TRUMBO EXPLAINS WHY THE POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY WAS FORMED
In 1947, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, refused to answer that he joined the Communist Party from 1943-1946, was one of the Hollywood Ten held in contempt of Congress, and was imprisoned for a year while at least 500 in the film industry were blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood. Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach (no relation to Hal), explains how the anti-Communist furor after World War II impacted Hollywood, which then failed to make films with overt political messages until the mid-1980s, prompting this reviewer to form the Political Film Society in 1986 to give awards to directors with the courage to make politically-oriented feature films. The film depicts Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston) as a genial family man with an adoring wife and children who becomes a workaholic ghostwriter of Hollywood scripts from 1951 to 1960 to support his family. (Although the film pretends that he stayed in Los Angeles after prison, in fact he moved with his family to Mexico City.) Then director Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) decides to give him explicit credit for Exodus (1960) and Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) refuses demands to stop work on Trumbo’s Spartacus (1960), thereby defying the blacklist. At the end of the film, Trumbo accepts a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America in 1970, giving a speech aimed at healing by refusing to talk about “heroes and villains” but instead an industry of “victims.” Nevertheless, Dalton does identify villains: At the top of the list are columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne (David James Elliott). Dalton and the Hollywood Ten are the heroes along with Preminger and Douglas and producer Frank King (John Goodman). The film credits Bruce Cook’s biography Dalton Trumbo (1977) as the basis for the script, though other sources abound. The Political Film Society has nominated Trumbo for best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2015. MH