Into the Red River: Adolphe Menjou Turns on John Cromwell

John Cromwell's Caged (1950) will play as part of Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist at 79th Locarno Film Festival, August 2026. — EK

Hearings regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry

Tuesday, October 21, 1947

House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Washington D.C.

Humphrey Bogart: "I'm No Communist!"

Transcribed from Photoplay, March 1948, Vol. 32, No. 4. A segment of this I have used in my upcoming, six-episode podcast about Hollywood Blacklist, to be released in June 2026. — EK

As the guy said to the warden, just before he was hanged: “This will teach me a lesson I’ll never forget.”

No, sir, I'll never forget the lesson that was taught to me in the year 1947, at Washington, D. C. When I got back to Hollywood, some friends sent me a mounted fish and underneath it was written: "If I hadn't opened my big mouth, I wouldn't be here."

The New York Times, the Herald Tribune and other reputable publications editorially had questioned the House Committee on Un-American Activities, warning that it was infringing on free speech. When a group of us Hollywood actors and actresses said the same thing, the roof fell in on us. In some fashion, I took the brunt of the attack. Suddenly, the plane that had flown us East became "Bogart's plane," carrying "Bogart's group." For once, top billing became embarrassing.

British Postwar Cinema: Great Expectations at BFI Southbank

Turn the Key Softly

Notes written for the monthly programme of BFI Southbank, May 2026. In May and June some of these films are also playing at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA, Filmhaus Nürnberg in Nuremberg, and Filmoteca Española in Madrid. – EK

Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema

Handpicked highlights from a recent retrospective at Locarno, revealing the humanism, exuberance, and existentialist edge of British classics.

From its very first edition, the 79-year-old Locarno Film Festival showed a genuine interest in British films, culminating in Hunted (1952) winning the festival’s top prize. Last year at the Swiss festival, we revisited that tradition with a retrospective structured around the question of life in Britain as reflected in postwar films set in contemporary times. This handpicked selection from that larger programme showcases precious 35mm prints from the collection of BFI National Archive and traces different shades of popular cinema from a golden period – films grounded in reality yet shaped by distinct generic, authorial, and formal convictions. Be it a comedy or a crime film, the shadow of the war continues to loom over characters’ motives and scars the urban landscapes they inhabit, where life and its meagre joys remain rationed. Including several rare gems, these works chart a nation’s rise from the ashes of conflict and follow its faltering steps toward reconstruction.

British Postwar Cinema: Great Expectations at Filmoteca Española

It Always Rains on Sunday

Notes written for the monthly catalogue of Filmoteca Española on Great Expectations, currently screening in Madrid as part of the May–June 2026 programme. — Ehsan Khoshbakht

1945 was a watershed moment for Britain. To this day, it is debated whether it marked the beginning of greatness or the start of decline. A 45-film retrospective at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival explored that postwar landscape. As Ian Christie, a prominent historian of British cinema, told me, postwar Britain was a place you would rather not be: grim, desolate, broken, grey, and somehow lost, after the wartime spirit of unity had become an old, undesired rag, quickly discarded.

At the same time, Britain—or rather British cinema—was brimming with greatness on screen, a greatness that, beyond a few household names, has remained criminally marginal. The films of this era reflect the victor’s landscape of loss and displacement. They chart a nation’s rise from the ashes of conflict and follow its faltering steps toward reconstruction against the backdrop of the British Empire’s decline.

A conversation with Henry K Miller about the British postwar cinema season at BFI Southbank

The Great Expectations season is underway at BFI Southbank. The Financial Times’ Henry K Miller has penned a fine piece about this smaller selection from a British postwar cinema retrospective of the same name, originally curated for the Locarno Film Festival (August 2025), where the full 45-film programme premiered. He asked me several questions before publishing his piece, and I reproduce my responses here to provide further clarity about the nature of the season and its origins. This was an email exchange.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026: Easy Living with Mitchell Leisen

Mitchell Leisen showing Ray Milland how to kiss Jean Arthur. Publicity set photo from Easy Living (1937)

Easy Living with Mitchell Leisen

Il Cinema Ritrovao XL retrospective

In a light, sophisticated no-man’s-land (yes, largely inhabited by women) between romantic comedy, screwball, and pure Paramount aestheticism, the cinema of Mitchell Leisen comes to life. A former silent-era costume and set designer, Leisen became renowned for classics such as Easy Living, Hold Back the Dawn, and Midnight, and was the only Hollywood director to sign his name in his films’ credits. No auteur theory was needed to recognise his unmistakable qualities: an effortless narrative flow, impeccable design, and sparkling, innuendo-laced dialogue – sometimes written by Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, or Charles Brackett – alongside heroines as charming as they were uncompromising. In his films, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, and Jean Arthur radiated wit, grace, and razor-sharp comic timing. They twisted conventions as their encounters with men – often played by Ray Milland or Fred MacMurray – spiralled from mishap to romantic resolution. This Il Cinema Ritrovato tribute presents a selection of Leisen’s classics in restored versions (courtesy of Universal), alongside rarely screened archival prints.

Red and Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist

Red and Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist is the title and the theme of the upcoming retrospective I have curated for the 79th edition of Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

The retrospective presents not only the key titles of the blacklist period but also traces the wartime origins of concern over communist infiltration in Hollywood and its international aftermath. The programme features nearly 50 titles, including feature films, shorts, documentaries, newsreels, and animation.

This retrospective differs from previous surveys of the same subject in three ways: