Bleaklist

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Directed by MARTIN RlTT

Screenplay by WALTER BERNSTEIN

In a certain sense, The Front is an easy movie to criticize; almost everything it does could have been done better. On the other hand, it is a very difficult movie to judge because it takes up a previously forbidden subject--the blacklisting of showfolk suspected of Communist leanings during the early '50s--and has the nerve, and grace, to take an absurdist view of that deplorable era. For that, and for Woody Allen's fine performance (against his usual comic grain) in the title role, it deserves respectful attention.

Witch-Hunters. Allen plays a politically innocent but street-shrewd cashier in a bar and grill, whose old high school friend (Michael Murphy) is a blacklisted TV writer suddenly in need of someone to sign his scripts for him, cash his checks and show up at rehearsals pretending he wrote the thing. The friend is gifted, the network execs are pleased, and Allen (who takes a percentage for his services) soon finds himself prospering and enjoying his demi-celebrity. But, of course, a tweed jacket and a book-lined pad do not an author make. The Front's best comic moments occur as Allen, whose character is just barely literate, tries to act the role of author. His worst moment (and one of the film's best comic scenes): an attempt at an on-set rewrite of one of his client's scripts.

Before long, Allen is fronting for more than one talented writer. Then come the investigators. The witch-hunters just cannot believe that a scriptwriter this skillful has not committed an investigatable offense. Along the way Allen becomes involved with a comic named Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), whose career is destroyed by the witch-hunters and who then destroys himself. Allen's consciousness (and his conscience) have been steadily expanding. In the end, he heroically--and funnily --defies the congressional committee that tries to pry from him at least a few suspect names.

Blacklist Victims. The Front's scriptwriter, its director and one star (Zero Mostel) were themselves victims of the blacklist. Despite many virtues, however, the picture seems thin and schematic. Part of the problem lies in the fact that many of the incidents used in the story are taken directly from history. Whether they seem familiar or not, they are never as fully developed as they might have been in a documentary film, nor as fully digested as they should have been by any first-class dramatist. An even more serious flaw, however, is the fact that not a single character in The Front is surprising. The weak never startle with a momentary show of strength. The wicked never betray a flash of compassion. The heroes never convincingly falter in their convictions. They are simply not alive, and it is hard to care much what happens to them. Even the cleverly chosen New York locations somehow seem contrived. There is, in the end, something held back about The Front, some strange refusal to really dig into and turn over very rich historical and psychological soil. The result is a film unworthy of its excellent intentions.

Richard Schickel

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