Please note: This was screened in Jan 2016
Director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein (who were both on the blacklist for refusing to name names of suspected communists - and were thus unable to work for years) immediately made this clever satire after the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was abolished in 1975. The first Hollywood film to deal directly with the blacklist, it focused on how it functioned and how people responded to its various pressures, and almost everyone connected with it had been blacklisted back in the 50s.
Woody Allen stars as Howard, an amiable cashier, part time bookie and full time loser who can never quite pay off on winning bets. Always looking for a quick buck, he agrees to front for a friend, a blacklisted television writer, and soon starts fronting for more and more writers who have suffered the same fate. Howard enjoys the fame, money and success on the work of the blacklisted writers until, ironically, he comes under the scrutiny of the committee himself.
A satire blending comedy with pain, The Front highlights what an absurd, almost Kafkaesque experience the blacklist was, moving gradually from humour into more darker territory as the nightmarish aspects of the witch hunt take over. It's an important film, one that Ritt said he would have made for nothing: so much more than a history lesson, it provided a sort of public redemption (and for some, a paycheck) many blacklisted artists were cruelly denied.