An extremely complex subject — the blacklists in New York television, circa 1953 — is brought up, bravely, and set aside, hastily, by two victims, director Martin Ritt and scriptwriter Walter Bernstein, who should be able to tell us a good deal about it. They do not attempt to gloss over the political persuasions of the blacklist victims, but neither do they dwell on the matter. Rather, they rest on the convenient supposition, twenty years after the fact, that all the communists were martyrs and saints while all the red-baiters were tyrants and fantatics (the latter group can be recognized in this movie by their abstinence from smiling). And they have centered their story on an untalented and apolitical schlemiel who is used as a stand-in by three banished writers. In effect, Ritt and Bernstein have elected to wriggle through the narrow straits between enemy camps, without engaging either side in battle. On this stealthy mission they ride the narrow shoulders of Woody Allen. With him in the lead role, they seem quite content to harvest laughs from his familiar persona — alternately bluffing and blushing — but without making any particular point. A surprisingly light, retiring movie. With Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy. (1976) — Duncan Shepherd
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