Chaplin, Trumbo, Red Scare! Locarno Film Fest Sets Hollywood Left and the Blacklist Retrospective

The “Red Scare” and theinfamous Hollywood blacklist of theMcCarthyera will be the timely topics of the retrospective at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Under the titleRed & Black–Hollywood Left and the Blacklist, theSwiss festival’s Retrospettiva, once again curated by EhsanKhoshbakht, will put the spotlight on “one of the most turbulent and politically charged periods in the history of American cinema.”

Last year, the festival revisited the “Great Expectations” of British postwar cinema. This year, it focuses on a politicized time in Hollywood postwar history. During the period from 1947 to the early 1960s, Hollywood professionals suspected of communist ties faced a crackdown.Produced in partnership with the CinémathèqueSuisseandwith the support ofUCLAFilm & Television Archive, the program will paint “a complex portrait of an era in which creatives were confronted by unprecedented abuse of state and industry power and which they met, courageously, with fierce artistic resistance,” Locarno highlighted.

“As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union swelled into a defining feature of world politics, right-wing voices in the American political system alleged communist infiltration of Hollywood,” the festival explained. “Hearings that more closely resembled prosecutions followed, instigated by theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The industry responded in fear and enforced a blacklist that upended careers, forced artists to adopt pseudonyms, stifled free expression, and exiled creators overseas. Guilt by association tore families apart and films with left-wing ideas – real or imagined – were suppressed.”

Red & Black–Hollywood Left and the Blacklistwill “re-examine this repressive yet defiantly creative era, which mirrors the political attacks on free speech and artistic freedom seen again today,” Locarno concluded. The program will include nearly 50 films and other video projects from such directors, writers, and stars as John Garfield, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright, and Charles “Charlie” Chaplin.

Spanning fiction, documentaries, newsreels, and shorts from the U.S., Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, and Argentina,Red & Blackwill serve up digital restorations and archival prints, accompanied, as in previous years, by a book featuring contributions from international film scholars and critics publishedby Les éditions de l’œil. In a first, a podcast related to the retrospective, written by Khoshbakht,will also detail some of the history and context of the blacklist era.

Said Khoshbakht:“If you insist on calling classic Hollywood a ‘dream factory,’ you have also to see how that notion was hammered into pieces bysome of the most politically progressive figures in the history of American cinema across the more than 40 films brought together in this retrospective. It is the timeliest one I have worked on in my life. The imaginative ways of incorporating political consciousness into film, and the tragic consequences of that political determination, form the thrilling story of this program, offering new angles on the witch hunts of the McCarthyera.”

Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno festival, added: “This retrospective will be a unique critical and historical endeavor that sheds new light on a grim passage of Hollywood history. This program will provide a new context to reframe the conflicts of the time through a wider lens, allowing audiences to grasp the impact of political persecution. This historical context is supported by a wide and compelling selection of films and, as a supplement, rarely seen documents. A pivotal moment in cinema history will thus be brought back to life all while celebrating some of the most daring, searing, and audacious films ever made in Hollywood.”

The 79thLocarno Film Festival will run Aug. 5-15.Check out first films unveiled for the fest’s retrospective below.

The Sound of Fury(1950), directed byCy Endfield
The North Star(1943), directed byLewis Milestonebased on a script byLillian Hellman
Ruthless(Edgar Ulmer, 1948), written byAlvah BessieandGordon Kahn
Intruder in theDust(Clarence Brown, 1949), written byBen Maddow
Crossfire(1947), directed byEdward Dmytrykand produced byAdrian Scott
Amazing Mr X (1948), directedbyBernard Vorhaus
None But the Lonely Heart(1944), directed byClifford Odets
España otra vez(Jaime Camino, 1969), writtenbyAlvah Bessie