GUILTY BY SUSPICION
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Perhaps this is the wrong film on the
right subject. Irwin Winkler could not go too far wrong
having DeNiro play a top director whose career is ruined by
blacklisting, but the film does not go too far right either,
not having sufficient rage to be engaging. Rating: +1 (-4 to
+4).
An artist painting a picture has the option of reproducing exactly what the eye sees or of distorting reality to reach a deeper truth. The artist who just reproduces reality may be little more than a human camera; the artists whom we consider to be great have known how to distort reality to show a greater truth. It is possible to make a film about a subject that is realistic and at the same time does a disservice by being so realistic. Irwin Winkler's GUILTY BY SUSPICION, based on his own script, is a very realistic and at the same time subdued portrait of a blacklisted film director. But what is called for is a howl of rage against the government subversion of the Bill of Rights. Martin Ritt's THE FRONT, which starred Woody Allen, does have that release at its climax. GUILTY BY SUSPICION whimpers its way up to a modified version of an exchange that actually took place during the Army-McCarthy Hearings, but it is not nearly as effective as Allen telling the government to go fuck itself.
GUILTY BY SUSPICION mixes real Hollywood figures such as Darryl Zanuck with purely fictional ones and ones who are thinly disguised versions of real actors like cowboy star Jerry Cooper. The story begins as one of Zanuck's best directors, David Merrill (played by Robert DeNiro) returns to Hollywood in 1951 after having been in Paris for a while. However, Hollywood is not the town he remembers. The House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI are conducting a witch-hunt to find Communist sympathizers in the film industry. Careers are being destroyed and marriages broken up by the paranoia and the government pressure. David sees the family of a friend destroyed and soon he too is called upon to explain his attendance at a few meetings of what is now accused of being a Communist front organization. He is willing to cooperate until he is required to start by giving names of involved associates. For refusing to draw others into the net, he finds himself blacklisted. The project he is working on is canceled and the studio nearly bankrupts him by insisting he return a $50,000 advance. What follows is a long and not entirely interesting siege of unemployment seasoned with FBI harassment. The film builds to his eventual hearing with HUAC.
Winkler spent a fair amount of the budget recreating the early 1950s, much more than Martin Ritt did, or needed to do, for THE FRONT. I thought while watching the film that some of the women's hair styles were anachronistic, but I could easily be wrong. The period feel was somehow just missing, as was the dramatic edge of the film. DeNiro's character is weak and indecisive and spending so much time showing him not finding work just does not grab the audience the way it could. I give the film a flat +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.com
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