Guilty by Suspicion (1991) User Reviews (47)

A softer side of history

[lizlet101 · 7/10 · 21 October 2005]

This is a fairly good movie. It provides a compelling dramatic struggle and captures the paranoia of an era. However, like many Hollywood movies, it strives more to create a dramatic story than an accurate one.

This movie was originally to be based on the life of blacklisted writer/director Abraham Polonsky (Force of Evil, Body and Soul). Polonsky was working in France at the time of the HUAC hearings and a friend called to tell him not to come back or he'd be called to testify. He deliberately came back for the express purpose of telling HUAC where they could stick it. This is a good story as an anecdote, but not a great story for a movie.

The one place in which this movie (and many other movies) softens the history is by making the protagonist politically neutral. It is certainly true that many people accused were not communists or had only attended a meeting out of curiosity, but this is not true for everybody. Many of these people were devout socialists. As Polonsky has said on occasion "During the Great Depression, anybody with a brain considered Communism. The Capitalist system was BROKE. Communism looked like a smart bet." While many of these people reconsidered as the nation returned to prosperity, a large number did not.

Most of the famous Hollywood Ten were still believers in socialism when they were blacklisted. There is no evidence that any of them were spies for the Soviet Union-- many of them had already learned that the USSR was not the socialist paradise they dreamed of-- but they did believe in the writings of Mark and Engels. It is also true that they placed socialist themes in their films. They created gangsters who only cared about money, families screwed over by greedy real estate brokers and poor saps who put it all in the stock market.

However, none of this was illegal. They had every right to believe in whatever politics they chose to. They had every right to create these films-- and their movies seemed to have a resonance with the audience. They're lives and careers were destroyed because they held political beliefs that some viewed as threatening.

I also want to point out that Elia Kazan was not the model for this film. Elia Kazan has been repeatedly condemned by Polonsky and others who were blacklisted. He chose to name names and to allow the HUAC to bully him. I don't condemn him for this like other people. As this movie shows, so much was on the line for people who HUAC sets their sights on. Kazan cracked. He failed to be a hero, when the time came. This doesn't mark him a coward, merely something less than a hero. "On the Waterfront," while not a direct explanation of his actions, is an excellent look at his state of mind around that time.

While yes, I have not spent much time reviewing this movie, I felt it necessary to set the record straight about history.

Excellent re-telling of a dark period in America

[Boyo-2 · 8/10 · 2 August 2002]

Robert DeNiro plays David Merrill, a movie director who is 'Zanuck's wonder boy' at Fox as the movie opens. He's been in Europe for awhile so does not know the full impact the HUAC has been exerting on actors in Hollywood. Zanuck asks David to 'purge himself' so instructs him to meet with a man who has a lot of questions for him, all having to do with people he might or might not know (real actors names are mentioned in this scene) and DeNiro complies, but only to a point, because his best friend Bunny Baxter (George Wendt) is the last name on the 'list.' David can't deal with any of it anymore and storms out of the meeting.

Eventually he finds out the hard way that because he is being uncooperative, he is being portrayed as a Communist sympathizer and cannot get anymore work as a director in movies so he moves to New York to try to get work in the theatre.

Movie has a strange feel to it. There is something underlying in almost every scene, a strange current that flows through the movie because so much of this is about what is unsaid, what is damaging and what is the right thing to do. Husbands betray wives, best friends name best friends, and no one knows how to destroy this thing that has invaded them.

DeNiro, Annette Bening, George Wendt and Chris Cooper are riveting. Sam Wanamaker, Martin Scorsese, Tom Sizemore and Ben Piazza are very good in small roles. Patricia Wettig goes slightly over the top as an actress whose child was taken from her.

Not fun, but worth seeing, and for fans of old cars, DeNiro drives around in the most beautiful white convertible you've ever seen. Wish I knew what type of car it is! 8/10.

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been........?

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 19 September 2009]

It's almost impossible to write any kind of objective film about the blacklist, the wounds of it run deep in show business. Guilty By Suspicion has no pretense to objectivity, neither does that John Wayne epic Big Jim McLain which was favorable to the House Un American Activities Committee.

Those who gave testimony at HUAC did so for a variety of motives. Some like Adolphe Menjou wanted the blacklist for everyone to the left of Herbert Hoover. Some like Robert Taylor felt they were doing a patriotic service. Some under the threat of not being able to work as artists in their chosen profession named names before HUAC. A very select few said stick it in your ear.

If there any guilty parties it's not the artists whatever their political persuasion. It was the studio bosses and one of them, Darryl F. Zanuck is played here by Ben Piazza, who gave in without exception to HUAC and cooperated in the blacklist, who pitted the people of various political persuasions against each other. Sad to say that's not really demonstrated here in Guilty By Suspicion.

The members of HUAC were 95% on the political right of both parties. The Democrats were mostly southerners and the Republicans were on the right in their party. The liberals of either party had more constructive ways to spend their time in Congess.

Guilty By Suspicion tells the story of Robert DeNiro as a fictional film director who gets blacklisted because of secret hearing testimony given by Chris Cooper. His struggle to find work turns positively Kafkaesque until he agrees to go before the committee.

DeNiro strikes all the right notes in his performance and is aided and abetted by the performance of Annette Bening as his estranged wife. Acting honors however go to Patricia Wettig who plays a distraught blacklisted actress with a drinking problem to start with.

Guilty By Suspicion is not the ultimate telling of the blacklist's story, but it's still pretty good and does get a feel for the times the story is set in.

GREAT FILM

[cfish · 3 June 2002]

The film Guilty by Suspicion showed the effects of the Hollywood blacklist in true-to-life form. Not only did it deal with how friendships and families were affected during this period, but it also showed how other American's, such as teachers, were also blacklisted. Blacklisting was not only a Hollywood occurrence.

Those interested in communism in Hollywood will find the screenplay exciting and interesting, as there are hints of actual transcripts from the House Committee on Un-American Activities scattered throughout the movie. I've watched it at least three times, and I never get bored, I just pick up more and more of the realities of this time period.

The movie is not meant to be used as a way to research this time period. It is a statement movie. It is a statement about the evilness of the red scare. It is not pro-communist, but it is pro American freedom of expression.

Guilty by Suspicion is a great educational movie that is supported by a great cast, and great subplots!

The Second Red Scare

[view_and_review · 7/10 · 26 March 2020]

Some Americans today may never have heard of Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism. McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term refers to U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. It was characterized by heightened political repression and a campaign spreading fear of communist influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. After the mid-1950s, McCarthyism began to decline, mainly due to the gradual loss of public popularity and opposition from the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Court made a series of rulings that helped bring an end to McCarthyism.

The movie "Guilty by Suspicion" takes place in Hollywood during the height of the Second Red Scare. The movie focuses on David Merrill (Robert De Niro) though he is indicative of many Hollywood personnel affected by the Communist witch hunting.

David, by all indications, was a gainfully employed movie director that was in constant demand. He would have been able to stay gainfully employed so long as he told the F.B.I. what they wanted to hear. And they wanted to hear that certain friends of David's were Communists. David, valuing friendship over finances, opted to keep quiet about any of his friends activities. For that, David was put on the Hollywood blacklist.

"Guilty by Suspicion" is a weighty movie. We get an up close and personal look at what McCarthyism was doing to people's lives. Now I know that some of you may be saying, "Who cares? It was Hollywood." To that I would say that the Constitution never put zoning restrictions on who it applied to. The Constitution didn't have a Hollywood exemption in it and the U.S. government was trampling all over people's Constitutional rights. If they didn't have enemies within the U.S. they were certainly making them.

sincere Red Scare story

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 10 March 2017]

Director David Merrill (Robert De Niro) returns from filming in France to find the country over-run by the Red Scare. People are all taking loyalty oaths. The House Committee on Un-American Activities is hunting for Communists. Bunny Baxter (George Wendt) is his writer best friend. Actress friend Dorothy Nolan (Patricia Wettig) is struggling after her husband named names. David's married to Ruth (Annette Bening) with a young son. Friendships and marriages are breaking apart as tension rises. With his work on the line, Merrill is also pushed to name names as others acquiesce.

It's a sincere telling of a fictional Red Scare story with some of the real players in the real history of the Un-American Activities Committee. It's very sincere but not the most thrilling drama. The actors are first rate. Despite the good work, there are no surprises and nothing too dramatic. It feels more or less melodramatic. This is one movie where a based on true story would be useful.

Moral Panic.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 9 October 2010]

Robert De Niro is a highly successful screenwriter and director in Hollywood of the early 1950s. Twelve years earlier, during the Great Depression, he attended meetings of communists in the homes of some friends. Now anti-communism is sweeping the country in the wake of the Rosenbergs and De Niro, along with many of his friends, becomes a person of interest to the FBI and to a congressional committee that wants him to "name names", as they used to say.

Some of his friends who are still communist sympathizers flee to England. The rest are mostly terrified. De Niro's lawyer friend, Sam Wanamaker, urges him to spill the beans because, what the heck, it's all going to blow over some day and why should he ruin his life? But De Niro thinks he's above it all, too well-known and too much of a money maker for the studio. He's wrong. Daryl F. Zanuck wants him to continue working but only if he gives up his friends. (Real names are sometimes used, and historical situations simulated.) He loses his livelihood, his car, his house, his friends, and his intransigence drives away his estranged wife. Broke, he leaves Hollywood for New York but his theater friends won't touch him. Back to Hollywood on a Greyhound bus, where he finds a job directing a picture for Monogram, but he's fired before he can finish it.

De Niro is subpoenaed and appears before the congressional committee whose loud-mouthed members browbeat him until he's removed from the room. The ending is ambiguous.

It would be easy to dismiss this as some sort of America-bashing on the part of the movie makers, and in a way it is, since it's a reasonably accurate portrayal of a particularly shameful incident in American history. There were of course communists and socialists around in Hollywood, but the hysteria that accompanied this conviction caused more damage than the disease itself.

A thought experiment suggests itself. As I write this, many Americans support a social and political movement called the Tea Party. Imagine if, fifteen or twenty years from now, the political climate had shifted dramatically and Tea Party sentiments were widely viewed as treasonable. All of a sudden a lot of people who were caught up in these rallies and picnics are persecuted by the FBI and, if defiant, get to spend some time in jail. It could happen. It happened to casual supporters of workers' causes during the depression, the kind of people that De Niro's character represents. Sociologists call these waves of collective hysteria "moral panics." They're not uncommon. We've had witches, Satanists, pre-school child molesters, Illuminati, Masons, and so forth. Common sense gets lost along the way.

De Niro is fine, as usual. He looks the part of the free thinker. He wears loose and sloppy clothes and has long, tousled hair. The period decor is accurate. And some of the incidents, such as De Niro's court appearance, look overdrawn and yet are very closely modeled on some film clips of the real congressional committee's conduct. "Typical communist response. Step away from the table." So why isn't it more successful? Partly because the plot is so mechanical. One thing leads predictably to another. The audience is always far ahead of De Niro's character. We all know pride goeth before a fall, and that he's going to wind up in somebody's "Fix It Shop" on a side street in New York before he bounces back after an infusion of some moral roborant and that he will wind up with his wife again. It's like watching a long and preachy After School Special.

Perhaps one of the worst things a message movie can do is overdramatize the problem. "Guilty by Suspicion" shows us an actress whose life was ruined by the movement committing suicide. Then we get to see the mourners at the funeral. It's too much. We don't need the death. It interferes with our suspension of disbelief. Or -- if you insist on killing someone in an attempt to increase the audience's involvement -- you'd better do it well, and this suicide is sketchy as hell. We've hardly met the woman. We can be grateful that De Niro doesn't pause on the stage and come out with a soliloquy along the lines of, "I can't give up my friends because it would be an immoral act...." The worst he says is, "Am I supposed to spend the rest of my life dreaming what I could have been?" (Most of us do, Bobby.) That doesn't rob the film of its irony. One of the reasons the committee wants to nail De Niro is that he attended a demonstration that urged an end to nuclear weapons, which happened to be one of Ronald Reagan's announced goals towards the end of his administration.

One sided and rather tired but fun visually

[bwarrior · 6/10 · 16 July 2000]

Beginning with harmless errors, there were several anachronisms - the film is set in 1951-52, but the Roseberg execution and 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' occurred in 1953. Not that the anachronisms are at all relevant, they are intended merely to put the viewer in the frame of mind of the 50's and serve that purpose admirably. I agree with the previous poster's commentary as to the one-sided nature of the plot's theme. In addition, the film moves predictably and at a consistent and dull tempo, boring the viewer. However for the more educated viewer, visually the film is very well done. The lighting, spacing, and angles of Robert De Niro relative to other characters and objects give the intended sense of alienation.. Along with the interesting editing, that was enough to keep me watching this film until the end.

I'll have to stay out of rooms with mirrors for the rest of my life, I just like looking at myself too much.

[sol1218 · 8/10 · 24 June 2006]

****SPOILERS**** Intelligent and uncompromising movie with an almost total lack of the false heroics, on the part of those victimized, that you would usually expect in films like these of the Hollywood "Blacklist" years.

It's September 1951 and Hollywood's "Golden Boy" director David Merrill, Robert de Niro, has just come back from France where he spent the last three years making movies for Fox Studios. David has come back to a country that doesn't resemble the free and open, to ideas and opinions, nation that he left. It's not long afterwords that he's hit with the stark reality of the overblown and self-righteous House of Un-America Activities Committee (HUAC) that destroyed, financially as well as psychically, thousands of people in the entertainment world for no other reason then to throw it's weight around in fighting the communist menace. which it unconsciously did more to advance in its own very Un-American and Un-Constituional witch hunts and hearings.

David finds his friends in the entertainment industry in a white panic the very first evening, at a welcome home party at his house, when screen writer Larry Noland, Chris Cooper, got into a very heated exchange with his actress wife Dorothy, Patricia Wetting, over him naming names at a secret HUAC hearing. The names that included some of his, and Dorothy's, life long friends in the industry. Called into he office of his boss 20th Century Fox head man Darryl Zanuck, Ben Piazza, David's told that he'll soon be subpoenaed to testify before HUAC and if he values his job in movies, or anywhere else in the entertainment world, he'd better tell them what they want to hear.David is even told to turn in his own wife Ruth, Annette Bennings, as being a member of the Communist Party if that's what they wan't David to do!

Excellent recreation of a period of American History that we'd very well wan't to forget. Robert de Niro is at his very best as the troubled and self-doubting Hollywood director David Merrill who during the entire movie is caught between a rock and a hard place.David is given a way out, by HUCA, to rat out his friends and associates for among other things an anti-Atomic Bomb Peace rally that they attended in 1946.

There's no real winners in the movie "Guilty by Suspicion" with everyone in it from David on down being forced one way or another out of the profession that they chose, creativity in movies books and on the stage,to put all their hearts and souls into. There's poor Dorothy Noland who's career as an actress was destroyed and even had her young son Matthew taken away from her by being falsely accused by her rat-fink husband Larry, working in concert with HUAC, as an unfit mother. With all doors in Hollywood and on Broadway closed to her and never seeing young Matthew again Dorothy started to drink heavily. One evening after saying goodbye to David and Ruth at a restaurant in L.A Dorothy, at the end of her line,got herself smashed on drinks and ended up really getting smashed by killing herself in a car smash-up. The smear-mongering scoundrels of HUAC had the gal to grill David about her, Dorothy, being a communist, which she wasn't, even with her body still warm in her grave!

David for his part, who was anything but a hero up until then, just had enough and threw caution, that his lawyer Felix Graff (Sam Wanamaker) told him to have, and his career to the wind and let the Grand Inquisitor Chairman Woods, Gallard Sartain, an his two sneering and sanctimonious deputies Congressmen Tavennar & Veld, Robin Gammell & Brad Sullivan, have it. David tells them: "In the name of ridding the world of Communism you destroyed her life! Have you no shame in what your doing! She's DEAD!" David did indeed become a hero at the end of the movie but not because he wanted to be one but because his conscience and love of country and just plain human decency wouldn't let him be anything else.

Kazan

[safenoe · 6/10 · 27 December 2021]

This film is poignant because later on De Niro appeared on stage with Elia Kazan when the famed director accepted a special Oscar amidst the McCarthyist controversy.

Good intentions but it doesn't work

[preppy-3 · 5/10 · 22 May 2009]

Movie about the House Committee on Un-American Activities and their attack on supposed communism in Hollywood. It takes place in 1951 and director David Merrill (Robert DeNiro) returns from France to find Hollywood and his friends living in terror of being called to testify in front of the committee. If you didn't name names your career was officially over and you were (unofficially) suspected of being a communist. Merrill refuses to name anybody and his life becomes a nightmare. It also affects his ex-wife Ruth (Annette Bening) and friend Bunny Baxter (George Wendt).

This movie has good intentions and it's great that anybody made a film dealing with the horrendous witch hunts in the 1950s--but this film just doesn't work. It's simplistic to a ridiculous degree--EVERYTHING is dumbed down so anyone can get it. Also the plot is obvious (I was always one step ahead of this) and the movie is overlong. However the movie looks just great and the music is wonderful. Acting really helps this one--DeNiro is a little subdued but still good; Bening is given the thankless ex-wife role but pulls it off; Wendt overdoes it at times but is basically pretty good and Patricia Wettig (as a friend who cracks under the strain) is WAY over the top to an embarrassing degree. Also it's amusing to see Martin Scorses in a small role as a director. Ultimately the film is too bland to really work--but the courtroom sequence at the end does provide real fireworks. Worth seeing if you know nothing about what happened in Hollywood back then. I can only give it a 5.

"Guilty By Suspicion" Is True to Form ***1/2

[edwagreen · 9/10 · 15 April 2006]

Robert DeNiro will not give names to the House UnAmerican Activities committee. There goes his Hollywood career. His marriage to Ruth, Annette Bening, has already ended in divorce, so why not the rest of his life down the drain as well?

The film is very similar in nature to Woody Allen's "The Front" of the 1970s. If you've seen the latter, you know what the ending shall be. It's called principles above all.

Patricia Wettig gives a fine supporting performance as an actress turned in by her own husband with tragedy resulting.

Nice to see Martin Scorsese go in front of the cameras for this film. He is fleeing to England to escape testifying.

We get a wonderful sense of the 1950s in Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe is hot and so is this film.

Excellent story

[Shantalecinematicexpresso · 7/10 · 27 October 2020]

This is a way to remember those actors who were part of the Hollywood darkest era of the blacklist.

shallow historical soap opera

[mjneu59 · 4/10 · 25 November 2010]

The anti-Communist witch-hunts of the late 1940s will always be a dark chapter in American history, but this heavy-handed melodrama offers no insight into any of the causes or consequences. Robert De Niro (in a role any lesser actor could have played just as well) stars as a Hollywood film director declared persona non grata for his refusal to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but his blacklisting looks more like a blessing in disguise: curing his workaholic habits and reuniting him with his wife and son. The biggest problem with producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler's skin-deep screenplay is an unfortunate tendency toward soap opera histrionics, with most of the plot revolving around dramatic suicides, drunken tantrums, and one of De Niro's trademark rip-the-phone-off-the wall-and-throw-it-across-the-room scenes. The climactic hearing is just an excuse for some politically correct soapbox grandstanding, and of course there's a rolling moral before the end credits, always a tacit admission that a film has failed to communicate its message elsewhere.

Interesting but too earnest, safe and middle-of-the-road

[bob the moo · 12 April 2007]

In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities began an investigation into Communism in Hollywood. Shortly after this director David Merrill returns from filming abroad. It is not long before he is targeted for having attended "a few meetings" a few years ago. The approach is softly, softly with the committee just wanting Merrill to name some more names for them. When he refuses to help, he finds himself gradually cut out of studios and projects, with fewer and fewer people willing to take his calls.

The period of history around which this film is set is an interesting one and one that is worth knowing about as part of the whole "learning from history" ideal. However this is not the same as the film itself being good because unfortunately it is not what I would have liked. It relies too heavily on the informative nature of the recreation of the period rather than developing an interesting script with realistic characters. It doesn't help that the film tries to be all very serious and respectful but does rather fail and ends up coming over all earnest and self important. The script also tries not to really upset anyone who didn't take the moral stance of the fictional Merrill by just focusing on him even though it would have been a lot more interesting if it had had outrage, bitterness and realism at its heart.

Winkler directs without a great deal of style and his courtroom scene is average where it should have been the best scene of the film. De Niro works his material hard and makes for an engaging lead, however it is the lack of depth and complexity in his material that limits his performance. This is more or less true of the rest of the cast which, although starry, doesn't really provide anyone in particular with an opportunity to mark themselves out. Bening, Wendt, Wettig, Wanamaker, Sizemore, Scorsese, Cooper and others are good presences but not much more than that.

Overall then an interesting film in so much as it informs about an important period of history. However it is all very earnest and safe and lost a lot of potential for me. The cast is starry but the material is middle-of-the-road and didn't give anyone the complexity and outrage that the subject deserved.

Kazan NAMED names-he was in the penalty box with the 'lib's'

[knnhon · 7/10 · 11 September 2010]

Kazan named LOTS of names at the HUAC hearings.

The screen-writer,, Mr. Abraham Polonsky, took his name off the credit list---he said,this was about 'communists', not lib's But,JERKS, like McCarthy,and BIGGER JERK, Roy Cohn;put all in the same category-'guilty by association'. We don't seem to learn much from history, do we? Mr. 'P', also,wrote, "Force of Evil", which was just on TCM 09/07/10. John Garfield starred-GREAT movie noir!---In real life,Mr. Garfield-Julius Garfinkel, also, refused to give up names. In Ida Lupino's biography, and the documentary by his daughter, there is quite an legitimate argument that this is true. He died of heart-attack at age 39. The speech given by Mr. DeNiro's character is almost verbatim of speech given by Lawrence Walsh before McCarthy. "At Long last, have you no decency...."

Totally one sided.

[MartynGryphon · 7/10 · 4 June 2023]

Firstly, I need to get the inaccuracies out of the way. The House Committee on Un American Acitivities (HUAC), did not once impose a blacklist and stop communists from working, except when those in contempt were sent to Prison. The Blacklist was a decision made by the Studios themselves. Secondly, the use of the phrase 'McCarthy witch hunts' would be incorrect to describe these hearings, given that Joe McCarthy was a senator and not a member of the House of Representatives so would not have sat on any house committee irrespective of what it was for.

With that out of the way, on to the film. Well acted? Yes. Well directed? Yes. Well written? Yes...and No. It is a very one sided view of the HUAC hearings and it very strongly takes the sides of those suspected communists called before the committee, which is not surprisingly given that the screenplay was written by Abraham Polonsky, a bitter, hateful and thoroughly nasty piece of work, who was a communist and was blacklisted himself for his political views at the time.

However, when director Winkler wanted a rewrite changing the main character to a mild liberal and someone who wasn't actually a communist, Polonsky blew his stack and insisted his name was removed from the production in every way. Polonsky walked and the rewrites went through, but the majority of Polonsky's work remained.

Surprisingly, Sam Wanamaker, an American actor who was also blacklisted in the late 1940's before relocating and rebuilding a career in England, appears here playing an attorney who's encouraging his clients to cooperate with the committee.

The irony of this whole movie is that it is communist propaganda, written by a communist, who was blacklisted to stop him from spreading communist propaganda in movies, something the communists accused swore blind was not happening. Yeah right!

You only have to look at the Hollywood of today to see how, when left unchecked, communism can indeed infest and indoctrinate every fibre of our lives and can flourish when people actually stop caring. The most recent output from Hollywood has convinced me that that the HUAC hearings and the blacklist wasn't such a bad thing after all.

a rough time in our nation's history

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 13 July 2023]

In the mid 1940s, the committee on un-american activities was looking for members of the communist party in hollywood. Some talked. Some did not. Those who refused to co-operate were blocked from working in hollywood for many years. As we know, senator mccarthy himself was censured in the mid 1950s (for the second time) and the huac committee was losing its power. Here, deniro is "merrill", a liberal minded director, but doesn't want any part of the huac hearings. Which was changed from the original author's screenplay. Reading the trivia items will help one understand this film better. There are so many scenes of merrill spending time with his son. We get it... he's a good father. Most of the film is leading up to the date of the hearing. I really don't think baxter would have asked permission to name merrill if he were questioned... pretty unrealistic. He might have done it on the spur of the moment, but I don't think anyone could ask a person to their face. Especially someone who wasn't even a communist. Near the start, scorsese spoke so fast, I had to turn on captions to figure out what he was saying. It's okay. De niro had already won both of his oscars. Written and directed by irwin winkler. Won the oscar for rocky. To learn the details, there's plenty of info on joseph mccarthy and the huac in wikipedia dot org.

It ended up raising the issue.

[Tanbalarai · 6/10 · 2 September 2020]

I thought the storyline was too slow to develop. First of all, the episode about how to deal with the main character's problems needs progress. I felt the story of this film lacked that. It felt like they were doing in the climax what they should have done in the beginning of the story. I felt like the film was in a rut from the beginning to the end as if it was struggling with the same thing and the similar episodes continued and the human drama never developed. Even so, I managed to watch this movie without getting tired of it, thanks to the actresses. The actress who played Robert De Niro's wife is my type, so I couldn't help but admire her. She is Annette Bening. I was disappointed that this actress hadn't played any leading roles other than Bugsy. This time she played a very good role and I was glad to see her a lot. I think the fact that this actress is so beautiful and gorgeous helps to support the image that her husband must be a very high status director. That's why I watched this movie to the end and I could understand the issues raised. I realized that the United States is a country where the super-rich have controlled to prevent a few of them from losing their privileges. But to go straight to the subject matter like this movie does is a boring one. It's a too social matter movie and if a naive person like me watches it, it's not fun at all. When dealing with this kind of theme, I wish they would twist the rules a little more, for example, make a movie about an ideal communist country. Is there possibility that they still won't let us make those kinds of movies?

teaching tool

[martinbuchman · 9/10 · 6 November 2006]

This film is Perhaps the most emotional and realistic teaching tool to communicate the effects that McCarthyism had on the personal lives of those who were implicated by the HUAC committee. The climactic trial scene stands as a monument to the abuse of power of demagogues and obscenity of political bullying. (The trial scene though is a composite of many of the McCarthy HUAC hearings and thus needs to be explained by the teacher.) The resemblences of major characters such as David Merill in the movie (David Merick in real life) are transparent enough to use as fact. Scorsesee and De Niro made a few non gangster movies that were significant and underrated . This is one of them (King of Comedy is another). The political tool of intimidation of Hollywood intellectual types depicted in this film is especially relevant today given the climate of Rush Limbaugh and his miinions. The acting, soundtrack, cinematography are all impeccable. Many of the small parts are played by character actors who will be recognizable to your students. The film also pays careful attention to the sights and sounds of Hollywood in the fifties. As far as the omnipresent issue of Hollywood vs History this film ranks as one of the most fidelitous to history. Use it.

CHEER! - (7 stars out of 10)

[BJG-Reviews · 7/10 · 7 March 2021]

The stage curtains open ...

The 1950's in Hollywood wasn't quite so glamorous. Many were under the scrutinizing and accusing eye of the FBI. It was a restless time in American history, the time of the Hollywood Blacklist, the time of McCarthyism, the time when a communist could have been your very next door neighbor. It was also a time of resolve and of being true to oneself and your conscience.

Hollywood Director, David Merrill (Robert De Niro), fell under the FBI gaze because of a couple of meetings he once attended 12 years prior. He is prompted to go visit a lawyer before he can continue working on a movie. Unless David will turn against his friends and associates, naming them as communists, he must appear in court and face possible imprisonment as a communist himself. He refuses and suddenly, his life and the lives of everyone around him is thrown into chaos. He can't find work, his closest friends turn on him, and even his own son wonders if his Dad is a "red".

This was a very good depiction and comprehensive story of what it must have been like back in those days. De Niro, as usual, turned in a wonderful performance as a man who was willing to lose everything before he lost his dignity and integrity. He would rather stand up for what he believed to be right, than sell out his friends for something they didn't do.

I recommend this film. It is a bit dated, but it still holds up pretty well and is just as viable today as when it was first released 30 years ago. It isn't a tense film, not a thriller, but a steadily paced drama showcasing the human dilemma. As such, it does move rather slow in parts, but the final scene will have you riveted. This is a solid 7 stars out of 10.

Just necause de Niro was in it.

[motorzbh2002 · 2/10 · 13 September 2022]

Another piece of commie propaganda. Like the other movies ( The majestic with Jim Carrey. ) the protagonist wasn't really a commie , just a little socialist, he didn't support the Soviet Union and so on. But history proved them right. Let's talk about Alan Alda and Mash: he was against the Vietnam War because he was paid by the Soviet Union. Oh, how they cared about the vietnamese babies and so on. But after the commies took over and killed millions did you see one of them saying something about the reeducation camps? No. Remember Jane Fonda posing with the NVA artillery men shooting at his countrymen? And so on. We were on the war with commies and they worked for them. Who gave the nuclear bomb to the russians? Another commie.

The movie is really junk, if not for de Niro I wouldn't watch it. But he did worst movies . At least he got a lot of money.

The political persecution of Hollywood and its devastating effects on human lives and American cinema.

[clanciai · 9/10 · 5 May 2015]

This is an important film that never should be allowed to fall out of conscience. It is the sordid and bitter tragedy of the political persecution against writers, directors and actors of Hollywood around 1950 with devastating effects on American cinema - it never became the same again, after reaching its highest levels of artistry and quality in the 1940s. The protagonist David Merrill here is fictitious, but his fate was shared by a vast number of his colleagues, like Jules Dassin, William Dieterle, Abraham Polonsky, Charles Chaplin, Joseph Losey and many others, some never being able to come back, others making masterpieces in other countries, like France and England.

The story here builds up towards the final interrogation by the committee in the end, which reaches nothing but a tumultuous quarrel of outrage and unacceptable bullying by those responsible, who are called heroes of America, one of them being Nixon, all of them being politicians. The whole spectrum of victims are exposed, like Larry Nolan, played by Chris Cooper who is forced to act against his conscience with the ruin of his family as a consequence, his wife Dorothy, a film star, being admirably played by Patricia Wettig, the perhaps most important role in the drama, illustrating the full inhumanity, Sam Wanamaker plays the lawyer who tries to find a way out without succeeding, Ben Piazza as Darryl F. Zanuck skillfully circumnavigating the dirty business of politics but without being able to evade shipwrecks, and Martin Scorsese as the director who voluntarily chooses exile to continue filming in England, possibly a portrait of Jules Dassin.

The drama is deeply upsetting, this is no comedy but the most unnecessary of all tragedies in Hollywood and the one that definitely wrecked the good name of the whole film business, which up to 1950 had been flamboyantly glorious. How sad. And how important for films like this one to be made, to tell the truth after all.

Blacklisting Sucks!

[PortugalOle7 · 7/10 · 4 November 2006]

Entertaining film about the Hollywood blacklisting scandal during the 1950's.

Follows the story of a film director (De Niro) who returns from Europe to find Hollywood a little different than when he left. Before he can make his next big film he must clear his name in front of a committee to prove he is not a Communist. Sounds easy enough? Not really. He must agree to name 10 people, most are his friends, who will be charged with being Communists. This list includes his closest friend who is a writer, played by George Wendt. When De Niro's character refuses, his ability to get work vanishes.

I expected more from the acting. De Niro was OK but I was disappointed with Bening, who plays De Niro's ex-wife and the rest of the cast. They all seem very bland, like they are going through the motions. The story drags a little bit when you keep thinking De Niro will never get another job until he decides to agree upon some of these names for the committee. One thing this film does do is expose the foolishness that was going on in Hollywood. Innocent men and woman were put out of work under falsehoods over and over.

A Much Needed Film

[lllinggg · 5/10 · 3 June 2003]

'Guilty by Suspicion' is a much needed film about McCarthyism -probably the darkest era of modern US history, one marked by conscious attempts to terrorize and silence political dissenters. David Merrill (Robert De Niro) is a relatively successful director who returns to Hollywood from filming in France to find that his political loyalty has been called into question by the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Unlike many of his artist friends, he decides to stick to his principles and fight the sinister Committee to the end.

It is a testament to the film's historical boldness that even professional critics have often found it impossible to evaluate it without digging into their personal political bias. Many see Merrill as the prototype libertarian antihero fighting against repression, while most see him as worthy of the fate of a 'communist traitor'. The film makes it quite clear that Merrill -who is of course a fictitious character- is representative of the vast majority of individuals persecuted by HUAC, in that he was as communistic as your average 'Save the Whales' member. His unconventional decision to challenge the Committee comes not from an ideological need to defend his mildly dissenting politics, but from his antagonistic frustration against HUAC's Stalinist witch hunt tactics that ruined the lives of many during the early stages of the Cold War. Ultimately, the debate about Merrill's character is largely irrelevant because it is actually HUAC's and the FBI's shameful and repulsive character, rather than Merrill's eccentric heroics, that is the film's central theme. Students of US history will not fail to hear throughout the film echoes of Special Army Attorney Joseph N. Welch's frustrated remarks "at long last, Sir, have you no decency?", aimed against a bullying Senator Joe McCarthy shortly before the latter's conclusive political demise.

Impressive performances by Robert De Niro and Patricia Wettig (as Dorothy Nolan) carry the film, whose deficient script unfortunately fails to make the most of an interesting and important theme. Equally disappointing is the film's failure to recreate a convincing visual context of late 1940s Hollywood. It is worth noting, however, that the film's final 12 minutes contain an unparalleled cinematic depiction of HUAC's early hearings, which is worth experiencing. Overall a fine effort, 5.5 stars out of ten.