"People joined the communist party because it was doing something. An effective instrument that was doing things they felt should be done."
To think that this drivel could issue from the same pen that had written that immortal screenplay 'Roman Holiday' and so much else. Not one of the Hollywood Ten could have survived two minutes under Stalin, as suspected by large numbers who had never boasted creative imagination, yet displayed a lot more of it than those who wore it on their sleeve.
During the war, of course, Stalin had been promoted to his fellow-Allies as the kindly uncle to humanity - often via Hollywood - and it is understandable that many felt bewildered when Russia suddenly became the Red Menace. The powerful effects of war propaganda could not be switched off so soon. But it is the sheer silliness of the Stalin stooges that comes through so strongly in this film. Not only the dramatic claims of scapegoating (America had become 'a concentration camp for writers', said one) and comparisons to the Faustian legend. But Trumbo's whole folksy picture of the world, and his love of shocking the bourgeois with schoolboy humour.
The film does no favours to Trumbo with all these extended recitals from his correspondence, though the treatment is quite original (initially confusing) with well-known actors speaking the lines with much conviction, especially Liam Neeson and David Strathairn. These are interspersed with more conventional commentary by family and friends, though I feel it was a mistake to bring on Kirk Douglas, well into his nineties, after the terrible stroke that had left him barely able to speak.
But at least Trumbo displayed a streak of defiant honesty when he pleaded guilty to contempt of Congress. He said he'd despised every Congress he could remember. I wonder how Stalin would have welcomed such outspoken views of the Kremlin.
To think that this drivel could issue from the same pen that had written that immortal screenplay 'Roman Holiday' and so much else. Not one of the Hollywood Ten could have survived two minutes under Stalin, as suspected by large numbers who had never boasted creative imagination, yet displayed a lot more of it than those who wore it on their sleeve.
During the war, of course, Stalin had been promoted to his fellow-Allies as the kindly uncle to humanity - often via Hollywood - and it is understandable that many felt bewildered when Russia suddenly became the Red Menace. The powerful effects of war propaganda could not be switched off so soon. But it is the sheer silliness of the Stalin stooges that comes through so strongly in this film. Not only the dramatic claims of scapegoating (America had become 'a concentration camp for writers', said one) and comparisons to the Faustian legend. But Trumbo's whole folksy picture of the world, and his love of shocking the bourgeois with schoolboy humour.
The film does no favours to Trumbo with all these extended recitals from his correspondence, though the treatment is quite original (initially confusing) with well-known actors speaking the lines with much conviction, especially Liam Neeson and David Strathairn. These are interspersed with more conventional commentary by family and friends, though I feel it was a mistake to bring on Kirk Douglas, well into his nineties, after the terrible stroke that had left him barely able to speak.
But at least Trumbo displayed a streak of defiant honesty when he pleaded guilty to contempt of Congress. He said he'd despised every Congress he could remember. I wonder how Stalin would have welcomed such outspoken views of the Kremlin.
