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Reviewed by:
  • Trumbo dir. by Jay Roach
  • Christopher Powell
Trumbo, Directed by Jay Roach, Written by John McNamara, ShivHans Pictures, Everyman Pictures, Groundswell Productions, 2015

It is a rare occasion when the film industry produces a historically-based movie in which the protagonist is a Communist. Of course Warren Beatty set the mark in 1981 with Reds, which received a dozen Oscar nominations, three of which won. Denzel Washington’s 2007 The Great Debaters did not do as well. Often, films that explore left history obscure the role of Communists. A recent example is Pride (2014), in which the screenwriter failed to mention that the hero of the story was in fact the Secretary General of the Young Communist League of Great Britain. Jay Roach’s Trumbo is a welcome addition to this genre. Although highly fictionalized, it tells the story of a Communist novelist and screenwriter who survived McCarthyism, bloodied, and perhaps unbowed, and reclaimed his place in Hollywood.

The film begins with an exposition explaining that in response to the Great Depression at home, and the rise of fascism abroad, many Americans joined the Communist Party. Dalton Trumbo joined in 1943. With the end of the war, however, and with the Soviet Union no longer an ally, the Cold War “cast a new light on Communists.” The camera first takes us to a room in Trumbo’s farmhouse north of Los Angeles in 1947, where it pans over a collection of his achievements up to that time, including a poster for his 1940 Oscar-nominated Kitty Hawk, and a copy of his National Book Award-winning Johnny Got His Gun.

As Red Scare hysteria rises, we are introduced to Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). She is a hard-nosed, high society Hollywood columnist whose scurrilous and virulent anticommunism permeates the press and film industry. She is joined in her mission by the anticommunist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and its President John Wayne (David James Elliot). If there are evil villains in this film, they are Hopper and Wayne. Unfortunately, they lean more towards caricature, giving the impression that at the heart of anticommunism were right-wing eccentrics, rather than much larger political forces.

The conflict begins when Trumbo and nine of his colleagues are subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, often known as huac. Trumbo leads the Hollywood Ten in a spirited, but unsuccessful, defense of their First Amendment rights, resulting [End Page 312] in federal prison terms for all of them. Upon release, Trumbo faces the blacklist. Unable to work, at least using his real name, he continues to write under front names and pseudonyms. In 1954, his screenplay Roman Holiday, fronted by Ian McLellan Hunter (Alan Tudyk) won an Oscar. In 1957, writing for producer Frank King (John Goodman) under the pseudonym Robert Rich, Trumbo’s work won another Oscar, this time for The Brave One. King produces low budget films that proudly pander to the illiterate. The Brave One is an anomaly. When Roy Brewer (Dan Bakkedah), the anticommunist President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Operators visits King, demanding he fire Trumbo, the producer, baseball bat swinging, shows Brewer the door. Later, confronted by reporters wanting to know if he is in fact the author of The Brave One, Cranston gives his most dramatic performance. “That small, worthless, golden statue,” declares Trumbo, “is covered with the blood of my friends.” Trumbo is finally outed almost simultaneously by Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) and Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman) while working on their films Exodus and Spartacus respectively. With the release of Spartacus in 1960, with Trumbo’s name in the credits for the first time in over a decade, and with President John F. Kennedy’s positive reception of the film, the black list comes to an end.

Trumbo is an important film. It reminds the audience that in postwar America to have certain opinions endangered one’s career, or worse. But movie-goers are advised that the film is highly fictionalized and selective in its history. For instance, omitted from the film is President Kennedy crossing an American Legion...

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