The Front (1976)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

It's 1950's New York. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a small time bookie and cashier at a bar. He's always broke borrowing from his brother. His school friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) has been blacklisted for being a communist sympathizer. Howard agrees to be a front to take authorship of his scripts (for 10%). With an eye towards making more money, Howard starts being the front for Alfred's other blacklisted friends. Hennessy is hunting communists at the studio. He bullies weak-kneed actor Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel) to give up names and spy on Prince. Associate producer Florence Barrett falls for Prince and his writing.This takes the seriousness of McCarthyism and infuse it with a bit of Woody Allen's comic timing. It has its fun moments. It's effective. I wouldn't mind Woody adding a few more joke but in general, this movie works. There are varying reactions to the political pressures. Zero Mostel is amazing. There is the climatic interrogation of Woody in the end. It's walking on a knife's edge. I wasn't sure if Prince was making sense but the final take is highly effective.

Watching this movie without knowing who's the director I could bet this is an Allen's movie, although it means not that the Woody Allen's performance hasn't brought the movie his best. The point is that we couldn't see how Ritt led this movie since most of the elements (funny situations, the coadjutor features, the Gran finale) seem like the Allen's movies. I had already seen them in Bananas and What's up Tiger Lily. In an era that communists were chased by authorities and media, the latter used to blacklist writers who were communists sympathizers. However, most of them defended the left-wing side and it resulted in a lack of non-communists available writers able to write a plot for broadcasting and writers facing financial problems due to lack of opportunities to write. One of them was Alfred Miller, played by Michael Murphy, a brilliant and tactful writer who has been fired for this political ideology. He had the idea of having a front for him to keep on writing and paying his bills. The one called for this duty was Howard Prince (Woody Allen), a grocery clerk who wanted to get a better-financed life got the chance. There came Woody Allen playing with extreme awesomeness bringing his usual clumsiness and conceitedness. As all his former movies, Allen plays a character in the same frame as Bananas, Everything you need to know about sex but you were afraid to ask and the others Take the money and run and Love and death that still hadn't been released: a shorty clumsy regular man who wants to date gorgeous women usually taller than him resulting funny moments of self-controversy and no-way-out situations. Both Prince and Hecky Green (Zero Mostel) play comic role in the movie being incapable to work even as a paperback writer. The movie is a must-see for those in literature, politics and media. Besides comicality, Ritt points out the dark ages of censorship and political persecution that the writers and another revoked by the current government. Still, the film regards how authorities handle with dissidents in a truculent and unconstitutional way in along the centuries,making The Front a movie for all generations.

The Front (1976)Deeply serious and sometimes hilarious, Martin Ritt makes an improbable critique of McCarthyism using several once-blacklisted actors and Woody Allen, then at one of his peaks of fame.Allen, though, is limited by his role, and seems to be Woody Allen rather than one of his more exaggerated characters. Some of his lines seem written by him, rather than just for him, which would be appropriate (people writing under assumed names). The real star of the show is Zero Mostel as a blacklisted comic actor. He plays it straight and zany with equal power, a real joy.Most of all is the point--that we can't forget how insidious this kind of spying and lying and persecution can get, so that even well meaning people go along as a matter of fear, or expedience, or just laziness. We'd like to think we wouldn't fall for a new McCarthy, but I think we very well might, in some new form, and sooner than we'd like. Movies like this (and Good Night and Good Luck) might forestall it. While not a work of terrible originality or genius, it's completely enjoyable and worth the time.

I had heard about "The Front" many years ago but had only recently had the opportunity to see it. The recommendation to see it came from a book which detailed the films that the author thought, in hindsight, SHOULD have been awarded "Best Picture" ("Rocky" won in 1976).There is so much talent here, both on screen and off--and yet the sum is not greater than its parts. One would think that a film about the 1950s entertainment blacklisting written and produced by those who not only lived through it but were also adversely affected by it would be thoughtful, serious, complex and sober...or satirical, ascerbic, and horrifying.Instead the film, as a whole, comes off as a "TV movie of the week" with a feel of having been put together by those who only heard about the blacklisting debacle fifth-hand. There is an occasional glimpse of the lives that were ruined: Zero Mostel's downward spiraling character and his suicide is easily the best element in the film, for example.But the focus is not on the blacklisted characters themselves but on Woody Allen's character, a schlub who with turtle-like drive tries to deflect the ramifications of his willingness to act as a "front" for three of his friends, all blacklisted writers, until all of a sudden, with literally 30 seconds left in the film, he has a change of heart: he believes! And he goes to jail a conquering and celebrated hero (who gets the girl) in a sappy ending this subject matter doesn't deserve.Furthermore, everyone is mostly reduced to a two dimensional portrayal: the network executives, the token girlfriend, the blacklisted writers themselves AND the agents leading the persecution resulting in the blacklistings. Granted the producers had an axe to grind against those who initiated the witch hunts...but if you're going to have an enemy the audience can take seriously, don't make them cardboard cutouts: that's what comic books are for.I wanted to like this film. But the irony is that the "Front" refers to writers not able to produce great works due to censorship based on their political philosophies--yet none of the characters would submit this screenplay in real life. Unfortunately, the real life victims did.