All in all, this 1976, Martin Ritt film amounts to an amusing look at a dark period in American civil liberties, made unusually memorable by the sublime presence of the unforgettable Zero Mostel.