Rating: 
Summary: Terrific comedy/drama about a dark time in US history
Review: A cashier and small-time bookie (Woody Allen) agrees to front for black-listed writers (Michael Murphy, Remak Ramsey, Marvin Lichterman) in 1950s network TV, passing off their work as his own and keeping 10% of the fee. He becomes comfortable and enjoys his new fame, but his delight at living the good life and dating a beautiful script editor (Andrea Marcovicci) gradually wanes in the face of the seriousness of the McCarthy era blacklist, the coercive tactics of the federal government, and its devastating effect on the lives of people in show business.
This is one of Allen's rare appearances in a film that he did not write and direct. He has chosen his material well. Director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein, both blacklisted themselves, have crafted a marvelously entertaining and funny film that also dramatizes the tragedy of the blacklist. Allen makes the material his own so that it often seems as if he has written his own dialogue. Zero Mostel delivers a great performance as the blacklisted comedian Hecky Brown.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect presentation of the absurdity of the Blacklist.
Review: An exceptional expose on the absurdity of the Hollywood Blacklist. Allen is a restaurant cashier asked by a former high school chum to "front" as a writer so this gentleman can continue to write and get paid. It works so well, two more blacklist writers are added. It's funny to watch unassuming Allen develop an ego as he takes on the persona of an actual writer. In addition, there is a love interest which questions whether this love would grow if he were still a cashier.The second half of this movie really builds around the conflicts involved with whether to testify and "name names". The absurdity is so evident when Allen is forced to testify to escape punishment if he will "out" a purported communist who has just committed suicide. Zero Mostel also has a great role as an actor trying to get work. I strongly recommend this movie to challenge your beliefs about the blacklist. Also, make sure and stay for the credits to see the many involved who were blacklisted but were able to work on this movie. An exceptionally entertaining and educational movie.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect presentation of the absurdity of the Blacklist.
Review: An exceptional expose on the absurdity of the Hollywood Blacklist. Allen is a restaurant cashier asked by a former high school chum to "front" as a writer so this gentleman can continue to write and get paid. It works so well, two more blacklist writers are added. It's funny to watch unassuming Allen develop an ego as he takes on the persona of an actual writer. In addition, there is a love interest which questions whether this love would grow if he were still a cashier. The second half of this movie really builds around the conflicts involved with whether to testify and "name names". The absurdity is so evident when Allen is forced to testify to escape punishment if he will "out" a purported communist who has just committed suicide. Zero Mostel also has a great role as an actor trying to get work. I strongly recommend this movie to challenge your beliefs about the blacklist. Also, make sure and stay for the credits to see the many involved who were blacklisted but were able to work on this movie. An exceptionally entertaining and educational movie.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect presentation of the absurdity of the Blacklist.
Review: An exceptional expose on the absurdity of the Hollywood Blacklist. Allen is a restaurant cashier asked by a former high school chum to "front" as a writer so this gentleman can continue to write and get paid. It works so well, two more blacklist writers are added. It's funny to watch unassuming Allen develop an ego as he takes on the persona of an actual writer. In addition, there is a love interest which questions whether this love would grow if he were still a cashier. The second half of this movie really builds around the conflicts involved with whether to testify and "name names". The absurdity is so evident when Allen is forced to testify to escape punishment if he will "out" a purported communist who has just committed suicide. Zero Mostel also has a great role as an actor trying to get work. I strongly recommend this movie to challenge your beliefs about the blacklist. Also, make sure and stay for the credits to see the many involved who were blacklisted but were able to work on this movie. An exceptionally entertaining and educational movie.
Rating:
Summary: Woody At His Best...
Review: Anyone interested in Woody starring in films he neither wrote nor directed should take a look at this dynamite performance. You may say he's playing himself, but he expands his range nicely in 2 or 3 great scenes with Zero Mostel and of course his handling of the HUAC at the end. A sad but true plot, terrific supporting performances (even by the bad guys) and a "WOW!" ending make this a classic. Oh yes, Woody gets to be funny, sometimes very funny in many scenes. I guarantee two wisecracks in particular were ad-libs. Rent and enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Serious Allen film about blacklisting communists
Review: B&W. One of the older Allen Films. Allen is a front for some of his writer friends who are blacklisted and cannot publish under their own names. Of course it has its comic relief! Good film. END
Rating:
Summary: great film
Review: brilliant comedy about something that wasn't funn
Rating:
Summary: See it now, before this exciting moment passes
Review: I had to see this movie because my real life was based on the idea that this kind of excitement is usually reserved for the experiences that money can't buy. I was surprised when the Secret Service was interested in having me sign a release to allow appropriate authorities to examine a photocopy of my 1989-1999 psychiatric files to determine if I needed to be on a list of dangerous persons that the government would be trying to prevent from flying or entering special safe zones for politicians who would like to stay far away from crazy people who could totally blow their cool. Since politics lately is like the idea that a Vietnam war hero is most likely to be treated like the oxymoron it always had the potential to become, I could even complain that this movie did not come close to the issues which make the current situation more like the movie `Fahrenheit 9/11.' But the people who made this movie knew what they were doing to protect their right to say whatever they wanted to say.
That Woody Allen and Zero Mostel managed to make a serious movie, `The Front,' which is based on the experiences of the blacklisted writers, actors, and the director that could give meaning to ideas like taking the fifth and naming names, still seems important, even though official investigation of subversive activities in the entertainment industry is hardly what it used to be. In the field of philosophy, Martin Heidegger retains a bad reputation among some people for terminating certain academic careers by calling certain people un-German or Jewish when that was his job and what his Fuhrer wanted, so some highly educated people are more sensitive to this kind of issue than others. Woody Allen has the ideal character from a modern American standpoint, able to play complete apathy, concerned that anyone should be in trouble, but hardly prone to accept the network's advice, `Name Hecky Brown. He's dead.' Sometimes death is more than just nature's way of telling certain people to slow down, and being an expert in this kind of death is not as comic as we keep pretending. In another context, Woody Allen said, `Intellectuals are like the mafia; they only kill their own.' This is one of the truer things he ever said, possibly the truest in my case. This film is like a layer of history in the crusade against godless Communism that the United States of America went through in the 1950's to get to the position it is in today, which is a different crusade in which comedy can hardly be faulted for failing to keep up with what is going on in reality.
Zero Mostel pretending to be a spy, knocking on a door saying, `Open up, this is the police!' is also the kind of behavior I observe in neighbors who are trying to participate in my form of paranoia. Anyone who has ever been to Harvard Law School should have some way to keep from sympathizing too much with the character that Zero Mostel plays in this movie, but I should save my sympathy for other people who already spent all the money they ever had. If comedy were an art form, I still wouldn't be funny, and that is what really hurts me, but this DVD is great either way.
Rating:
Summary: Biased but important reminder of a dark time
Review: I suppose first up, given some of the comments here, that it's worthwhile acknowledging that communism was a threat to the United States and the West in the 1950s, and that the CPUSA played a subversive role in supporting the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union. How culpable were the one-time communist sympathisers in Hollywood is another matter entirely, however, and the crudity and narrow-mindedness of McCarthy was unworthy of a democratic nation.
That the real danger of Soviet-style communism (both to the Americanist flagwavers and the progressive liberals and workers who understandably despised both the right and the CPUSA left) doesn't come across in this film is perhaps understandable: the personal hurt felt by all those who made it may over-ride their own sense of complicity. Unfortunate, but there you are. And it is a comedy.
As for the film itself, Allen is brilliant as Howard Prince, although once again, he seems to be playing Woody. The real star, however, is Mostel, whose bravura performance throughout puts you through the wringer with him. The ending is ambiguous - his testimony before HUAC is supposedly carefully planned by him (without his counsel's knowledge), but instead Woody playing Woody (ie. with all the nervous tics and unfinished, stuttering sentences) gives the perhaps misleading impression that he's floundering, and therefore can leave viewers wondering whether his rebuke to the system was a political statement or merely a desperate outburst from one who was outwitted by a group of professionals.
Nevertheless, the film is v. enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie, short on features
Review: It is always interesting to watch an old movie about an older time. This 1976 examination of the McCarthy-era serves a couple of purposes. At a time when the cold war was focusing on East Asia, the time was right for a re-examation of the excesses of the 50s lest they fade from memory (something that still applies to today). We start off during the opening credits with newsreel scenes from 1952: Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, frontlines from the Korean War, Marilyn Monroe getting her star on Hollywood Blvd, the Rosenbergs being carted off to their execution, new cars, new homes complete with bomb shelters, etc. But the movie focusus on the blacklisitng of writers, directors, and actors in entertainment; specifically at NBC television. The details and the methodology of the blacklist are exact and don't involve a lot of exposition. Halfway through the film, you get a fairly complete picture of how the blacklist worked. The movie is also a good old-fashioned "Screw You!". The film was written by a blacklisted writer (who is obviously drawing from his own experience), directed by a blacklisted director and is populated (not exclusively) by blacklisted actors. The actors who were blacklisted get their own titles in the closing credits. And thirdly, (and most importantly) the movie is good entertainment. Amateur bookie Harold Prince, described by his brother as "a lowlife bum", cares about two things: making money with as little effort as possible and getting laid. He has no apparent talent and no political convictions. Prince's lifelong buddy Al Miller (played by Mike "Jack Tanner" Murphy) has problems of his own: despite award-winning work, he can't get a job writing because word is out that he marched in a May Day parade. Al makes a proposition. He writes the stuff, Harold submits it, and Harold gets to keep 10% of the money. By his own admission, Harold knows nothing and cares nothing about politics or the blacklist. ("Why don't you just sue someone?" he asks). But he doesn't protest: this is easy money, he takes it. When it works, he takes on more writers and finds himself getting both more easy money and more tail than he would have imagined; but as he starts to realize some of the bigger issues at stake, he very slowly (VERY slowly) starts developing a conscience. The humor comes from Prince, trying horribly to fake being a writer. The producers of the TV shows he writes for love him because he doesn't act like a writer. As he becomes more popular, he keeps trying to play it cool with varying results. He finds himself getting very used to success and keeps thinking he can just finesse his way out of whatever problems come up. There are also some priceless scenes with the writers he fronts for as he keeps needing to be reminded that he's not the talented one. Special paragraph for people who hate Woody Allen:
Don't let that stop you from seeing this. It is not "A Woody Allen Movie." (aka "Movie about being neurotic in New York") Woody Allen plays Prince. He doesn't write, he doesn't direct, he even tones down the uber-nebbish character he usually plays. With everything that's come up about Allen since 1975, it is easy to forget that the guy can be very, very funny. But even though Woody is the lead, Zero Mostel (in one of his last films) is the star of this picture. In a couple of scenes we watch him go from top-of-the-world everybody-loves-me, to I've-had-a-setback-but-they-still-love-me, to deep despair. This is made particularly poignent since it parallels Mostel's own career. Even if you don't know Mostel's story (he came up through vaudeville and when he was discharged for disability, spent the rest of the war with the USO entertaining the troops, became a huge splash in Hollywood then couldn't work for 10 years when a producer turned his name over the the House of Un-American Committee and Mostel refused to implicate any of his colleagues in the entertainment industry) his peformance is incredible to watch. You go from hating the guy, to loving him, to pitying him. His emotions really run the gamut. If there's one negative, it is that the DVD has NO features at all. If a flick ever cried out for a special edition, this is it. So give it a rent when you've got a free night. Its got everything: humor, sex, political intrigue, nostalgia, Danny Aiello as a guy selling fruit, Andrea Marcovicci's film debut, and other historical importance.
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