While it was fun seeing "Cradle Will Rock" with my mother-in-law who had some memories of the time period, I also did a huge paper on the WPA Arts Projects in graduate school (I recommend Jerry Mangione's book on the Federal Writer's Project as a good introduction) and am quite familiar with the personalities and facts involved so was curious to see it as a docudrama.

But we plus my parents felt the film was too agit-prop and the 20% of it that's over-the-top (aw come on, Hearst -- "Citizen Kane" foreshadowing, Rockefeller and a steel magnate at a Versailles costume party at the climax?) weakens the historical telling of a confluence of happenings -- the strangulation of the Federal Theater Project as a precursor victim to McCarthyism through the Dies Committee (including actual testimony wherein Christopher Marlowe was accused of being a Commie, as were the classic Greek dramatists) and Nelson Rockefeller's benighted sponsorship and then destruction of the Diego Rivera murals at Rockefeller Center.

Effectively written and directed by Tim Robbins is how passionately political the artists were, not as "card carrying Communists" per se, but as committed anti-Fascists and unionists in every aspect of their personal lives--as equally committed as they were to the magic of the theater as a communication device.

It does go over the top (including Susan Sarandon as an elegant Jewish courier to Mussolini selling stolen Old Masters), it is effective to show how TPTB were sympathetic to and profited from alliances with the fascists and how much they hated That Cripple in the White House.

Amidst the politics, the art for art's sake oversize egos of John Houseman and Orson Welles are also well portrayed, if a shade as buffoons compared to the grimness of everyone else around them, most of whom needed these WPA jobs to keep from starving (there's a toss away line that barely explains that FDR had to throw the Theater Project to the wolves in order to save his whole alphabet soup of programs for the vast majority).

It's also a bit over the top in painting those who testified at the Committee as probably crazy, but who knows. The Vanessa Redgrave character is silly but I guess it's making a point that Radical Chic is not new.

The climax of the factual occurrence, the one and only original performance of Marc Blitzstein's "ThreePenny Opera"-inspired political musical "Cradle Will Rock" is a delightful recreation, and from what I've read, true to the real story. This is definitely a very un-1990's story.

(Additional recommended background reading: "Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century" by Michael Denning (Verso, 1998, 556 pages)

(originally written 1/2/2000)

A wonderful, large cast recreates the story behind "The Cradle Will Rock" in this 1999 film, written and directed by Tim Robbins and starring Hank Azaria, Ruben Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Bill Murray, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Jamey Sheridan, Gretchen Mol, Emily Watson, Bob Balaban - etc.

Before the Depression and the turbulence of the 1930s, plays focused on the upper class. Everyone talked like Katharine Hepburn and people wore beautiful clothes. In the 1930s, the working man began to have a voice with the works of William Sarayoan, Clifford Odets, and Maxwell Anderson, among others. During the Depression, FDR started the WPA, and the Federal Theatre Project was one of its programs. "The Cradle Will Rock" is a leftist labor musical by Marc Blitzstein that is chosen by Hallie Flanagan, head of the FTP, to premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theater in New York. The politics of the FTP come under question, the theater is locked, and the actors are forbidden to appear on stage.

Orson Welles finds another theater for the production, and the story of the opening night performance, spontaneously performed by the cast from the audience as Blitzstein sat up on stage and played, was thought to be one of the most exciting moments in theater history by those who were there.

Robbins focuses on the controversy surrounding the musical but also on several other important events. Maybe, in the end, it is too much content, but fascinating nonetheless. Diego Rivera, an avowed Communist, played by Ruben Blades, is hired by Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusak) to paint a mural at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller, however, doesn't like the revolutionary tone of the mural. One of the actors, played by John Turturro, has to deal with a family that supports Mussolini's Black Shirts.

Marc Blitzstein, in focusing on a prostitute in "The Cradle Will Rock," asks us who the real prostitutes are, and Robbins shows us in his depictions of Rockefeller, Hearst, and the Senate committee before which Hallie Flanagan testifies, the thin and sometimes nonexistent line between art and politics.

The performances are terrific. Just about everyone is a standout, with John Turturro in an especially showy role as a man who wants to demonstrate principles and ethics to his children. Ruben Blades and Corina Katt Ayala could have been Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the resemblance is so strong. Vanessa Redgrave is excellent as Countess LaGrange, a wealthy woman who gets caught up in the proceedings. The gifted Broadway star Cherry Jones gives another strong performance as Hallie Flanagan, and Emily Watson is marvelous as Olive Stanton. The minute I heard the vocal rhythm of Angus Macfadyen, I knew he was playing Orson Welles. He does a beautiful job, as does Susan Sarandon as Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini's ex-mistress who came to the U.S. to sell Mussolini to the American people via William Randolph Hearst's newspapers.

Well worth seeing, and the period is well worth reading about.