leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (03/20/91)
GUILTY BY SUSPICION
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Perhaps this is the wrong film on the
right subject. Irwin Winkler could not go too far wrong
having DeNiro play a top director whose career is ruined by
blacklisting, but the film does not go too far right either,
not having sufficient rage to be engaging. Rating: +1 (-4 to
+4).
An artist painting a picture has the option of reproducing exactly what
the eye sees or of distorting reality to reach a deeper truth. The artist
who just reproduces reality may be little more than a human camera; the
artists whom we consider to be great have known how to distort reality to
show a greater truth. It is possible to make a film about a subject that is
realistic and at the same time does a disservice by being so realistic.
Irwin Winkler's GUILTY BY SUSPICION, based on his own script, is a very
realistic and at the same time subdued portrait of a blacklisted film
director. But what is called for is a howl of rage against the government
subversion of the Bill of Rights. Martin Ritt's THE FRONT, which starred
Woody Allen, does have that release at its climax. GUILTY BY SUSPICION
whimpers its way up to a modified version of an exchange that actually took
place during the Army-McCarthy Hearings, but it is not nearly as effective
as Allen telling the government to go fuck itself.
GUILTY BY SUSPICION mixes real Hollywood figures such as Darryl Zanuck
with purely fictional ones and ones who are thinly disguised versions of
real actors like cowboy star Jerry Cooper. The story begins as one of
Zanuck's best directors, David Merrill (played by Robert DeNiro) returns to
Hollywood in 1951 after having been in Paris for a while. However,
Hollywood is not the town he remembers. The House Un-American Activities
Committee and the FBI are conducting a witch-hunt to find Communist
sympathizers in the film industry. Careers are being destroyed and
marriages broken up by the paranoia and the government pressure. David sees
the family of a friend destroyed and soon he too is called upon to explain
his attendance at a few meetings of what is now accused of being a Communist
front organization. He is willing to cooperate until he is required to
start by giving names of involved associates. For refusing to draw others
into the net, he finds himself blacklisted. The project he is working on is
canceled and the studio nearly bankrupts him by insisting he return a
$50,000 advance. What follows is a long and not entirely interesting siege
of unemployment seasoned with FBI harassment. The film builds to his
eventual hearing with HUAC.
Winkler spent a fair amount of the budget recreating the early 1950s,
much more than Martin Ritt did, or needed to do, for THE FRONT. I thought
while watching the film that some of the women's hair styles were
anachronistic, but I could easily be wrong. The period feel was somehow
just missing, as was the dramatic edge of the film. DeNiro's character is
weak and indecisive and spending so much time showing him not finding work
just does not grab the audience the way it could. I give the film a flat +1
on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.comjdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) (05/07/91)
GUILTY BY SUSPICION
A film review by James David Nicoll
Copyright 1991 James David Nicoll
Rarely in these days of socialist Big Government, does one get to
see a movie that is daring enough to support true American values.
GUILTY BY SUSPICION is such a movie.
The plot is based on the well-known (but oft distorted) patriotic
actions of HUAC (The House Un-American Affairs Committee) in the 1950s,
when a Hollywood rotten with Communists and Liberal Fellow Travellers
was purged of its socialist toxins. Robert De Niro plays one such commie
writer, who returns from a European trip (The Soviet Union, I need not
point out, is in Europe) and is asked by his employers to cooperate with
HUAC in its crusade against the corrupters of America. De Niro's
character refuses this very reasonable request, and over the next two
hours, is smashed like the communist filth he is.
I particularly enjoyed the careful and thorough case HUAC assembles
against De Niro. We are shown he has friends like:
An alcoholic woman judged *unfit* to raise her child, who kills
herself (a mortal sin!) after a pathetic binge. I need not point out
that a woman who can't raise her own offspring is a crime against human
nature. The family is (no matter what the perfumed homosexuals of
Hollywood might claim) the basis of all human civilisation!
An obese "comedy" writer who can neither control his craving for
food not his craving for approval from his socialist friends, who
*refuses* to testify to a *Congressional Committee of the United States
of America*!
De Niro's wife, a communist *teacher*, whose access to the pure
minds of American Youth is rightly taken away. She is shown undermining
the USA's defenses in one telling scene. She and De Niro are *divorced*
(The usual Hollywood serial polygamy, no doubt!) but later in the
movie, he is shown *living* with her. What kind of an example must they
set for their child; two single adults living together outside the
bounds of matrimony!
De Niro's character is shown to be paranoid when he attacks a man
and his wife while they are out enjoying American Free Enterprise!
Clearly, the anticipation of the Stalinistic purges that *would* have
swept the USA if not for HUAC eroded his mind!
These are just *some* of the examples of moral corruption HUAC has
to deal with in this film. They succeed in sniffing out communism in
cases a normal untrained observer would have mistaken as perfectly
harmless or even as *Pro-American*!
Rarely has a film dared to show the HUAC As It Was! This is one
film that so dares, and it make this reviewer *proud* to be American!!!
This is a film made in America, by Americans, for Americans!!!!!!
What, you think I'd post this without a disclaimer? Tee Hee. Just
a joke, folks; apologies to those who took it seriously. Inspired by a
comment by a friend, and a conversation I eavesdropped on.
James Nicoll
Who is almost certainly going to regret this...