The Front: 1976, dir. Martin Ritt. Seen on DVD (Oct. 7).
I have been wanting to see this movie since I read about it in high school or college, and I finally rented the DVD. My boyfriend wasn’t planning to watch it with me—he thought it was a Woody Allen movie—until I told him it was about blacklisted writers in the 1950s and he realized this was a movie he’d heard about before and wanted to see. The writer (Walter Bernstein), director (Martin Ritt), and some of the actors in The Front were all blacklisted in the 1950s.
Woody Allen’s character, an apolitical restaurant cashier saddled with gambling debts, offers to be the front for a blacklisted screenwriter friend of his, so the guy can keep writing TV scripts. Next thing you know, he’s working as the front for four writers, impressing a female TV producer whom he starts dating, and becoming known as a well-known TV writer. Eventually he’s investigated as a potential Communist sympathizer, and he has to decide whether to play along or risk becoming blacklisted himself.
Woody Allen plays his standard nebbish character, hardly a stretch for him, but it works well in this movie. My boyfriend enjoyed this movie and he is not fond of the movies Allen writes and directs himself.
So if you don’t like Woody Allen movies, even the early funny ones, you still might like The Front. For one thing, it has Zero Mostel in it. Who can resist Zero Mostel? He is excellent as the actor who is labeled a Communist sympathizer because he once went to a rally to impress and seduce “this girl with a big ass.”
After waiting so long to see The Front, I wasn’t disappointed. However, I thought it was a shame that the DVD was so bare-bones: I would have loved more information on the making of this movie, considering all the blacklisted talent involved.