Tonight at midnight EST and tomorrow at 10 AM EST, TCM will be airing Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil. This 1948 film noir stars John Garfield and Thomas Gomez. As with many films noir I post about, this film should be considered essential viewing for students of film noir, but I'm here to talk about the director and more specifcally about host Eddie Muller and his complete obsession with the Hollywood Blacklist and HUAC, and his santimonious preaching at us about it.

In terms of his knowledge of film noir and Hollywood film history in general, Eddie Muller has my respect and admiration. But neither he nor fellow TCM co-host Ben Mankiewicz can introduce a film in which any principle artist or studio executive or screenwriter was touched even peripherally by the Hollywood Blacklist without slathering on the sanctimony ten feet thick.

Noir Alley is in, what, its fourth season? Eddie Muller finds it impossible to not almost weep over the Hollywood Blacklist. To be fair, the rise of the film noir style in America coincides with the rise in governmental concern with infiltration of communist influences in American society, which is in the years immediately after WWII. So, many of the films Muller introduces on Noir Alley have actors, directors, writers and sometimes studio execs who were called to tesify before HUAC and who were blacklisted. And, yes, Muller is correct to say that this was a dark time in our nation's history, but hindsight is 20/20. For the people who were living in America at that time, there was genuine concern and real uncertainty as to the degree communism might have an impact on our republic. It's easy to look back now and see that much of the fear was unwarranted, and it is with this advantage that Muller and Mankiewicz preach at us from their lofty leftist perch.
It's gotten so bad that I find myself shouting at the screen during their lectures to their viewers. I see the name of the film they're going to introduce and I am quite familiar with the artists who were blacklisted or who rebelled against communism and willingly named names in their HUAC testimony, and I just know tat the lecture is imminent. Muller and Mankiewicz find it impossible to pass up the opportunity to tell us what a dark time it was and how it should never happen again. This is no exaggeration.

The thing is, that neither Muller nor Mankiewicz could ever admit that it is happening again, only this time, the blacklisting is not being influenced by the US government. No, instead, the blacklisting comes directly from the sanctimonous Hollywoood leftists of today. They seem to have forgotten their history, or, in many cases, are completely ignorant of it altogether, because Hollywood willingly, gleefully forces out any artists or executives who do not share their communistic (aka "progressve") and Politically Correct leanings.

Tune in this evening or tomorrow morning, and watch Muller just wallow in this crap. Two people ivnvolved with Force of Evil were blacklisted; actor John Garfield and writer/director Abraham Polonsky. The case of John Garfield is a particularly sad one. Garfield was a great actor who died in 1952 at the age of 39, and his wife says that the blacklist killed him. You can read here and see that Garfield was not a true communist and that he tried to be true to himself and his fellow actors but was unable to walk that fine line.

In the case of Polonsky, though (and about whom I am all but certain that Muller will spend the bulk of his time crying), the man was an avowed Marxist, and his film Force of Evil says, in essence, that capitalism is evil. I have no sympathy at all for Polonsky. Director Elia Kazan, himself a Greek immigrant, was summoned before HUAC and named names. He did what he felt a true American should do, and again, you have to put his actions in the context of the times. Polonsky hated Kazan for this, and he showed his true leftist colors when, in 1999, Kazan was honored by AMPAS with a lifetime achievement award. Polonsky hoped that Kazan would be shot onstage at the Academy Awards ceremony- a broadcast, by the way, viewed live by nearly one billion people, including children. "It would no doubt be a thrill in an otherwise dull evening." Disgusting. And to further prove his typical leftist nature, he exhibited great pettyness by saying at that time that he was working on a moveable headstone. "That way if they bury that man in the same cemetery, they can move me." Typical hate-filled, petty leftist. A half century had passed since all of this had taken place, and Polonsky was still seething with hate.

Kazan had no regrets for what he did, and the next time you watch On the Waterfront and you hear a defiant Brando as Terry Malloy shouting at Johnny Friendly after the mob boss had Brando badly beaten (after Brando breaks the code of silence and testifies against Friendy and his cronies), remember that it is actually Elia Kazan speaking to Polonsky and all the other communists and communist sympathizers of that period who despised Kazan for his desire to behave as he felt a true American would behave:

"You think you're God Almighty, but you know what you are? You're a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin' mug! And I'm glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I'm glad what I done!"

Just keep this in mind when San Francisco leftist Eddie Muller is tugging at your heart strings over how communists were treated in America in the aftermath of the most vicious war in all of human history. As I said, I do consider Force of Evil to be essential viewing for students of film noir, but I do not place Polonsky among the saints as does Muller. Both the film and its director have visible flaws.

I too have appreciated Muller and the Noir Alley programming. But his dwelling on HUAC and bringing politics into the films description and details are a needless rehash of the McCarthy era and a distraction from the films.

I am tired of that political blathering as well. In addtion to his harping on the same subject he needs to brush up his lecture style. Constant dropping of names and influence is impossible to follow.I miss Osborne, Siskel and Ebert. Concise, and to the point. Osborne actually knew most of these people, unlike Muller.