Cold War Cinema

Join hosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas, as well as a new guest, Paul Klein, as they discuss the iconic actor and director Charlie Chaplin and his late talkie masterpiece Monsieur Verdoux [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsieur_Verdoux] (1947). Paul is a film scholar who writes at the intersection of film and history. His research focuses on the cultural, political, and technological aspects of Hollywood and American filmgoing practices. He also write about how and why movies matter at Reading Movies [https://readingmovies.mailchimpsites.com/] (howtoreadmovies.com) As for Chaplin, he hardly needs an introduction, but many people don't realize that he was a victim of Red Scare harrassment from the media and feds and was eventually exiled from the United States. Monsieur Verdoux is a bold film in that it asks a viewer, just two years after the end of WWII, to consider state-sponsored mass murder (e.g. war) and what Engels calls "social murder" [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch07.htm] (murder by deprivation), as opposed to individual crimes, which are easier to identify and denounce.  It's also a Chaplin film full of his signiture gags. The combination of these two registers, deadly serious and comical, makes for a fascinating but jarring cinematic experience.  As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review! Follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian, Anthony at @tonyjballas, and Paul at @ptklein, the latter two are also on BlueSky.  Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com. [coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com] Happy listening!

Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss the celebrated socially conscious Hollywood director, Martin Ritt [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Ritt] (1914–1990). Ritt is known for a number of critically aclaimed movies, among them Paris Blues (1961), Hud (1963), and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965). In this episode, we focus on four of Ritt's explicitly pro-worker films: The Molly Maguires (1970), Sounder (1972), The Front (1976), and Norma Rae (1979). Ritt was never brought before HUAC, but he nevertheless blacklisted after his name was mentioned in the right-wing anticommunist newsletter Counterattack, along with 150 of other Hollywood workers. These experiences were satirized in The Front, the first film that confronts the blacklist era directly.  Sally Field, the star of Norma Rae, once wrote of Ritt that "he felt it was important to stand for something, to have a moral point of view—especially if you work in the arts." That committment to justice is present all through Ritt's work. He boldly tackled labor issues and racism in a number of films, going as far as critiquing the all-white suburbian "utopias" in the overlooked gem No Down Payment (1957).  As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review! Drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com [coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com] Happy listening!

Join us for our first ever interview with the Australian writer and scholar, Andrew Nette, who, along with the film historian Samm Deighan, co-edited the new book Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990 [https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1656], published by PM Press.  Nette [https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/andrew-nette/] is an author of fiction and nonfiction. He is coeditor of three previous books for PM Press, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980; Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980; and Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985. His writing on film, books, and culture has appeared in a variety of print and online publications. He has also contributed video and print essays and commentaries to a number of DVD/Blu-ray releases. He writes a regular newsletter under his name on Substack. Follow him on Twitter (X), Instagram, and Bluesky: @pulpcurry. Nette is also on Letterboxd, and he made a list of all 353 films mentioned in [https://letterboxd.com/andrewnette/list/revolution-in-35mm-political-violence-and] Revolution in 35mm [https://letterboxd.com/andrewnette/list/revolution-in-35mm-political-violence-and].  As always please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review! Send us tips or ideas or anything else at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com [coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com]. We hope you enjoy!

Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Herbert J. Biberman's iconic independent masterpiece Salt of the Earth [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_of_the_Earth_(1954_film)] (1954). The film is based on the real-life Empire Zinc strike [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Zinc_strike] in 1951 in Grant County, New Mexico, and was self-financed and made entirely outside the studio system using mostly non-professional actors, many of them actual miners playing versions of themselves. Jason compares the the film to Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 masterpiece The Battle of Algiers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers] in terms of its scrappy production, dialectical sctructure, and Marxist themes. (You can hear him gush about that film on another podcast, linked here [https://www.whatapicturepod.com/podcast/episode/9a69ede0/58-the-battle-of-algiers-1966-gillo-pontecorvo-with-jason-christian].) Biberman was one of the Hollywood Ten and he was blacklisted, as were the screenwriter, Michael Wilson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wilson_(writer)], and the producer, Paul Jarrico [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jarrico]. The Hollywood apparatus and law enforcement attempted to sabotage the production of Salt of the Earth on numerous occasions, going as far as getting the lead actress, Rosaura Revueltas [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaura_Revueltas], deported to Mexico on trumped up charges. Although she was from a prominent family of artists and writers, she was blacklisted and never acted in another Mexican film.  As always please suscribe to the podcast if you like what you hear, and don't forget to leave us a review! Happy listening!

Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Irving Pichel's 1950 crime thriller Quicksand [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksand_(1950_film)], starring Mickey Rooney, Peter Lorre, Jeanne Cagney, and Barbara Bates. The film's plot revolves around Rooney's character making one bad decision after another, shattering his moral compass along the way. The implicit message, heavy-handed in its delivery, is that poverty breeds crime. Pichel was one of the so-called "unfriendly nineteen" brought before HUAC [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee] hearings in 1947. That group was whittled down to ten and later dubbed the Hollywood Ten. Pichel was  blacklisted [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist#The_Hollywood_Ten] along with the others who refused to testify.  We hope you enjoy this episode. Please subscribe and rate the show if you feel so inclined. And if you have any comments, recomendations, or questions, feel free to email them to us at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com [coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com]. Happy listening!