THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER ANNOUNCES DETAILS FOR
RED HOLLYWOOD AND THE BLACKLIST
August 15-21

Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s Red Hollywood opens theatrically for an exclusive one-week run on Friday, August 15 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

New York, NY (Monday, June 16, 2014) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the details for the upcoming series Red Hollywood and the Blacklist (August 15-21), timed to a one-week exclusive theatrical run of Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s Red Hollywood, beginning on Friday, August 15.

Andersen and Burch’s documentary Red Hollywood (1996) was one of the highlights of Film Society’s recent critically acclaimed documentary-as-art series, Art of the Real. The film takes a unique look at the Hollywood Blacklist period by focusing on the ideology of the filmmakers involved and how it was reflected in what wound up on the big screen both prior to and after they were affected. Based on Andersen’s 1985 essay, the film features interviews with several of the people (including Paul Jarrico, Ring Lardner, Jr., Alfred Levitt, and Abraham Polonsky) who were blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In addition to Red Hollywood, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will also present a selection of films by blacklist casualties chosen by Andersen himself. Andersen explains, “There are many remarkable films by Hollywood blacklist victims that could not be excerpted in Red Hollywood. This series provides a rare opportunity to discover—or revisit—some of these gems projected on the big screen.”

Among those films are two from Joseph Losey (The Prowler and Big Night), as well as a pair from Cy Endfield (Hell Drivers and Zulu). Losey’s The Prowler (1951), written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, features Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes in a film noir driven by Heflin’s ex-jock cop character’s class resentment, and Losey’s final American film, The Big Night (1951), co-written by fellow blacklistees Ring Lardner, Jr. and Hugo Butler, tells the story of a teenager trying to become a man in one night. Endfield’s Hell Drivers (1957) features Patrick McGoohan and Stanley Baker in an intense competition between rival truck drivers, and his film, Zulu (1964), was a reenactment of the British victory in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The film became one of the most influential films of the 1960s, inspiring the likes of Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson. 

Other selections include Louis King’s Road Gang (1936), Frank Tuttle’s I Stole a Million (1939), Abraham Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).

Tickets for the theatrical run of Red Hollywood as well as for the films screening in the Blacklist series will go on sale Thursday, July 24. Single screening tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members. There will also be a discount package option for the films screening in the series. Package prices start at  $30; $24 for students and seniors (62+); and $21 for Film Society members. Visit www.filmlinc.com for complete film festival information.

RED HOLLYWOOD AND THE BLACKLIST
FILMS, SCHEDULE & DESCRIPTION

Red Hollywood
Thom Andersen & Noël Burch, USA, 1996, digital projection, 120m
Working from extensive original research, this revelatory documentary—an elaboration of Andersen’s 1985 essay of the same name—offers a unique perspective on Hollywood filmmaking from the 1930s to the 1950s, when “Red” screenwriters and directors worked within the studio system to make films that challenged issues of class, war, race, and gender. Andersen and Burch use clips from 53 different films spanning numerous genres in order to demonstrate how this network of filmmakers’ ideology affected the meaning and reception of their work, as well as interviews with many of the artists (such as Paul Jarrico, Ring Lardner, Jr., Alfred Levitt, and Abraham Polonsky) who were blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Friday, August 15 at 1:15PM and 6:45PM
Saturday, August 16 at 2:00PM and 6:15PM
Sunday, August 17 at 3:15PM and 8:00PM
Monday, August 18 at 2:00PM and 6:30PM
Tuesday, August 19 at 3:45PM and 9:00PM
Wednesday, August 20 at 2:00PM and 6:30PM
Thursday, August 21 at 4:15PM and 8:30PM

The Big Night
Joseph Losey, USA, 1951, 35mm, 75m
Joseph Losey’s last American film tells the story of a teenager trying to become a man in one night, foreshadowing Rebel Without a Cause—although the hero here must confront an adult world. Okay, so John Drew Barrymore is no James Dean. But even so, this film does feature the final screen role of Dorothy Comingore, who was redbaited, made a scapegoat by the Hearst press after playing Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane, and, as a result, lost everything. Fellow blacklistees Ring Lardner, Jr. and Hugo Butler also worked on the script, adapted by Stanley Ellin from his own novel, Dreadful Summit.
Monday, August 18 at 4:30PM
Thursday, August 21 at 6:45PM

Hell Drivers
Cy Endfield, UK, 1957, 35mm, 91m
Like Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield thrived in his British exile. And together they established the star of Stanley Baker, who here plays Tom Yately, a tough ex-con truck driver who must risk life and limb for his unscrupulous boss at Hawlett’s Trucking Company. Tensions arise due to the unreasonably high expectations the company holds for its drivers and a rivalry soon emerges between Tom and another trucker, Red (Patrick McGoohan). Tom and Red’s antagonism not only pushes both men to their limits but also winds up unveiling the crooked practices being carried out behind closed doors at Hawlett’s. This film notably features an early performance by Sean Connery.
Friday, August 15 at 9:30PM
Tuesday, August 19 at 1:30PM

I Stole a Million
Frank Tuttle, USA, 1939, 35mm, 80m
Nathanael West: Communist or fellow traveler? Both, but he died too young to be disillusioned or exiled. A B-movie writer? Yes, but his scripts are closer to his novels than the films adapted from them. I Stole a Million is an absurdist version of film noir in which the American Dream goes obscenely wrong for decent but impetuous taxi driver Joe Lourik (George Raft), who tries to buy his own cab but soon finds himself turning to crime amid money disputes with the company he enlists to help him do so. West’s pessimistic script serves as the foundation for a gripping parable about the perils of trying to control one’s own economic fate under capitalism.
Saturday, August 16 at 9:00PM
Wednesday, August 20 at 4:45PM

Odds Against Tomorrow
Robert Wise, USA, 1959, 35mm, 96m
“Money brought them together. Racism tore them apart” reads the tagline of this film about the perfect heist gone wrong, written by Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding and scored by John Lewis. Dave Burke (Ed Begley) recruits two men (Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte), one white and one black, to help carry out a bank robbery. Both are desperate for money, but tensions rise as racism rears it ugly head. Polonsky and Gidding’s script is granted a strong sense of place by director Wise’s location shooting on the streets of New York City and Hudson, NY, yielding a heist thriller that richly evokes the social climate at the time of the film’s release.
Sunday, August 17 at 1:15PM

The Prowler
Joseph Losey, USA, 1951, 35mm, 92m
A rare critique of the sexual stereotyping in film noir and a treatise on the hidden injuries of class, The Prowler is the greatest work of Losey’s pre-blacklist period and one of Dalton Trumbo’s best scripts. A former high-school basketball star turned cop (Van Heflin) seething with resentment for the more privileged seduces a lonely rich housewife (Evelyn Keyes) and commits the perfect crime in order to obtain his dream: owning a motel in Las Vegas (“It’s making money while you’re asleep”). There’s just one little problem, which leads him to take desperate measures… Trumbo used fellow blacklist victim Hugo Butler’s name as a front for his suspenseful and bleak screenplay.
Monday, August 18 at 9:00PM
Thursday, August 21 at 2:15PM

Road Gang
Louis King, USA, 1936, 16mm, 61m
Dalton Trumbo adds some new twists to the chain-gang film with his first script, in which many of his signature themes and motifs are already present: mutilation, torture, desperation, etc. A reporter (Donald Woods) exposing local corruption in an unnamed southern state is framed after writing one exposé too many on a slimy politician (Joseph King) and finds himself “disappeared” into a prison farm, finally ending up in the dreaded prison mines. Road Gang is a film about a journalist/advocate but that is also itself a work of journalistic advocacy, unflinchingly engaging with the dire state of the American penal system.
Saturday, August 16 at 4:30PM
Wednesday, August 20 at 9:00PM

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here
Abraham Polonsky, USA, 1969, 35mm, 98m
Polonsky’s Marxist Western, starring Robert Redford and Robert Blake, wasn’t bloody enough for 1969, but it was—and remains—the most perspicacious neo-Western. Polonsky was no doubt thinking of himself when he wrote Willie Boy’s line: “At least they’ll know I was here.” Native American Willie Boy (Blake) goes on the lam with his girlfriend Lola (Katharine Ross) after shooting her father in self-defense, and Deputy Sheriff Cooper (Redford) is tasked with leading a posse on the subsequent, harrowing manhunt. Ripped from the headlines and under-screened since its initial release, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is a moving illustration of how society endeavors to eliminate rebellion by any means necessary.
Sunday, August 17 at 5:50PM

Zulu
Cy Endfield, UK, 1964, DCP, 139m
Endfield’s reenactment of a great British victory in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 has become one of the most influential films of the 1960s (Peter Jackson and Ridley Scott’s overt imitations are just the beginning!). Endfield presents the contradictions of imperialism as a company of Welsh soldiers give their all for someone else’s Queen and Country, fighting against a people defending their homeland. But he never tips his hand, improbably but persuasively crafting an ambiguous parable. Zulu might be the most conventionally epic of Endfield’s films, but it is no less complex and political than the movies upon which his reputation as a member of Red Hollywood was founded.
Friday, August 15 at 4:00PM
Tuesday, August 19 at 6:15PM

Public Screening Schedule

Screening Venues:
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam

Friday, August 15 – All screenings in the Walter Reade Theater
1:15PM Red Hollywood (120m)
4:00PM Zulu (139m)
6:45PM Red Hollywood (120m)
9:30PM Hell Drivers (91m)

Saturday, August 16 – All screenings at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
2:00PM Red Hollywood (120m)
4:30PM Road Gang (61m)
6:15PM Red Hollywood (120m)
9:00PM I Stole a Million (80m)

Sunday, August 17 – All screenings in the Walter Reade Theater
1:15PM Odds Against Tomorrow (96m)
3:15PM Red Hollywood (120m)
5:50PM Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (98m)
8:00PM Red Hollywood (120m)

Monday, August 18 – All screenings in the Walter Reade Theater
2:00PM Red Hollywood (120m)
4:30PM The Big Night (75m)
6:30PM Red Hollywood (120m)
9:00PM The Prowler (92m)

Tuesday, August 19 – All screenings in the Walter Reade Theater
1:30PM Hell Drivers (91m)
3:45PM Red Hollywood (120m)
6:15PM Zulu (139m)
9:00PM Red Hollywood (120m)

Wednesday, August 20 – All screenings at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
2:00PM  Red Hollywood (120m)
4:45PM I Stole a Million (80m)
6:30PM Red Hollywood (120m)
9:00PM Road Gang (61m)

Thursday, August 21 – All screenings in the Walter Reade Theater
2:15PM The Prowler (92m)
4:15PM Red Hollywood (120m)
6:45PM The Big Night (75m)
8:30PM Red Hollywood (120m)

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year’s most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, LatinBeat, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, The Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award. The Film Society’s state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the Kobal Collection, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

For Media specific inquiries, please contact:
John Wildman, (212) 875-5419
[email protected]

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