Film & History News

Artime-wanted to broaden and liberalize the government that Hunt had assembled under Eisenhower. Hunt complains that the Kennedy aides, such as Schlesinger, didn't even speak Spanish and wanted to impose a "proletarian...Jacobin government" on Cuba. About a month before the invasion, Hunt was removed as political officer for the project and replaced by the more liberal former chief of Havana Station. This downturn in Hunt's career makes an interesting story if Hunt himselfis interesting, as he is. But as an echo of clandestine foreign policy, Hunt's career has been passed through the distorting filters ofboth the CIA and its loyal, ifnot admiring, veteran. The title ofthe film romanticizes the romantic. By career Hunt was an intelligence bureaucrat, neither vigilante nor desperado. He was also the author of paperback spy thrillers under several pen names. His protagonists, following the fashion ofthe genre, were vigilante archetypes who suffered and inflicted hard knocks. The voiceover asserts that in these books Hunt displays a "sadistic" temperament, though compared with Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming, or even with Raymond Chandler, his sense ofmayhem is downright sissyfied. Paperback Vigilante indulges in what is known as the "genetive fallacy" in literary criticism: The notion that a literary work reveals the personality of its author, rather than merely his talent. IfHunt's thrillers were genuinely revealing, he must have spent his CIA career in a drunken stupor, since his heroes drink as incessantly as Dasheill Hammet's Nick Charles, though with James Bond's attention to class. The Agency, in any case, was on guard against revelations. Hunt's lone literary distinction is that in the United States of America he published over 40 works of fiction that had been subjected to censorship. Although Paperback Vigilante was produced freely with a thinly veiled aversion to its subject, it retells the story of a "maverick" that CIA and Hunt have been fostering since his Watergate arrest. FILM& HISTORY NEWS AMERICAN QUARTERLY SPECIAL ISSUE Film is the exclusive subject of the American Quarterly's winter issue [31,4 (1979)]. (American Quarterly. Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut St., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.) As is appropriate for a journal ofthe American Studies Association, the issue focuses on the relationship between motion pictures and their cultural contexts. American film propaganda and its aims are decoded by Thomas Cripps and David Culbert in a joint article about The Negro Soldier (1944). On the Waterfront (1954) and the artistic/political battles surrounding it are "leaned on a little" by Kenneth Hey. Leslie Fishbein puts The Snake Pit (1948) on a psychoanalytic couch, seeing it as a product ofpopular Freudianism. Dr. Strangelove (1964) is given a complete metaphysical examination by Dr. Charles Maland. Methodology is also discussed: Vivian Sobchack specifies how film language can contradict ideological purposes ofa filmmaker in her savoring ofThe Grapes ofWrath (1940): John O'Connor provides a gourmet's 14 guide to texts for teaching American Studies; Peter Rollins provides a Parnassian perspective on bibliography. AMERICAN LABOR FILMS-NEW RESOURCE BOOK PUBLISHED! American Labor Films published by the Film Library Information Council as a double-issue ofFilm Library Quarterly and designed as an informational meeting point for unions, labor educators, historians, filmmakers and film librarians is now available. American Labor Films includes a Directory ofAmerican Labor Films with 250 entries and the sources; 40 full-length movie reviews; 5 essay reviews which analyze 75 films on Working Women, Work, Political Education, Occupational Health and Safety, Hollywood and the Working Class. Also there are articles by experienced practitioners on Films in Labor Education, Films are Organizing Tools, and a list of films in Spanish. The book has 20 illustrations, 112 pages and is available for purchase while this edition lasts at $7.00 each postpaid, payment with order to American Labor Films, P.O. Box ,48, Radio City Station, New York N.Y. 10019; Canada and foreign, $7.50 U.S. funds. Quantity order prices will be quoted on written request. 15 ...