Debris, Heartbreak, Unhealed Wounds: The Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist

The Hollywood 19

 

These questions were sent to me by email by the Italian critic Maurizio Porro. If I have understood correctly, he used parts of my responses in his Corriere della Sera article on the forthcoming Hollywood Blacklist retrospective that I have curated for the Locarno Film Festival. — EK

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Are there obvious points of contact between the titles?

They’re all connected like the branches of a tree. Some of those branches are revealed to be connected by this programme for the first time.

The most immediate connection is the central narrative, which traces the cinema of the radical and the left in Hollywood from the US entry into the Second World War and its alliance with the USSR through to the formation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings for Hollywood, the blacklist that ensued, and eventually the gradual demise of this system of arbitrarily banning talent from working in the film and television industries.

These films are also connected by individuals—either in front of or behind the camera—who were targeted by the witch hunt. If you ask me why an Argentine film by a French director, such as Native Son, is in the programme, I would answer that the writer of the novel on which the film was based—the great Richard Wright—was also targeted during the McCarthy era. Unable to make the film in the US, it was produced in Argentina. Nobody dared to play the leading role, so Wright himself appeared in it. The programme therefore offers an expansive notion of the blacklist that even includes the jazz bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw. We will also screen one of his short films.

Like a Hunter at Night: Programming for Il Cinema Ritrovato

Screening of Guy Maddin's Careful at Sala Scorsese

 

I was interviewed by Spanish journalist David Pardillos Rodríguez for Infobae España via email. I share my responses here. — EK

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- Please introduce yourself to our readers who may not know you: what is your role, and what do you do for the festival? What is a typical day like for you as you prepare for this year’s edition?

Along with Gian Luca Farinelli, Cecilia Cenciarelli, and Mariann Lewinsky, I work as a co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato, the annual film festival in Bologna dedicated to film history, preservation, and restoration. There is no “typical” day in what we do. Our work more closely resembles the struggles of a hunter at night. You go out and seek the game. Many nights you come home empty-handed. Some nights you come home with something you believe can feed a large family with a large appetite for essential cinema. And then there are those rare nights when you capture the tiger. It involves watching a huge number of films and trying to figure out how they can be arranged into meaningful juxtapositions and illuminating strands.

Red & Black (2026) | New book on Hollywood blacklist

 

Red and Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist

Edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Published by Les éditions de l'oeil

Out in late July 2026 | Pre-order here (Shipped from August)

In the period now known as the McCarthy era, a climate of fear bordering on paranoia took root. Communists, it was claimed, had infiltrated Hollywood for its profits and its immense global propaganda power. They had to be purged. A series of governmental “hearings” followed, deliberately designed as, and functioning like trials. Hundreds suspected of being leftist “subversives” or “un-American” were effectively barred from employment in the film and television industries.

Red and Black, featuring a dozen new essays – several by leading scholars in the field – revisits the work of the Hollywood Left and the blacklist that haunted American cinema from 1947 well into the 1960s. It traces the careers of the blacklistees – from radical communists to committed liberals – before and during the witch-hunt, following them through years of anonymous work behind pseudonyms and, for some, exile.

The book presents a group portrait of figures such as Charles Chaplin, Dalton Trumbo, Joseph Losey, Adrian Scott, Paul Jarrico, John Berry, Hugo Butler, Cy Endfield, Bernard Vorhaus, and Irving Lerner at a moment when their civil liberties were under attack by the very institutions meant to protect them.

Full Line-up: Hollywood Blacklist Retrospective at Locarno

 

I have already shared news about Red and Black, a forthcoming programme on the Hollywood Left/leftism and the blacklist/McCarthyism, which will take place at the Locarno Film Festival from 5–15 August. (Previous posts included the accompanying podcast series, which you can still access here.)

Now I am delighted to share the complete programme.

The retrospective features 26 films that will be screened in 35mm (including several photochemical restorations), one 16mm print, and the remainder in excellent DCP presentations. In total, fifty or fifty one titles.

Highlights include very rare films by Losey, Vorhaus and Odets; brand-new restorations of A King in New York and The Hat; newly scanned, rarely seen period newsreels; and the world premieres of two documentaries: Dangerous Citizen: The Life and Times of Abraham Polonsky and La Liste Noire d’Hollywood: Par ceux qui l’ont vécue, about a remarkable 1983 gathering in Los Angeles attended by many of the last surviving victims of the Hollywood blacklist.

RIP Tony Rayns

Tony Rayns in Bologna in 2018

Il Cinema Ritrovato joins the international film community in mourning the great British film critic, historian, programmer, and lifelong champion of Asian cinema, Tony Rayns, whose passing was announced today.

Tony Rayns was the author of landmark books on Rainer Werner Fassbinder, In the Mood for Love, and Kenji Mizoguchi. His final book, published in 2024, was Just Like Starting Over: A Personal View of the Reinvention of Korean Cinema.

Since the 1970s, Rayns played a decisive role in the international recognition of Asian cinema and in transforming the Western world's understanding of films produced across Asia beyond Japan. His influence has been profound and culturally significant—something repeatedly acknowledged by generations of Asian filmmakers, some of whom insisted that only Rayns should prepare the English subtitles for their films.

"Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist" Trailer

This project encompasses my curatorial work, including a retrospective of more than 50 films at Locarno, a book published in Paris, and a podcast recorded in London, all three on Hollywood radicals and the ensuing blacklist.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026: Favourites & Discoveries Poll

Young Frankenstein turned 52; Mel Brookes turned 100; we turned 40. We're still the youngest.

"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing," I once heard King Vidor say in a cameo appearance. This year in Bologna, we certainly took him at his word. Not only did we overdo it, but so did the generally inhospitable weather and the drifting audience navigating the scorched cityscape between the festival's nine venues. Even before receiving a single vote, I was certain that a programme of this scale would make any truly cohesive result impossible. I wasn't entirely wrong.

Jazz 625: An Illustrated Talk

Behind the scene of episode 1, feat. Duke Ellington

Jazz 625: Music Giants on the Small Screen

An illustrated talk by Ehsan Khoshbakht at Close-Up Cinema on July 20

Its title alludes to the new 625-line broadcasting technology, which provided higher image quality. Jazz 625 captured the excitement of the newly launched BBC2 and showcased the cream of American – and occasionally British – musicians during their UK tours. This talk sheds light on the history of jazz on television through a close examination of Jazz 625, accompanied by rare excerpts from its episodes, featuring jazz giants such as Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Ben Webster, Bill Evans, and many more.

Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire (Richard Schickel, 1991)

This television documentary by Richard Schickel plays at Il Cinema Ritrovato on June 17, 2026. — EK

“Kiss me in my mouth as if we are lovers,” a 76-year-old Barbara Stanwyck – still provocatively breaking taboos – tells a priest (Richard Chamberlain) in the TV miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983). Rejected by him, she lambasts a vengeful God who cruelly punishes bodies and beauty – in effect a God who undoes a star, though in Stanwyck’s case not entirely successfully.

Blur-ray Release of Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio

For the first-time ever on home video, this collection presents the complete output of the iconoclastic independent Iranian film studio founded in the late 1950s by a towering figure of Iranian culture, Ebrahim Golestan. The studio’s earliest productions were documentaries that helped bring Iranian cinema to international attention, including The House Is Black, directed by the poet Forough Farrokhzad. From 1961, the studio turned to fiction. Two feature films were completed, including the pivotal Brick and Mirror – both of which are presented here. After years of circulation in compromised versions, sometimes altered by censorship, these classics, which map the origins of the Iranian New Wave, are now presented in restored and definitive versions. The nine films in this set move fluidly from prose poetry to political allegory, achieving remarkable results that have inspired generations of filmmakers from Abbas Kiarostami to Jonathan Glazer.

Red & Black: The Hollywood Blacklist Podcast

 

This six-part series on the Hollywood Left and the Blacklist is my first foray into the world of podcasting.

Written and produced for the Locarno Film Festival – where I have also curated a major retrospective on the same subject for the forthcoming 2026 edition – the series is narrated by Eve P. Thompson and sound-edited by Rob Szeliga.

The episodes are:

1. The Left on the Rise

2. From Hot War to Cold War: Years of Anxiety

3. The Cinema of the Left and the Radical

4. HUAC Attacks!

5. Blacklisted and Rejected: Fronts and Exiles

6. The New Left and Coming Out of Darkness

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | The catalogue

A Man on the Beach (Joseph Losey, 1955)

Restored in 4K in 2026 by Hammer Films at Silver Salt Restoration laboratory, from the original 35mm elements. Note written for the world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato. — EK

What at first seems to be a genteel story of an Englishwoman abroad being driven around in an antique Rolls-Royce by the Mediterranean Sea – all in calm, saturated Eastmancolor – is in fact a coldly executed heist plot that descends into murder.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 | Films on Film (16mm & 35mm)

This year, Il Cinema Ritrovato will present more than 120 titles on celluloid, the majority in 35mm and a dozen in 16mm. These are the films to be screened on film:

Newspaper ad for Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974)

Newspaper advertisement for the second theatrical run of Ebrahim Golestan’s Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974), which opened on 27 June 1978. (The film’s original release was on 10 December 1974.) In the atmosphere of mounting revolutionary fervour, it was this time promoted under the subtitle “The Secrets of the Nouveau Riche Society.” The film played for two weeks at the Moulin Rouge cinema.

The new restoration of the film, based on the shorter cut prepared for its 1978 reissue, will be screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part IV)

Eight Girls in a Boat

Final part of my recommendations from Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. — EK

31

Tol'able David

Dir: Henry King | USA, 1921

We dedicated a retrospective to Henry King’s sound films in 2019, and this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with what both King and his admirers regarded as his first true masterwork. The film bears touches of autobiography in its depiction of the pre-industrial rural milieu from which King himself emerged. It tells the story of a shy country youth who is branded a coward but ultimately proves his courage. To be screened in 35mm.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part III)

Tallinna Turg

Part three of what I – and, in some cases, colleagues I have spoken to – recommend from the 2026 edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. Parts one and two can be accessed here.

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La Grève des bonnes

Dir: Charles Lucien Lépine | France, 1906

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Les Effets de la foudre

Dir: Gaston Velle | France, 1906

For the Century of Cinema: 1906 series, Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko watched approximately 500 films and ultimately selected 64 to be screened across six programmes. The screenings are closely modelled on the way exhibitors of the period organised their programmes, recreating a rich variety of emotional and aesthetic effects by combining different forms of production, including comic sketches, dramas, féeries, and topical films.

Two major highlights are La Grève des bonnes and Les Effets de la foudre, both produced by Pathé Frères. In La Grève des bonnes [The Strike of the Housekeepers], working-class women fight against exploitative labour conditions, going so far as to beat up policemen. Les Effets de la foudre [The Effects of Lightning] is particularly remarkable for its inventive use of experimental techniques, including scratching the filmstrip with a sharp tool to create striking visual effects.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part II)

Mudar de Vida

My favourite things: Personal recommendations and favourite discoveries from among the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Part one here. – EK

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Anémic cinéma

Dir: Marcel Duchamp | France, 1926

The only film directed by Marcel Duchamp – the early Dadaist, later Surrealist, and, much later, solitary painter and chess player – this classic of the weird consists of two alternating sets of images: one of rotating and interlocking geometric forms, amounting to a kind of cinematic pop art avant la lettre; the other of words and sentences inscribed on spinning discs. The film offers an opportunity to confront one of cinema’s most fundamental questions: what are space and time in film? The restored 35mm print may contain the answer.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part I)

La Dérive

A selection of personal tips, recommendations, and favourite discoveries from the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026.

1

La Dérive

Dir: Paula Delsol | France, 1964

Biased historiography haS long buried the work of this suppressed member of the French New Wave, who, alongside Agnès Varda, was one of the movement’s few female directors. Time to rediscover this favourite of Godard and Truffaut.

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: