VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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TRUMBO
Directed by Peter Askin
Written by Christopher Trumbo
Starring Dalton Trumbo, Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy
​Released in 2007
Picture
Their names have shadowed into crystalline mist, vanishing into the morning sunrise. Yet, on some of the quieter dawns, we can still hear the whispered screams: Bertolt Brecht. John Garfield. Herbert Biberman. Lester Cole. Albert Maltz. Adrian Scott. Samuel Ornitz. Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr. John Howard Lawson. Alvah Bessie. Dalton Trumbo. Twelve names in all. Brecht answered HUAC's questions, then fled to Europe. Garfield was never seriously considered, despite having been a member of the Group Theatre. The remaining Hollywood names became grouped as one: The Hollywood Ten. The most celebrated of these was Dalton Trumbo. 
    HUAC was the House un-American Activities Committee, a group of some of the members of the 83rd U.S. Congress who, in 1947, began investigating--along with the diabolic head of the Motion Pictures Industry Council Roy Brewer--members of the Hollywood community, particularly those whose work was important enough to cause their political affiliations to be of concern to the committee.
    Friendly witnesses such as Elia Kazan decided to name names. What names? The names of people they knew or suspected to be members of the Party. Usually the question would come like this: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party? The reason this question was so problematic was that if the person being asked it were to say yes, then the follow-up question would be: Who else do you know in that capacity? and that was a question none of the Ten wanted to answer. Rather than seeking a Fifth Amendment remedy to the question, the Ten relied on the First Amendment, believing that their right to freedom expression and concomitant right to join together in private were protected under the first addendum to the Constitution. The Supreme Court felt otherwise and the Ten were found guilty of contempt of Congress. 
    A lot of good works have been made about this despicable time in post-war America. None have hit the point as well as the book Naming Names by Victor Navasky and certainly no film has captured the horrors of this period as well as Trumbo (2007). Regarding the book, the best review ever written about it comes from Alvah Bessie.
    Trumbo, the movie, is an amazing visual document, with no less than nine great actors playing the part of Dalton Trumbo, author of Eclipse and Johnny Got His Gun, and screenwriter for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, Roman Holiday, The Brave One, Spartacus, Exodus, and Papillon, among many others. They sent this man to prison for Contempt of Congress. When you hear people such as Michael Douglas, Joan Allen, Donald Sutherland, Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane and Liam Neeson read Trumbo's letters as if they were Trumbo, you will begin to grasp the agonizing horror that was committed against these ten people, against the country of the United States, and against children who--like myself, probably like you--had not even been born at the time. 
    While I would not be so rotten as to betray one line of this film's dialogue and risk robbing from you the opportunity to be blown away by the words and their amazing deliveries, I do think that a couple of quotes from outside the film are in order. These two remarks regard democracy. 
    "Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."
    And:
    "Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for."


It is extremely difficult to watch the last ten minutes of the 1960 version of Spartacus (the first was made in 1913!) without wishing that we could go back in time and say to the men who went to the ranch to arrest the writer: "I'm Trumbo!"
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links