The Blacklist's Lasting Impact on Hollywood
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The Ghosts of Hollywood’s Past Haunt Us Still
Ehsan Khoshbakht, the curator of the Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist retrospective at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, has a daunting task ahead of him. As he prepares to screen some of the most shameful episodes in Hollywood’s history – including the work of directors, writers, and stars who were blacklisted for their perceived left-wing sympathies – he’s compelled to ask: what can we learn from this painful period?
The Blacklist was a plague that ravaged the lives of hundreds of artists, causing serious health problems, tearing families apart, driving people to suicide, and preventing some potentially great films from ever being made. It was a dark chapter in Hollywood’s history that eerily resonates with our own times.
Khoshbakht notes that it is a “bitter irony” that the current administration has invoked similar tactics of smear campaigns and fear-mongering. The retrospective program features an impressive array of films, including some key blacklist works that haven’t been screened before in major retrospectives. Among these are classics like John Garfield’s “Force of Evil,” Dalton Trumbo’s “The Brave Bulls,” and the super-rare Joseph Losey film “The Intimate Stranger,” which was only recently declassified.
Khoshbakht’s own fascination with the Blacklist stems from his curiosity about why some artists, like Alvah Bessie, would choose to fight for a cause that could have easily led to their downfall. His search for answers has led him down a path of discovery, revealing the complex and often fraught relationships between Hollywood and the world beyond its golden gates.
The program highlights how exile changed the filmmaking landscape. Forced to adapt to new modes and industries, artists like Joseph Losey and Jules Dassin were able to tap into a unique blend of European style and American sensibility, creating some truly groundbreaking works. These films respond in various ways to the ugly excesses of our own era.
The collaboration between institutions like UCLA Film & TV Archive, Cinémathèque suisse, and the BFI has made this retrospective possible. Their support is a testament to the enduring power of cinema to bring people together in the face of adversity. As we look ahead to the 79th Locarno Film Festival, it’s clear that this program will be one of the highlights of the event.
With its unique blend of classic films and contemporary resonance, Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist is a must-see for anyone interested in the complex history of cinema. But as we bask in the glow of this cinematic treasure trove, let’s not forget the ghosts of Hollywood’s past that still haunt us today. The Blacklist may have been a plague, but its legacy lives on – and it’s up to us to learn from its mistakes before they are repeated once again.
Reader Views
- TSTomás S. · wedding photographer
The Blacklist's Lasting Impact on Hollywood highlights a painful period in Tinseltown's history, but what's striking is how its tactics eerily mirror today's divisive climate. The piece mentions Ehsan Khoshbakht's retrospective at the Locarno Film Festival, showcasing films that haven't been screened before, but it's worth noting that some of these classics have been repackaged and sold to newer audiences without acknowledging their complex historical context. It's crucial for us to critically reexamine the Blacklist era, not just its cinematic artifacts, if we hope to genuinely learn from its mistakes and prevent similar travesties from happening again.
- ANAria N. · street photographer
The Blacklist's legacy is more than just a cautionary tale about government overreach and artist persecution – it's also a warning sign of Hollywood's complicity in those same excesses. The article focuses on the blacklistees themselves, but what about the studios that enabled this witch hunt? How did they profit from the suffering of these artists, and what responsibility do they bear for their silence? This is the missing piece of the puzzle: understanding how the system allowed such atrocities to occur in the first place.
- TLThe Lens Desk · editorial
The Blacklist's legacy is still palpable in Hollywood's corridors of power, where fear and intimidation can silence dissenting voices just as effectively today as they did during the Red Scare. What's striking about this retrospective is not just the films on display but also the eerie parallels between the blacklisters' tactics and those employed by our current administration to target artists and activists. The program would be even more potent if it explicitly explored how the Blacklist's victims managed to survive – and sometimes thrive – in a system designed to crush them, rather than merely showcasing the pain they endured.