High Noon on the Waterfront

Anyone who thinks of themself a film fan must see this film.

I consider myself a film fan. I have 6,419 ratings on IMDB and only 2% (109) had a rating of 10. This one was #110. (BTW if you don't know what IMBD is, maybe you're not a true film fan).

What's so great about this film. It's a 2022 look back and two famous Hollywood creators and two famous films and it shows how the films they helped create were a reflection of the "blacklist" era in the U. S. For those who don't know what that was, it was a time in the U. S. when right wing GOP members sought to cleanse the country from communists. It was a byproduct of the "McCarthy Era" and HUAC (House Unamerican Activity Committee). The hay day was between 1945 and 1950. Future President Richard Nixon (then a Senator) made a name for himself here.

Of course we know that art reflects life (and vice versa) but this is a stunning example of how this was never so true.

The two people are Elia Kazan and Carl Foreman.

Elia Kazan (1909-2003) did such wonderful films as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gentleman's Agreement, Pinky, Panic in the Streets, a Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront (the subject of this film). He often worked with Marlon Brando. His films won so many awards I won't list them.

Eliza Kazan is the villain in this film and in life. He was one of many cowards who appeared before HUAC and named names, which created a "blacklist" and virtually destroyed lives of the people he named and also their families. Few of the people named were truly Communists, none of them had done anything to jeopardize national security, and most had been a communist before WW2 when it was a trendy thing to do. Kazan was only one of many cowards, but Carl Foreman was one of only a handful of brave people who refused to betray his friends and associates. He is the hero in this film.

Carl Foreman (1914-1984) was a writer-producer-director. Some of his unforgettable films include Champion, Home of the Brave, Young Man with a Horn, The Men, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and High Noon (the subject of this film).

Voiceovers are taken from the subjects' writings, and done by Edward Norton (Foreman) and John Turturro (Kazan).

Scene by scene the film shows how the character and the people in the film reflect what the directors were going through. In "On the Waterfront" Brando rats on Lee J Cobb just as Kazan rats on his nearly a dozen of his friends, who included ironically Lee J. Cobb. In "High Noon," Gary Cooper is isolated (as was Foreman), faced with an overwhelming and powerful opposition (as was Foreman vs. HUAC), but he refuses to give up. Everyone tells him to leave town, an d he seriously considers it because he knows his life and his family's life are being threatened, but he turns around and faces the forces pitted against him.

I'm not doing justice to the film. You need to see it if you really enjoy films.

Postscript. - The coward Elia Kazan continued to make films, but he never made a great film after this. Orson Welles called him a "traitor." In 1999 the Academy gave him a "Lifetime Award." Many in the audience booed, refused to clap, and some walked out.

Carl Foreman was never named as a "communist" but he was not a "friendly witness." He was forced out of his film company by Stanley Kramer and got lots of pressure from high ranking people in the film industry, but he refused. Because he was primarily a writer, he continued to work using a pseudonym. Others whose lives were forever changed included Dalton Trumbo, Lillian Hellman, Edward Dmytryk, Dorothy Parker, and John Garfield.

It's an inventive short subject, right enough, showing clips on two early films which decried the Blacklist symbolically, while Edward Norton and John Turturro read from the letters of Carl Foreman and Elia Kazan on the personal effects of the Blacklist. There is nothing to say about the real issues of the time -- it feels like we're going through it again over different issues -- but ....

The reality of the two men's reactions was far from a friendly reading of the letters, particularly Kazan, who traded his friends for a clean bill of health from the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and a continuing career. Knowing that, his complaining that he had two terrible choices sounds like someone complaining that actions have consequences.

Firstly this film, in it short length makes numerus factual errors. It is not honest about either Foreman or Kazan. Foreman was a supporter not of socialism, but of Stalin. And in Fact Kazan rightly named the names of the most slavishly Stalinists and apologist for Stalin's genocides and totalitarianisms.

Carl Forman was not blacklisted in the US for not naming names, he was blacklisted for being dishonest about his own membership in the Communist party. He outright lied. That membership continued long after the Hitler Stalin pact. Foreman was not simply a confused socialist. He was particularly aligned with the most Stalinist faction of the American communist party as well. His did not join as a idealist young person and get alienated by the Hitler-Stalin pact. His avid support for Stalin persisted and became stronger as the world well understood that Stalin was as nasty as Hitler. Soviet archives also show he helped Soviets attempt to coerce other people in Hollywood as well.

In contrast, Kazan actually knew from family in Greece in areas occupied by Stalin's sycophants what was going on under communism. That it was as murderous and corrupt and soul crushing as Hitler and his goons were.

This short is frankly just another totally uniformed and ahistorical take on this issue by Hollywood. Those in Hollywood ought to read the Kremlin archive on this issue. They have been available for two decades. Would it be wrong to name names of persons who were active supporters of Pol Pot during the Cambodian genocide?

And why leave out Foreman's metoo issues?

Too short (even for a short) to be of much use to anyone. Still, there is an interesting irony to be savored, namely that the actor who portrays Carl Foreman's beau ideal of the Lone Courageous Man, Gary Cooper, was in real life a namer of films, if not names, before the House Un American Activities Committee. This tiny film is also a timely reminder of the large truth that the better person is not always the better artist. In other words, I would rather my daughter marry Carl Foreman but I would gladly trade ten "Guns Of Navarone" and twenty "High Noons" for one "Wild River" or "Splendor In The Grass". C plus.