Review of The Front

It's not his movie, though Woody Allen agreed to appear in this story about a group of writers and performers who become blacklisted in the early 1950's for being communist sympathizers. As the lowly cashier of a small restaurant, Howard Prince (Allen) is approached by his good friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), who is a talented TV writer but has found himself out of work, rejected due to his communist leanings. Miller wants to hand off his scripts to Prince, using Howard as a front to pass them off as his own, and letting him take a percentage of the profits. Since Howard is in debt up to his eyeballs he accepts, and business becomes even more lucrative as other blacklisted talents request his services too. But things come to a head when Howard becomes confronted by a committee for UnAmerican Activities.

I don't usually care about politics one way or the other, but this was a rather strange and effective film, as it begins with a touch of comedy but eventually delves into more serious territory. Woody Allen has never been a great actor, but I liked watching him in what was something of a more dramatic departure for him. This also features Zero Mostel as a tragic actor who faces the wrath of the Red Scare himself, and Andrea Marcovicci as Allen's girl who falls for him when she thinks he's an actual writer. At the end of the film it is revealed that many of the cast and crew themselves had been blacklisted in the '50s. *** out of ****