Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[The Front" (AA), directed by Martin Riff and…]

Socialist Press no. 55, 16 March 1977 · scan p. 8 · about 717 words

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The Front" (AA), directed by Martin Riff and starring Woody Beaten US carworker-victim of McCarthyite witch-hunting.

right combination of mania and Woody Allen can prosper and at depression as the apolitical actor the same time make a stand on driven to despair and suicide by the principle.

Allen builds up well the slightly or even a stage, but becomes pathetic character of the 'practical- instead a cardboard world of its false role as a 'famous writer'. film remains amusine enough. and to the notorious Hollywood "black- between livelihood and principle, is list'. not clearly revealed.

This film deals with an important topic-the anti-communist witch-hunt in the United States twenty five years ago.

It has an interesting story-line and is well-directed and held together.

However, it reduces the greatest political problems to the level of melodrama and the most profound individual choices into comic turns.

The witch-hunts in the United States during the 'Cold War' were not just part of the reflex action of American imperialism to international rivalry with the Soviet Union.

They owed much to the traditions of American life.

"CONSPIRACY'

The founders of the. first American colonies firmly believed in witches of the supernatural variety, and they hunted and killed old women in their search for them.

Their descendants in the American ruling class have chased and persecuted hundreds of trade union militants, socialists and black activists.

The campaign against the 'communist conspiracy' after 1945 was part of real efforts to hold back and defeat any upsurge by the American working class.

For the liberal, what is wrong with witch-hunts is not that they are directed against these fighting thinp, People thinking "their own for better conditions, but that they thing'.

Thus the liberal can only confront a witch-hunt as a matter of individual choice, separate from its context and results.

PATHETIC CHARACTER Most of the bourgeois critics of this film have talked about 'miscasting' and other such causes as being the reason for the failure of the film.

But this is not really the case. Woody Allen performs very well as 'the front'. the man who nuts his name to scripts written by authors Fabu sAI banned from working openly due NALGO's Drain; NUT's Jarvis;

Each of the public sector unions is contributing 25 hand picked delegates to the March 22nd conference called by the November 17th steering committee.

This is no more than a pathetic gesture against the cuts, which, the iron leaders say, is an attempt to influence Healey's April Budget.

Last year. in an attempt to defuse the growing demands of thei members. the execurives of auble sector scions called a (AA), directed b Allen, Zero Mostel Reviewed by witch-hunters.

SPOTLIGHT у Martin Riff and starring and Michael Murphy.

John Docherty Zero Mostel provides just the ly illiterate' restaurant cashier who own.

wins fame, fortune and a girl, in a Yet the trouble is that this unreal Honywood worla is seen in - - 1 TT _ 11- _11 :two dimensions only.

All the witch-hunted are angels whose revolt is a matter of individual protest, not an attack on the system that oppresses them.

They are all brilliant scriptwriters, great actors and heroic martyrs in the cause of the right to free thought In this way the true horror of the witch-hunt, the terrible choices B 30 02ASTMS's Jenkins cuts.

Strikes were not en couraged.

This manoeuvre badly misfired and 80,000 workers, many of them on strike, turned out in defence of the health, education and public services.

Feeling this pressure, NUPE lefttalker, Alan Fisher called on his members to stage one-day protest strikes a little at a time, area by area, in a tactic calculated to divide the membership and persuade them of the "ineffectiveness" of strike action.

The pressures are absent when Hollywood stops being a symbol This is a pity really, because the TaY 70-1 worth seeing..

But the liberal stance, deriving irom the Stalinist/liberal standpoint of the (formerly blacklisted) people responsible for the'film makes it into much too faint an echo of the ferocity of the witch-hunt and the horror of its effect in allowing the American ruling class to perpetrate crimes agains the poor in every part of the wntli and holdino hark the development of the socialist and and SATIO movement for generation.

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 55, 16 March 1977