ARGUING THE WORLD
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. First Run Films Director: Joseph Dorman Writer: Joseph Dorman Cast:Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol At: Film Forum, 209 W Houston St. NYC
They say that the Communist Party of the United States is made up today of 10,000 members, half of whom are FBI agents. Now, 10,000 out of a population of 270,000,000 wouldn't make much of a dent in this nation's political box office, especially since of the legitimate members, most are said to be little old ladies in tennis sneakers.
Things were different during the Depression. Not that Communism appealed even then to that many workers, employed or otherwise. But the ideology did cut some ice with urban intellectuals, which is not surprising considering that radicals often come from that class--think Robespierre, Danton, Franz Fanon, even Karl Marx himself.
In a most satisfying documentary produced by its writer- director, Joseph Dorman captures the flavor of the 1930s radicals by examining the lives of four of their major spokespersons, all New Yorkers of professorial bent, all members of the Jewish faith. Three are alive today; one has recently died. All are articulate about their beliefs and appear to have strong memories of those perfervid years which are not at all gone forever, as the three living subjects are still furiously writing today. The dramatis personae are Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell and Irving Howe. All came up from poverty, all went to the then-free City College in New York. Nowadays they and their acolytes would be considered members of the Old Left, their ideas having been picked up and thoroughly changed by organizations of the 1960s and 70s like Students for a Democratic Society: the New Left. One of these men, Irving Kristol, did a 180 degree turnaround and became a conservative. Nathan Glazer, author of groundbreaking texts in the field of sociology, became a moderate, as did Daniel Bell. Irving Howe did not change his beliefs all that much, remaining until his recent passing a leader of the American socialist movement.
Dorman's film, which is aptly edited by Jonathan Oppenheim, spends a good deal of time in the present, dominated by the recent views of the four who sit in their easy chairs discussing their lives. The interviews, which are topically organized as camera person Peter Browscombe switches his lens from one spokesman to another as each subject is considered, are laced with flashbacks to black-and- white snapshots and motion picture clips of demonstrations from the thirties. Occasionally we witness scenes from the fifties, as the treacherous Senator Joseph McCarthy, looking every bit the malicious and power-seeking politician, grills those accused of membership in the American Communist Party--many of whom invoke the Fifth Amendment as a defense against self-incrimination.
The strongest point made by the film is that most of these leftist protesters quit the party and became anti-Communist when they heard the remarkable news that their idol, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, did not turn out to be a Slavic Mother Teresa but was instead a paranoid, totalitarian despot who put thousands of innocents on trial and somehow got them to confess to preposterous charges of treason. Stalin's signing a non-aggression pact with Communism's arch-enemy, Adolph Hitler, did not help the cause.
"Arguing the World" is hardly for everyone. It is, after all, a documentary, a genre which does not exactly attract the "Jurassic Park" crowd. Even within that category, it focuses on men from academia, founders of highbrow periodicals like The Partisan Review, not a favorite subject of masses of Americans--many of whom probably hated school.
For its target audience, though, "Arguing the World" is a splendid look at four American geniuses, in large part answering the query: Why are so many intellectuals attracted to left-leaning politics? Not Rated. Running time: 106 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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