Red Hollywood is an engrossing bit of both history and cinematic history that starts with progressive-leftist-themed films in the 1930s and WW II years, and ends with the reaction to those films, especially the filmmakers associated with them, during the so-called "Red Scare" of the late 40s and early 50s. It seems that many creative sorts in Hollywood, especially screenwriters but some directors as well, were radicalized by the economic turmoil of the Depression-era 1930s, and moved to the left , or moved further to the left, politically. Many became card-carrying communists and many more became "fellow travelers." Their films had a collectivist slant, e.g., embracing communal sharing among working women during the housing shortage of WW II, or had a pro-labor slant (endorsing the strikers' position), or took the position of the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, or generally took the side of the racially or economically oppressed. Their films also strove to reveal class cleavages in a presumably (ideologically) class-free America.
And then we come to the WW II films, particularly "Song of Russia" and "Mission to Moscow," which were propaganda vehicles, at FDR's request, to solidify American public opinion behind our Soviet ally. Mission, in particular, portrays Stalin as an avuncular, pipe-smoking good ally, and goes so far as to justify his Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, even though (ironically enough) it drove many anti-fascist Communists to leave the party in 1939-1940. Unfortunately, many of the folks involved in these films were blacklisted after the war when HUAC and McCarthyism pressured the studios.
I understand that one of the producers of "The Best Years of our Lives" (1946) claimed a few years later that it couldn't have been made under the current anti-communist atmosphere. I'm assuming he was referring to: (1) the banker ready to lend money to returning GIs with no collateral but good character (too socialistic), and (2) the utter, and physical, refutation of the guy who claims "we fought on the wrong side," i.e., the real enemy was the Soviet Union. Thus, it was noteworthy for me to see how often "left-themes" crept into films during this later period, even through the early 50s , including films and scenes deploring racial and religious prejudice. Of course, deploring racial and religious prejudice shouldn't be a left-right "divider" but the left has taken the lead on these issues in our history, particularly on civil rights.
Some of these earnest leftists have apparently not discerned the sweep of economic history. The film ends with Abraham Polonsky, a blacklisted film director, saying near the end of his life that "capitalism is crime." What a silly remark; but I still love his "Force of Evil."
