- Locarno Film Festival 2026: 17 Urgent Hollywood Blacklist Films (August 18, 2026)
Bold. Radical. Urgent. Those words could describe the last few years the Locarno Film Festival has screened its daring classic retrospectives. But they’ve never been felt more than in the latest edition curated by filmmaker, writer, and programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht.
Last year’s postwar Britain program included 45 films made in England between 1945 and 1960. The year before that, their Columbia 100 celebration “The Lady With the Torch” showcased 44 films made by the studio between 1929 and 1959. Like those two programs, this year’s retrospective—“Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist”—also offers keen insights into a certain era of filmmaking, but with a distinctly political urgency. The 50 films in this series are not limited to pictures made within the Hollywood studio system; rather, they run the gamut from early American independents to international cinema stained by the blood of the blacklist.
Watched in short succession, these films paint a bleak portrait of artistic resilience amidst an onslaught of political attacks from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and even those within the film industry itself. The retrospective, along with a six-episode podcast series and a nearly 300-page book featuring essays by film historians and critics like Imogen Sara Smith, Farran Smith Nehme, and Phuong Le, offers both an incisive look at the horrors of the recent past and also holds up a mirror to the startling parallels to the rising tide of fascism today.
By the time I arrived at the festival, about half of the screenings had already taken place. However, it felt like I had arrived at just the right time. Practically sprinting from my train, I made it to the GranRex cinema just in time for the world premiere of a documentary about blacklisted filmmaker Abraham Polonsky by the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller. This powerful new film proved to be the glue that held the whole retrospective together for me. With that, here are seventeen striking films I watched over six days rife with hopeful idealism, righteous anger and indignation, and even melancholic regret for a world that’s lost its way.
“Dangerous Citizen: The Life and Times of Abraham Polonsky” (2026)
Written and produced by noirchaeologist Eddie Muller, this documentary portrait of trailblazing blacklisted filmmaker Abraham Polonsky used excerpts from Polonsky’s films, archival interviews with Polonsky and long-time collaborators like “Odds Against Tomorrow” star and producer Harry Belafonte, plus new interviews with Muller, historian Imogen Sara Smith, David Mament, Oliver Stone, fellow blacklistee Lee Grant, and Julie Garfield, whose father John Garfield worked multiple times with Polonsky on films like “Body and Soul” and “Force of Evil,” to survey a key figure in a politically fraught time in Hollywood—and American—history that seems to largely be forgotten today. The doc thoroughly uses film clips to serve both as a slick overview of Polonsky’s career for those uninitiated, and as encouragement to rewatch his work with fresh eyes.
The film also offers a deft introduction to the history of the Hollywood Ten, of which Polonsky was a member. The doc doesn’t stop at the rise of the blacklist; it also surveys Polonsky’s later career, like his return to filmmaking with “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” in 1969 and his time as an instructor at various film schools. While the interviews with his film students are illuminating, as are the archival clips of Polonsky himself, the film’s most powerful moment belongs to Julie Garfield. While discussing the death of her father from a heart attack at the age of 39, just a year after he made his last film “He Ran All The Way,” she says, “I’m 72 years old, and I’ll never get over it.” It’s a reminder that while filmmakers like Polonsky had their careers deferred, others, like Garfield, lost their lives to the madness that HUAC wrought. Muller’s film was paired with a screening of Polonsky’s anti-capitalist noir “Force of Evil” (1948), featuring one of Garfield’s most nuanced and complex film performances.
“The Hollywood Blacklist: The Survivors Tell Their Stories” (2026)
A few days later, I watched another world premiere documentary: Marie-Dominique Montel and Christopher Jones’s “The Hollywood Blacklist: The Survivors Tell Their Stories.” The film is crafted from archival footage shot by film historian Pat McGilligan, who says, because of McCarthyism, “Hollywood was traumatized, and it changed forever,” during a reunion of about a hundred or so blacklistees who came together one day in Los Angeles in 1983. The rushes were improperly stored for decades, causing significant damage. The filmmakers entrusted Blake Jones to digitally restore the footage, using new software he designed for the task.
While the restored footage is sometimes wonky, the candid interviews it preserves with blacklistees like Ben and Norma Barzman, Jules Dassin, Sam Jaffe, Lester Cole, Karen Morley, Ring Larder, Jr., and Lionel Stander are invaluable for their insights and their righteous fury. The film itself feels like it was made for television, and often spends too much time foregrounding the history of the blacklist in its most basic terms, rather than using the oral histories this footage contains. As I watched, I kept wishing it were structured more like “Once Upon A Time In Harlem,” and just let the interviews and the footage of the reunion speak for themselves. This doc was shown as a double feature with filmmaker and actual Soviet spy Irving Lerner’s “City of Fear,” which is what Hollywood had become with the cloud of HUAC hovering over its head.
“The North Star” (1943)
A film made during World War II to remove distrust between the American people and the Soviet Union, who were our wartime allies, “The North Star” became controversial after the war and was re-edited to remove its propagandistic opening sequence of communal harmony on a collective farm. Described by Khoshbakht in his introduction as the “reddest director in Hollywood,” the film’s director, Lewis Milestone, was of Ukrainian-Jewish descent and firmly believed in the virtues of collectivism, as seen in the film’s true ensemble nature. Deemed by Khoshbakht as the closest Hollywood got to fully endorsing a Marxist-Leninist way of life, “The North Star” was written by Lillian Hellman, who was blacklisted for her communist views and political activism.
The first half of the film is very much a collectivist fever dream, presenting an idyllic vision of communal farm living as we’re introduced to its inhabitants, who include a pair of strong-willed school girls (Anne Baxter and Jane Withers), a pilot (Dana Andrews), an esteemed doctor (Walter Huston), a love mother (Ann Harding), an idealistic high school graduate (Farley Granger), and a wise old man (Walter Brennan, putting a singular spin on his beloved wise fool persona). This harmony gives way to the dissonance of invasion, and eventually the abject brutality of occupation. Children we saw at play in the first half are gunned down by the Nazi invaders and left to die alone in the cool stream that flows through the village. An oddity of the era, Milestone’s film is a social-realist wartime musical that, at its heart, is about what it takes to have the courage of your convictions.
“Salt of the Earth” (1954)
Screened on 35mm with an insightful introduction by critic Phuong Le, who also wrote about Jarrico in the retrospective companion book, this milestone of American independent film encapsulates several of the socialist themes that pulsate throughout the retrospective: workers’ rights, women’s rights, and immigrant rights. A collective work made equally by its director Herbert J. Biberman, screenwriter Michael Wilson, and producer Paul Jarrico, the film doesn’t just tell the stories of striking miners; it was made in collaboration with them as well. Although the cast is led by a few professional actors, like Rosaura Revueltas and Will Greer, most of the striking mineworkers and their wives depicted in the film were non-actors who actually worked the mines and fought for their union rights.
Shot in a style reminiscent of Italian neorealism, “Salt of the Earth” centers on a group of miners and their wives working in a mine in Zinc Town, New Mexico. Although their people had lived on this land long before the territory became part of the United States, they are treated like second-class citizens. Their homes do not have hot water, their contract with the company is not equal to that of the white unions, and their mine is considerably more dangerous. When they finally go on strike, the men have to learn to let go of their misogyny and let the women be equal participants in their shared future, or as one of the women says, “If we win we’ll win more than just the strike, we’ll win hope.” A resounding success of social criticism and artistic expression, the film was hampered financially by the theaters that owned the means of distribution and the studios that pressured them not to screen it. However, its spirit lives on in films like “Harlan County, U.S.A.” by Barbara Kopple and even Lucrecia Martel’s “Nuestra Tierra.”
“Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman” (1947)
As with “Salt of the Earth,” many of the films programmed focused specifically on the lives of women. I missed screenings of pivotal films like “Tender Comrade,” “Caged,” “Woman in Hiding,” and Ida Lupino’s directorial debut “Not Wanted,” but thankfully I had seen them before (although I would have loved to see them on the big screen and think about them in the context of the retrospective). However, I did catch a pristine 35mm screening of the subversive Susan Hayward weepie “Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman,” a film I had only seen once, years ago via a terrible rip on YouTube. Based on a story by Dorothy Parker with a screenplay co-written by blacklisted John Howard Lawson and directed by Stuart Heisler, the film was the first of several vehicles for Hayward in which she embodied a new kind of independent woman. She specialized in characters who bucked against the chains of patriarchy or found themselves crushed by its crippling weight.
On its surface, “Smash-Up” is a prototypical Hollywood melodrama with big emotions, crushing drama, and a star-crossed love affair. Yet, Parker et al use this template to smash up conventions and explore complex themes like female isolation, the rise of rampant consumerism, and the suffocating grasp of patriarchy in post-war America. Loosely based on the tumultuous life of Bing Crosby’s first wife Dixie Lee, Hayward stars as Angie Evans, a popular nightclub singer who gives up her promising career to support the dreams of her husband Ken (Lee Bowman) and raise their child. Soon finds herself drawn into despair and alcoholism after the demands of Ken’s rising radio stardom lead him to neglect her emotional needs. The glamorous Hayward is unafraid of pushing herself to the limits of this part; her body becomes at times a limp rag, ravaged by alcoholism, while at other times she rages with the fury of self-hatred. For this fearless performance, she received her first of five Oscar nominations for Best Actress (eventually winning the award in 1958 for “I Want to Live!”). Along with Hayward’s gripping performance, Marsha Hunt, who would later be blacklisted for her staunch beliefs, offers a counternarrative to Angie’s miserable housewife, as a radio executive who also finds herself eaten up and spit back out by the cold indifference of patriarchy.
This screening was preceded by a 35mm print of the short musical film “Symphony of Swing,” featuring bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw, who went into self-imposed exile in Spain after being blacklisted in 1953.
“The Young One” (1960)
This rarely screened gem from the early days of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican era was a collaboration between blacklisted writer Hugo Butler and producer George P. Werker. Screened on 35mm from a print on loan from the Harvard Film Archive, this film was a real highlight in the middle of the retrospective, inspiring many spirited discussions from the nearly sold-out crowd afterward.
A parable about the insidious, festering nature of American racism during the mid-century mixed with Buñuel fascination with both the power and fragility of female virginity the film centers on three main characters: Traver (Bernie Hamilton), a Black clarinetist on the run after he’s accused of raping a white woman; Hap (the always great Zachary Scott), the irascible game warden of a private island off the Carolina coast: and his ward Evvie (Key Meersman), whose recently deceased grandfather was the handyman on the island. The filmmakers use these three characters to explore the complex balance of power in American society. Hap, an illiterate grouch, holds both Evvie’s and Traver’s future in his greasy hands. Evvie, whose “innocence” is taken by Hap the first chance he gets, is the only person who can help Traver make it off the island alive, while Traver must rely on Evvie to do the right thing and help him escape.
These power dynamics are distilled in two powerful sequences. In one, Traver explains that “It’s easy for him to kill me, but hard for me to kill him so he still has the power.” In the other, Traver needs Evvie to untie him so he has a chance to flee while Hap and his cronies are distracted by drink. When Evvie hesitates, saying “They’ll hit me,” he replies, “If they get me to town, they’ll kill me.” The church also catches strays in the form of a priest (Claudio Brook) who is willing to give Travers the benefit of the doubt about his innocence, but won’t sleep on the same mattress as him. The slippery subject of systemic racism and the violence it evokes was also explored in other retrospective selections like “Native Son,” in which author Richard Wright stars in the filmic adaptation of his own novel, and the William Faulkner adaptation “Intruder in the Dust,” which features a trailblazing turn from Juano Hernandez.
“Stranger On The Prowl” (1952)
“They’re all waiting for me to die. I have a right to be hungry. I have a right to eat. I have a right to live,” says the unnamed stranger (a wonderfully restrained Paul Muni) in blacklisted director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Ben Barzman’s insightful spin on Italian neorealist drama. Muni’s stranger finds himself trying to make money for a boat fare in a bombed out post-war town where another lost soul, a young boy named Giacamo (Vittorio Manunta) hopes to earn enough from playing marbles to attend a traveling circus. Soon these two lives collide as the film explores the hopeful innocence of childhood and the hopeless frustration of a new generation of forgotten men.
A film that finds itself in a curious liminal space between the class conscious films of Losey’s later career, like “The Servant” and “The Go-Between” (minus the psychosexuality) and the post-war Italian neorealist films like “Shoeshine,” “Rome, Open City,” and “Bicycle Thieves,” it also at times harkens back to another social realist film starring Muni, the depression era prison reform drama “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” After Muni’s stranger accidentally kills a cheese shop owner out of hunger and flees the scene, a cop asks a bystander why he did not report that the stranger had a gun, admonishing him because he “might have prevented a murder.” The man retorts, “Why didn’t you give him some cheese? You might have prevented a murder.”
The 35mm screening began with an emotional Q&A between Khoshbakht and Losey’s son Gavrik Losey, who tearfully asked: “How do you sum up a life in ten minutes?”
“He Who Must Die” (1957)
Also co-written by Barzman, along with fellow blacklist-exiled director Jules Dassin, “He Who Must Die” adapts Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1948 novel “Christ Recrucified” into a parable about modern-day hypocrisy, rife with socialist and pro-immigrant themes, as well as anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideology. Set in the 1920s during the Turkish occupation, the film centers on a small Greek town preparing for its annual passion play about St. Elijah. Their preparations are interrupted by a group of starving refugees, the only survivors of a village that resisted occupation, who have set up camp on the outskirts of town. While the town at first seeks to give them shelter, their corrupt priest (Fernand Ledoux) and collaborating leader (Gert Froebe) oppose the act of charity.
The humble, stuttering shepherd (Pierre Vaneck) picked to play Christ in the passion play becomes Jesus incarnate, advocating for the poor and the weary, while a war widow turned sex worker (Melina Mercouri) is tapped to play Mary Magdalene, showing a courage of conviction that proves to be much stronger than those who judge her for how she earns her living. The sharp script not only cuts to the hypocrisy at the center of the church, the aristocracy, and the occupying forces who are “just following order,” but also a whole world that has turned its back on Christ’s socialist teachings. In the film’s dynamic climax, one stalwart young man decries the feckless priest, insisting that “If Jesus came back to Earth today, he’d be crucified again and you would lead the way.”
“Welcome Mr. Marshall!” (1953)
Directed by Luis García Berlanga and co-written by Juan Antonio Bardem (Javier Bardem’s uncle), this Spanish satire sees a Castilian village desperately pretend to be an Andalusian village in an attempt to seem “authentically Spanish” after they hear that American officials in charge of allocating funds via the Marshall Plan will be passing through. In his introduction, Khoshbakht said he wanted to screen this film for one thirty-second sequence in which a bigoted priest has a nightmare about the impending Americans that imagines them as a HUAC-like tribunal dressed up in hoods that evoke the KKK.
The dream sequences in the film not only parody popular American films like noir, westerns, and backstage musicals, but also criticize Spain’s colonial past and the parallels between McCarthyism in the U.S. and the Spanish Inquisition. Ultimately, the film uses its sharp humor not only to examine both the false hope that is the “American Dream” and its own country’s hypocrisy and damaging attempt at homogenization of its rich and varied culture, but also to make the case that Spain should not allow itself to be dependent on aid from the United States. It proudly declares that the Spanish people unite with all their specificity intact as they stand proud and walk into the future on their own.
“Spain Again” (1969)
Blacklisted screenwriter Alvah Bessi, a member of the Hollywood Ten, mined his own experiences during the Spanish Civil War for this melancholic drama. Director Jaime Camino keeps this largely forgotten gem humming along in a striking, yet minor, key and offers a wonderful showcase for Mark Stevens, who himself could be described as largely forgotten. One of the industry’s first triple threats, Stevens was a popular television actor during the 1950s and also directed several singular genre films, including the Alaska-set noir “Cry Vengeance.” He stars as a soulful neurosurgeon, Dr. David Foster, who has returned to Spain for a medical conference, his first time back in the country since he fought as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
While a romantic subplot where Foster finds himself drawn to the daughter of his one-time lover, played by flamenco dancer Manuela Vargas, doesn’t really hold up all that well, the film’s politics remain as sharp as ever. When Foster says it was his duty as a doctor to go and serve in the war, his colleague disagrees, asserting that “medicine and politics don’t mix.” It’s hard not to see the scene through the parallel lens of contemporary films like the documentary “American Doctor,” which follows three surgeons who traveled to Gaza to aid those injured by the ongoing genocide. “We helped people who were suffering,” Foster retorts. In another scene, a colleague mournfully declares he hopes those crazy times won’t ever come back; Foster ruefully reminds him that they have “in Vietnam.” A tender elegy for the broken ideals of this country’s leftist past, Camino’s film reminds us that history is indeed a circle, and that fascists will rise again if we don’t keep fighting.
“We Were Strangers” (1949)
This John Houston joint was described by Khoshbakht as one of the “forgotten films of the Red Scare era.” A critical and box office failure, it’s a curious mixture of staunch political commentary and traditional Hollywood adventure filmmaking. Featuring yet another tremendous turn from the great John Garfield, already looked ravaged by the stress of HUAC persecution that would in just a few years claim his life, the film is set in 1933 during the waning days of Machado’s dictatorship. Inspired by a true story, Garfield plays a Cuban-American who returns to Havana and joins a subversive group of guerrillas plotting to liberate his country.
The film looks back at the pre-WWII leftist liberation movements much like “Spain Again” does, but with a still hopeful eye towards the future. Although star Jennifer Jones affects a creaky accent to play China, a bank employee radicalized after she sees her younger brother gunned down on the steps of his university by a seedy government official (a never-better Pedro Armendáriz) solely for passing out leaflets, she gives a typically fiery performance (and even gets to wield a machine gun in the film’s gonzo finale). The film also features a standout supporting turn from heartthrob Gilbert Roland as a beefy partisan and silent film legend Ramon Novarro as the leader of the underground movement. As the group begins to lose heart after their plot goes awry, China reminds them that failing is not a disgrace; it’s only a disgrace if you don’t try.
“Point of Order” (1964)
Introduced by RogerEbert.com Associate Editor Robert Daniels and screened on 35mm, Emile de Antonio and Dan Talbot’s fiery archival documentary uses hours of footage from the kinescope recordings of the televised 1954 Army–McCarthy hearings to examine what was then a dark plot on America’s recent past. A dizzying feat of editing, the filmmakers craft a gripping courtroom drama from this footage, out of testimonies by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Senator Stuart Symington, and other key figures from the hearings, which, when it was first broadcast live on television, had been watched by approximately 27 million viewers. A decade later, when the film hit theaters, McCarthy was dead, the blacklist had largely been broken, and screenwriters like Dalton Trumbo and other blacklistees were working regularly again in Hollywood.
It’s hard not to look back at this footage and see nothing but a circus full of pompous men, whose unchecked lust for power and lack of decency destroyed countless lives across the country, the impact of which still reverberates to this day. It’s easy to see parallels in how politics play out in our country today, where hearings are still full of obfuscation, personal vendettas, and perversions of power, rather than any real concern for the well-being of the citizens these people are meant to govern. The echoes of McCarthy’s attacks not just on Hollywood, but anyone on the American Left, including those who worked in higher education, can be seen today with Governor DeSantis’ dismantling of free speech at New College in Florida. Films like “Point of Order” give us a glimpse back at a time that seems a long time ago, and urge us not to forget the sins of the past lest we be doomed to repeat them.
“Red Hollywood” (1996)
Another feat of editing, Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s 1996 documentary “Red Hollywood,” which is narrated by the great Billy Woodberry, weaves archival interviews, new interviews, and clips from over forty movies made by blacklisted artists like Paul Jarrico, Alfred Levitt, Ring Lardner, Jr., and Abraham Polonsky, into a showcase of just how ideals of the Hollywood Left were reflected in the cinema they made. The film is structured in sections about war, class, race, the sexes, and crime as it looks at the way these filmmakers tried to address the fractured social systems that had been failing the people of this country at least since the Great Depression (but honestly, probably always if you were a rich white man). You’ll walk away from this film with a massive watch list of subversive classic films; you’ll also be reminded of just how smart studio-made Hollywood films used to be. These filmmakers made movies for adult audiences about adult themes. Films that were entertaining and made you think all at the same time.
While talking about the crime pictures he wrote, Polonsky shares maybe my favorite tidbit from any of the films I watched during this retrospective: “All films about crime are about capitalism, because capitalism is about crime. I mean, quote-un-quote, morally speaking. At least, that’s what I used to think. Now I’m convinced.” Watching these formerly blacklisted filmmakers speak so eloquently about the work they made and their careers that were deferred or outright destroyed by McCarthyism, one feels the loss of intellect in American pop culture acutely.
“High Noon” (1952)
Adapted by Carl Foreman from John W. Cunningham’s 1947 short story “The Tin Star,” “High Noon” is probably one of the most well-known films screened during the retrospective. A winner of four Oscars, including Best Actor for star Gary Cooper as the iconic Marshal Will Kane, a man who must stand alone when his town turns its back on him after a murderer he sent to jail has been set free. Returning on the noon train, Kane spends the hour after his wedding to a young Quaker named Amy (Grace Kelly) trying ( and failing) to raise a posse to face the killer and his gang, despite Kane having helped make the town a place where a “decent woman can walk down the street alone.”
It’s hard not to read the film as an allegory about the filmmakers who found themselves caught up with HUAC (and many books have been written on this very subject). Screenwriter Foreman was called to testify during the film’s production, and although he finished his work on the film, he was eventually labeled “uncooperative witness.” He fled to the U.K., where he could still find work, although he often had to use a false name. A few years later, Foreman co-wrote the screenplay for “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” with fellow blacklistee Michael Wilson (who also penned the retrospective title “Salt of the Earth”). The two did not receive official recognition from the Academy until 1984. Allegedly, Foreman was only told he’d finally be recognized for his work on the Best Picture winner the day before he died from a brain tumor.
“Silver Lode” (1954)
Looking at the plot of “Silver Lode,” this Allan Dawn western appears to be a knock-off of “High Noon.” However, viewed within days of each other, it proves to be a much richer film than that would imply. This was a film I had seen many years ago back when I did weekly Sunday Morning Western screenings; I was excited to rewatch it not just because it was screening on 35mm, but also because I had never thought of the film in terms of the blacklist before its inclusion in the retrospective (despite the lead villain’s name being McCarty!). Written by Karen DeWolf, whose own blacklisting is a point of contention among scholars, the subversive genre flick is a personal favorite of director Martin Scorsese.
The always underrated John Payne stars as Dan Ballard, a relative newcomer to the titular small Nevada town, who is set to marry Rose (Lizabeth Scott), the daughter of its most prominent citizen, on the Fourth of July. Before the wedding can take place, an alleged Marshal named Fred McCarty (Dan Duryea) arrives with two deputies accusing Ballard of murder and theft. At first the townspeople stand by Ballard, but soon, as McCarty’s lies spread, they turn their back on him one by one. At one point Ballard has to shoot his good friend in order to defend himself, and the townspeople ask, “How can you trust someone who will shoot his best friend?” The film, however, asks, “How do you trust someone who would turn on his best friend?”
“Crossfire” (1947)
Based on a novel by Richard Brooks, “Crossfire” is both a seminal post-war film noir and an awards-worthy social picture. A B-film that ultimately netted RKO five Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture and one for Robert Ryan’s incredible performance, it’s a curious film that straddles many strains of Old Hollywood political history and censorship. In Brooks’ original novel, the victim of the hate crime at the center of the story was homosexual. Due to the Hays Code, this had to be changed, as homosexuality was considered “sexual perversion” and forbidden on screen. Although this subtext is hinted at, the victim is changed to a Jewish man, allowing the film to address growing antisemitism and xenophobia in the post-war years, all while transfixing the audience with J. Roy Hunt’s bewitching high-contrast black and white cinematography.
Both screenwriter John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk were blacklisted shortly after the film became an unexpected success. One of the infamous Hollywood Ten, men who refused to name names and spent time in jail for contempt of Congress, a few years later, when called again before HUAC, Dmytryk named over fifteen individuals. This included screenwriter Arnold Manoff, who died before he ever saw his real name used again on screen; screenwriter John Howard Lawson; and director Jules Dassin, who fled to Europe to keep working. Years later, Dmytryk and Abraham Polonsky were both professors at USC, where it’s said you never wanted to be in a hallway with both of them at the same time. While Dmytryk’s story shows the shame of being the man who betrays his friends, his continued success, as well as others who named names, remains one of Hollywood’s biggest stains, even if the industry refuses to actually contend with it.
“The Front” (1976)
One of the last films screened during the retrospective, this new restoration played to a sold-out afternoon crowd. Written by blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein, directed by blacklisted director Martin Ritt, and starring several one-time blacklistees (Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough, after watching “The Front,” even with its studio-imposed comical tone, you’ll see why someone like Polonsky would never want to be in a room with someone like Dmytryk, who lost the courage of conviction (or maybe never had it to begin with?) and named names in order to keep his career. While the witty bon mots of star Woody Allen, who plays Howard Prince, a restaurant cashier and small-time bookie turned front for a bevy of blacklisted screenwriters, haven’t aged all that well, the serious undertones of the film still carry weight.
It is particularly felt in Mostel’s melancholic performance as Hecky Brown (real name Herschel Bronstein), a popular television comic who loses more than just his career to the blacklist. Inspired by his real-life friend Philip Loeb, who died by suicide after being blacklisted, Mostel’s performance acutely distills just how violent the blacklist really was. Years later, he told his biographer he did the film because “It’s part of this country, and a lot of kids don’t even realize that blacklisting ever existed.” I watched “The Front” on my last day at Locarno, but this quote had me thinking about something Eddie Muller said during his introduction for “Dangerous Citizen” on my first day. He told of a young man who came up to him during a screening of a Polonsky film and couldn’t believe that the blacklist was real, that our government would really jail its own citizens and punish them for their free speech. Muller said that night he knew his job was not done.
Khoshbakht ended his final introduction saying he hoped that “good, old American sense” would come back. As an American whose roots in the country date back to the 1600s, I’m not so sure we ever had it to begin with, although we’ve always been good at selling that illusion of ourselves. My takeaway is that retrospectives like this one, filled with films made by fearless artists who saw the motion picture as an art form that could push for social change and who were then punished by their own government for their ideals, remind us that the American Dream is a fragile, if not a completely false, notion. And that history must be kept alive, or else we are doomed to repeat it.
- Gorgeous Platformer “Duskfade” Has Echoes of “Kingdom Hearts” (August 18, 2026)
At the end of last week, gamers lost their minds at the reveal of some new footage from the monumentally anticipated “Kingdom Hearts IV,” a title that fans of the legendary Disney franchise have been hoping to play for years now. The clip included not just some nice Goofy and Donald Duck action, but the reveal that the world of “Coco” would factor into the gameplay. The small problem is that we’re probably not playing around in this Square Enix sandbox until the end of 2027, more than a year from now.
Until then, fans should spend some time in the throwback 3d action-platformer “Duskfade,” now available on multiple platforms, and clearly inspired by “KH”. There’s no Mickey Mouse here, but there is a sword that can be used as a key, and combat that feels super “Hearts,” alongside platformer elements that reminded me of formative early PS2 games like “Jak & Daxter” and “Ratchet & Clank.” It’s got some janky combat, but if you’re an old-fashioned (or just old) gamer like me, one who would put the upcoming “Rayman Legends: Retold” high on a list of anticipated games, then this is a good pick-up, especially at a relatively low price.
Developed by Weird Beluga and published by Fireshine Games, “Duskfade” is the story of Zirian, whose sister is trapped in a Clock Tower that has somehow fractured reality. Chains attached to the clock tower need to be destroyed to free her, sending Zirian to different regions to do so, where he learns new powers to navigate the terrain and destroy the enemies in front of him.
The game’s strongest asset is its look, which sometimes resembles Square Enix games like “Kingdom Hearts” and “Final Fantasy,” but also has a hand-drawn, painter-like aesthetic that recalls my personal favorite animation house, Studio Ghibli. Every problem one has with this game washes away in the beautiful backgrounds that the developers keep refreshing in terms of style: In one level, you’ll be deep in a forest; in another, high above the clouds. It’s a game of constant movement, like a lot of platformers, and the space you’re moving through is so lovingly rendered that the clunky aspects don’t poison the overall experience.
To be fair, they’re definitely there. Zirian has a “clockwork sword” that he uses to defeat the mostly blue-hued creatures who come his way, but the combat is truly inconsistent, both in mechanics and physics. As the game progresses, Zirian gets more powerful with new toys and weapons, but the combat, even in repetitive boss battles, never feels as refined as one would hope. It’s a game that works better in exploration—jumping, grapple hooking, riding rails—than it does swinging swords at enemies that don’t feel particularly 3D.
As for the storytelling, there are some strong cut scenes that shift “Duskfade” into a coming-of-age story, a tale of a young man forced into heroism for the first time, and it’s effective for the game’s relatively modest ambition. At first, I didn’t care much about the story, but it develops nicely, especially for a game that seems slight on storytelling to start.
At $30, this isn’t something meant to take over your life for the long term, but it’s a nice appetizer to one of the busiest gaming seasons in history. As “Wolverine,” “Control Resonant,” “Grand Theft Auto VI,” and a dozen more titles of interest loom on the horizon, it’s nice to have a game that reminds players of the worlds that made them gamers in the first place.
The publisher provided a review copy of this title.
- An Incredible Light: Hayden Panettiere (1989-2026) (August 17, 2026)
The world was saddened Sunday night to learn of the death of “Heroes,” “Scream 4,” and “Nashville” star Hayden Panettiere at the age of 36. While the cause of death isn’t official, the Greenville Police Department confirmed on Monday morning that no foul play was suspected, and People reported that officials were heard on the 911 call using the words “overdose” and “cardiac arrest,” making an undeniable tragedy even sadder. A friend and colleague at Variety, Marlow Stern put it perfectly in his piece last night titled “Hollywood Failed Hayden Panettiere.” He cites several heartbreaking passages from Panettiere’s memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning, released in May of this year, in which the star chronicled a history of abuse, alcoholism, and depression. So many of her colleagues and co-stars this morning are sharing their memories of the star, commenting on what a bright light she was on set and in the community. It’s a tragedy that her light is gone.
Sadly, Hayden Panettiere is another story of a child actress who wasn’t protected enough as she grew up on screen. Her first credit was actually in a Playskool commercial when she wasn’t even a year old. At the age of five, she started performing on “One Life to Live,” maintaining the role until 1997, and jumping soap operas to “Guiding Light” from 1996 to 2000. When she landed what many consider her breakthough role in the NBC mega-hit “Heroes” in 2006, she had already amassed an insane resume for a teenager, appearing in “Ally McBeal,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Remember the Titans,” “Ice Princess,” “Racing Stripes,” and voice work for “A Bug’s Life” and “Dinosaur.”
But it was the words “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” that made Panettiere a household name. The first season of “Heroes” was the kind of phenomenon that doesn’t really seem possible on network TV twenty years later, averaging 14.3 million viewers, the highest rating for a new NBC show in five years. It was the network’s biggest hit of the 2006-2007 season, old or new, and it made Panettiere a fixture at events like Comic-Con and Fan Expo for the rest of her life. That the show kind of dissolved in season two and sputtered through two more after that didn’t help Panettiere avoid typecasting as “the cheerleader,” but she broke out of that in 2012 with another solid ABC hit in the drama “Nashville,” which ran for six successful seasons.
On film, she was a highlight of “Scream 4,” returning to the franchise after a break from acting to appear in “Scream 6.” She did some strong voice work throughout her career, including “Alpha and Omega” and “Hoodwinked Too!,” but gamers will always remember her as a major character in the hit “Until Dawn,” as well as voice work in four “Kingdom Hearts” entries.
Hayden Panettiere was also an activist, supporting Save the Whales campaigns and encouraging young people to vote. She was a teen ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation and fought for victims of domestic violence. She used her star power for good.
Even before her memoir, Panettiere was open about her struggles, discussing post-partum depression on television, and even revealing that the condition, along with her addiction issues, forced her to give up custody of her daughter.
On Sunday night, Hayden Panettiere’s father wrote in a statement to the BBC: “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her and to the millions who watched her onscreen.”
Our deepest condolences to her friends, family, and fans.
- How I Spent Another Summer Vacation At The Drive-In (August 17, 2026)
My wife, Kerry, and I embarked on another tour of drive-in theaters across the States, and while this was a shorter drive than the last time (only four theaters visited, as opposed to six on the last one), they all offered something that made me think of the nostalgia factor of a drive-in (where it exists and where it does not) as well as how these facilities and their owners have adapted to modern audiences and the drastic steps they have taken to keep these landmarks open.
I often see articles written in local papers about their local drive-ins and how they transport people “back in time.” I get what they mean, but my only problem with this premise is that drive-ins never went away. Many have survived through the decades, and younger generations of drive-in owners keep stepping in to save them when it looks like they might close down. Over the last two decades, the owners (the ones who could afford it anyway) have adopted digital projection and now rely on social media videos to advertise and get the word out about last-minute closings due to weather. You can even order your tickets online and (sometimes) your food on an app.
Of course, modern-day drive-ins still love to show the old “Let’s All Go To the Lobby” bumper between shows, as well as the 10-minute Intermission reel you see in “Grease,” but there is one thing they all still do that multiplexes will not do anymore: double features. This is the real nostalgia of it all. Two movies for the price of one is something you can pretty much only get at a drive-in these days.
The Starlite Drive-In in Butler, PA. (Photo: Collin Souter)
Our first stop was the Starlite Drive-In in Butler, PA, which had three screens. One look at their condition and the surroundings as a whole, and you can see the story of how this drive-in tried to adapt and survive by adding more viewing options. Screen 1 is the main big screen (showing “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “Motor City”). Screen 2 stands further back (showing “Moana” and “Toy Story 5”). Screen 3 (showing “The Odyssey” only) also stands further back, to the left of Screen 2. Looking at the structure of these latter two screens, you can see they might have been late additions to help bring in more people. Each is built on five tree logs, with a screen made up of over a dozen white panels where you can plainly see the cracks. It’s downright charming.
We parked at screen 2, which also happens to be the smallest drive-in screen I have ever encountered. It felt intimate, like being in someone’s backyard. I have heard drive-in owners shun the idea of multi-screen drive-ins, and I never understood why, until now. At Starlite, all three screens face the same direction. From our vantage point, we could see “Moana” and “Toy Story 5” just fine on Screen 2, but we could also plainly see the bottom half of Screen 1 in the distance. While cowgirl Jessie has her emotional moment of realization under the tire swing in “Toy Story 5,” we could also watch a woman getting brutally attacked in “Motor City.”
Then there is the problem of noise bleed. While trying to get lost in Christopher Nolan’s sprawling epic, you also have to endure having to hear “How Far I’ll Go” blasting a short distance away, which could actually be funny if it lands during a scene of Odysseus on a boat sailing the high seas. Surprisingly, this is the first time I have ever encountered this problem at a multi-screen drive-in. Most people don’t sit in their cars anymore. They sit outside with their radios or their SUVs blasting the soundtracks. We learned that there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to do the multi-screen set-up. They did, however, have a great concession stand and a Ms. Pac-Man.
Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theater in Orefield, PA. (Photo: Collin Souter)
The oldest drive-in in America is Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theater in Orefield, PA. It was the second drive-in ever built (the first was in Pennsauken, NJ in 1933), and has been going strong since 1934. Well, mostly strong. The theater was dangerously close to shutting down until 2022, when it was saved by local drive-in enthusiasts, Lauren McChesney and Matt McClanahan, a married couple who have been running it with love and care ever since.
They have partnered with local food vendors to spice up their concession menu and, on this particular night (when we watched “Spider-Man” and “Hokum”), set up a separate table to support a local charity. Throughout the evening, I kept thinking about this place as a kind of sacred ground, that a film like “It Happened One Night” might have played here in its very first run, and all the different kinds of cars that have passed through these grounds over the last 92 years.
Shankweiler’s is beautiful. Its grounds are a combination of grass and gravel, with some lovely greenery surrounding the area. The opening announcements are often on-the-fly, personable and full of good humor. The staff is extremely helpful in making sure no one’s views of the screen are obstructed by people putting their hatchbacks up. Their concession stand is quite small, leaving no room for a Ms. Pac-Man, but the menu remains plentiful.
And here’s something that can only happen in an outdoor setting (for better or worse). During “Hokum,” our second feature, a fog rolled in and almost engulfed the place. It cast a beautiful light shaft from the projector during intermission and made “Hokum” look like a horror film made in the ’70s (totally appropriate for a gothic haunted-hotel tale set in Ireland). Later on, the fog gave the film a 3-D effect when the main character (Adam Scott) had to walk around in pitch-black darkness with a flashlight. Those unintended light shafts made it more immersive.
The Mahoning Drive-In Theater in Lehighton, PA. (Photo: Collin Souter)
Now, speaking of immersive experiences, I can write a whole twenty-paragraph essay on the legendary Mahoning Drive-In Theater (not far from Shankweilers, in Lehighton, PA), our third stop and the catalyst for this trip. We’ve wanted to visit this place since we first heard of it several years ago. If you want to talk about drive-ins being nostalgic, nothing beats the Mahoning, which still shows films in 35mm. They only show digital when they have to. Every night is a new night. Sometimes you get a thematically linked double feature; sometimes you get a single. Sometimes, you get a fully-loaded fan event, which we had in store for us on Saturday, August 8th: The Guzzoline Gathering, a celebration of George Miller’s triumphant “Mad Max” films, in this case, a double bill of “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” What true cinephile can resist?
First, the drive-in itself. Where to start? Everywhere you look, something makes you want to grab your phone and take a picture. Their mailbox near the entrance looks like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit.” They have “Willy Wonka” items everywhere, perhaps leftover from their opening night in the 2016 season, their most pivotal year for this facility, as outlined in the feature-length documentary “At The Drive-In”. Their concession area showcases a large library of VHS tapes and DVDs to peruse. You can also go record shopping as you sift through their collection of vintage albums, or you can take a look at old event posters for sale. They have specialty menu items tied to the films being shown. For this evening, they had a special stew and an ice cream float. Plus, toys and trinkets everywhere, plus a separate room for Mahoning merch.
Outside on the walls of the concession stand and projection booth is a mural dedicated to the former owner, Jeffrey D. Mattox, who passed away in 2024. As detailed in the doc, Mattox faced a challenge in 2016 when he had to decide between raising money for a digital projector or sticking with 35mm and only showing old movies. Two film enthusiasts, Virgil Cardamone and Matt McClanahan (yes, the current co-owner of Shankweiler’s), convinced him to try the latter approach: keep the 35mm projector and let them program the double features themselves. This formula worked, and the Mahoning has been making a name for itself as one of the best venues to host fan events in the country, while also keeping analog film presentation alive and well. Take one look at their calendar of events, and you’ll find something you are dying to see on the big screen in 35mm. Oh, how I envy anyone who can afford to be a regular here.
Before the films and during intermission, they have some of the usual (and unusual) drive-in fanfare, but of course, being in 35mm, you get the honest and true effect of a real old-fashioned drive-in movie experience you cannot get anywhere else. You can also enjoy the teaser trailer for “Back to the Future,” “The Terminator,” and a hilariously faded trailer for Disney’s “The Shaggy D.A.” Many of the Mahoning regulars shout out callbacks during the drive-in ads, giving it a nice “Rocky Horror”-like atmosphere. The projectionist, Robert, kindly let me add a little something to the proceedings, a 35mm trailer for the Kevin Costner “Mad Max”-On-Water epic, “Waterworld,” a trailer that had never been unsealed and played before. I have had this fairly useless item in my collection for over thirty years, and it finally got to spin away on a reel for an audience to enjoy (“a virgin print,” he told everyone).
The “Guzzoline Gathering” at Lehighton’s Mahoning Drive-In Theater. (Photo: Collin Souter)
Then, the event itself. I got to meet the organizer, Faye Dorsey, and her husband, Tank, who used to be a Lord Humungous cosplayer (the villain in “The Road Warrior”), and who has a fine collection of “Mad Max” costume and prop replicas, including a dusty motorbike, which was driven around the lot by a pair of impressive “Road Warrior” cosplayers, Scott Frost and Deirdre VonDoom. Tank also showed off his screen-used bits of debris he found in Australia when scouting the area with a metal detector where they filmed the climactic chase in “The Road Warrior,” a next-level commitment to fandom you can expect when you go to an event such as this. We also saw multi-colored Interceptors (Mad Max’s car) on the lot, as well as an assortment of other cosplayers representing both films. My phone eventually heated up as I constantly took pictures and video of everything happening around me. I had no time to play a round of Ms. Pac-Man.
“You know what you get here that you don’t get at other drive-ins?” Faye said to me. “A real community. People walk around and talk to each other, meet each other, and form friendships. You don’t get this at other drive-ins. People mostly stay near their cars and keep to themselves. Not here. Every night, it’s like this.” And the films themselves looked magnificent. You can also camp out for the night if you pay a little extra, as long as you vacate at dawn. Sometimes, they run more drive-in shenanigans on the screen into the wee hours, but not this night. I cannot wait to go back. I have finally seen and experienced another gold standard of drive-in theaters (another being the Skyline Drive-In in Shelbyville, IN; I know there are more).
Aut-O-Rama Drive-In in North Ridgeville, OH. (Photo: Collin Souter)
Finally, on the way home, we stopped at the Aut-O-Rama Drive-In in North Ridgeville, OH (home of the late, great Martin Mull). Despite its rough exterior, this two-screen establishment is very well-run, and with the nicest, cleanest bathrooms I’ve ever seen at any drive-in. The colorful concession stand has plenty to offer, including spicy fried pickles, gigantic ice-cream-and-cookie sandwiches, and a nice assortment of dips and sauces you can add to your burger, brat, or corndog. They also have an arcade area where I finally indulged in a game of Ms. Pac-Man. This place has a more modern feel than a nostalgic one. They do play some of the usual old-school drive-in bumpers between shows, but showcase few (if any) old movie posters or pictures of the Aut-O-Rama from yesteryear. You walk into the concession stand, and you feel like you’re at a multiplex.
Things to know before attending: Wear good shoes and make sure your car tires are strong. The grounds are rough and rocky and don’t provide any way to throw down a picnic blanket for the night. Most people stayed in their cars.
There is also the problem (at least on screen 2, where we endured “Super Troopers 3” before it started to rain heavily) of there being a busy highway on one side and loud freight trains going by every fifteen minutes on the other, which probably explains why people mainly stayed in their cars, so they can hear the film better. It is a testament to how well this theater is run that people put up with that sort of thing, enjoy the films anyway, and keep coming back. Whatever its flaws, it has worked for sixty years and counting, so it just goes to show that friendly service, a rock-solid food menu (and don’t you dare try sneaking in your own food), and a money-saving double bill can go a long way in the tricky business of modern-day theater management and ownership.
Make no mistake, drive-ins still struggle from year to year. So why do I keep going back to these venues every summer and keep looking for new ones to discover? I’m not in it for nostalgia. I had never set foot in a drive-in until I was twenty. Anyone can create fond memories of the drive-in experience today, just as one did in the 1930s and onward.
I keep going for many reasons, one being that they might not be here next year. You never know when you’ll come across a message on Facebook saying “we have made the unfortunate decision to close our doors for good at the end of this season.” Right now, many are dealing with heavy flooding due to all the storms that have rolled through recently. Last year, I mentioned a drive-in in Virginia called the Family Drive-In that needed a buyer. Luckily, they got one, and the name has been changed to The Historic Route 11 Drive-In Theatre.
I also keep going because I love road trips, I love movies, and I love seeing how these places find new ways to enrich the experience, whether through nostalgic trailers and decor, an inventive food menu, irresistible programming, or, best of all, all of the above. I also love sitting outside our car and occasionally looking up at the stars and seeing way more than I would ever see on a clear night in Chicago. I’m also more of a night-owl than a morning person, so being parked at a drive-in on a gorgeous spring, summer, or fall evening until 1:00 am to watch a late-night, double-feature picture show is its own reward. Find a drive-in near you and support it. Remember to hang up your speakers before leaving.
- Locarno 2026: I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Hearing, Bruton (August 16, 2026)
Though I have left Locarno, I haven’t finished writing about its many idiosyncratic offerings. The festival today announced its awards, including the recipient of the Golden Leopard (more on that in my final dispatch). And while I’m thrilled by many of the winners, in this dispatch I’d like to highlight a couple of films that I’m simply shocked didn’t take home a prize from the competition. One is a contemplative wartime flick set in Ukraine; the other is one of the more ambitious undertakings I’ve seen this year. Both deserved better. Along with those titles is another film that comes oh so close to brushing with something interesting only to get in its own way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Ukrainian-Russian war has often been framed as an existential threat, one understandably requiring faithful nationalism on the part of Ukrainians and a ceaseless arms race between the two countries. Often documentaries about the conflict have either shown Ukrainian refugees fleeing their homeland or those who’ve stayed to fight for their sovereignty. That black-and-white contrast makes the earned drama of the semi-fictional LGBTQI+ narrative “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming,” which premiered in the main competition, so refreshing.
Produced by Tom Tykwer and Uwe Schott, Ukrainian writer Anna Melikova teams with her wife, director Isabelle Stever, to tell a story inspired by accounts from their Ukraine-based friends. The film concerns a trans man, Oleh (Markus Bright), and his fiancée Olya (Tania Myronyshena), whose New Year’s bliss is interrupted weeks later by real-world horrors when Russia invades Ukraine. The pair leave Kyiv, venturing to Olya’s parents home. And while her parents are initially supportive of Oleh not serving in the military, as the conflict wears on, their prejudice and nationalism get the better of them. Nevertheless, Oleh and Olya work to get the former out of their military transcription by showing that the government and Oleh’s doctor have already excused him from military service. But in a war that demands that its citizens choose sides, especially when it comes to speaking, which includes for some, their native Russian language, Oleh’s trans identity is quickly viewed by many around him as something he can choose to ignore. In one queasy scene, two transphobic women soldiers literally tell Oleh to choose whether he wants to have the excuse of being a woman so as not to serve or be a man and fight.
Bright shoulders the many slings thrown at Oleh with immeasurable sensitivity, rendering each hurt from each insult not as a single debilitating blow but as a piece-by-piece deconstruction of a once peaceful person. Stever’s lens is equally attentive to Oleh’s plight and Olya’s eventual desperation, positioning both characters in tender and sometimes claustrophobic frames. Some might find the ending, which sees the couple embracing a kind of normativity, difficult to square. But what’s on display is actually a great tragedy—one that depicts a casualty that’s rarely, if ever, captured on the nightly news. With its startling humanism and boundless empathy, “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” should shake viewers from their slumber to see how war touches every corner and every person.
It’s difficult to apply one or even a few apt descriptors to Vietnamese director Lê Bảo’s atmospherically adventurous mood piece “Hearing.” The film, which premiered in the festival’s main competition, defies strict categorization. Rather, this multi-generational survey of a family beset by decades of an agreed-upon silence moves with a stunning clarity that recalls recent splendors like “Viet and Nam” and “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” Like those immersive works, “Hearing” relies on an excellent combination of hypnotic sights, penetrating sounds, and soulful evocations of unhealed fissures to whisk the viewers onto a woozy journey of discovery.
Such filmic playfulness is best displayed in the picture’s technically precise and wholly enveloping opening. There, we’re dropped into a lively restaurant whose clattering of voices inspires Ninh (Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn), a mechanic, to install decibel meters that light up blue (sometimes in the film it’s also violet and indigo) whenever it gets too loud. From there we’re transported to florists located on the floor above who appear to be frozen by the noise. One neighbor is so incensed by the racket, he throws a flower pot from his balcony, which only leads to a brief lull in the hubbub. Lê spends the entirety of his film juxtaposing scenes like these, particularly in smaller villages where the rank-and-file workers of all ages go to party to booming club music, with moments of austere silence. While the latter’s quiet appearance might suggest tranquil calm, plenty of buried angst still causes disquiet among our primary cast.
Ninh, for instance, lives with his elderly mother (Ngọc Tản) because his wife (Khánh Huyền) separated from him following at least one instance of domestic violence. While his wife lives nearby, suggesting the glimpse of reunion by her mere proximity—despite his own difficulties admitting his wrongs to her—Ninh’s unbothered father (Minh Hùng) lives far from them in a small rural village. He was also abusive to Ninh’s mother, but unlike his son, he doesn’t share reservations about his past actions. These cycles of aggression and distance, mixed with varied memories whose present lens offers comfort and shame, arise in the film’s quietest moments, when the act of listening is not only possible but also an inescapable terror.
Lê adds further hints of surrealism, particularly the ghostly presence that Ninh’s decibel lights bring to a jungle filled with nervous monkeys. In these moments, there’s no clear delineation between the troubles of the urban and the rural, making for a blurred line that Lê blends to imperceptible levels as the film wears on. Lê also flashes style and confidence with incredible dexterity, seemingly pushing the audience’s patience and the boundaries of his frames, filled with hallucinogenic images whose intoxicating energy overwhelms the senses to their widest possible limits. Consequently, “Hearing” isn’t merely worth listening to; it’s also worth finding, seeing and consuming.
This is the third straight film, in the third straight year, from American director Vincent Grashaw to appear at Locarno. The first was the pugilist crime flick “Bang Bang” starring Tim Blake Nelson; the second witnessed Lou Diamond Phillips as a jaded Reservation cop mentoring a new trainee. His latest is “Bruton,” a first-person biography of a Miami dealer unfairly sent to prison, away from his devoted daughter, for an accidental death. It follows a lineage of Grashaw’s work that skirts the line between genre and message picture, relying on bruising, gritty settings to reveal the inequities of a system. Of his three attempts, “Bruton” might be his least successful.
As is often the case, the film begins with Bryan Bruton (Theo Rossi) alone in his prison cell, somewhat lamenting his fate. But unlike the other incarcerated men, one can tell that Bruton doesn’t necessarily think he’s wholly innocent, at least not in the moral conception of the word. The legal side, however, is quite the opposite. We then snap back three years; Bruton, a master at evading the cops, explains to us via voiceover his honed methodology. He switches cars often, which makes him harder to track, and when he’s pulled over, he dispenses pills and other paraphernalia into a half-filled chip bag knowing that they’ll either be overlooked or camouflaged among the contents. The cops also know him well enough to joke with him but not disrespect him. He’s even hoping to go straight, having just opened up a legitimate concrete hauling business.
Bruton risks all of that when he begins sweet-talking Elana (Dana Namerode), a young local daughter of a family he’s been supplying with drugs for years. That personal slip-up is contrasted with Bruton’s tenuous role as a family man. While he only somewhat cares for his wife Sienna (Aya Cash), he adores his daughter Crystal (played as a child by Alexandria Arnold and as a teenager by Kayden Brenna Tokarski). But when a jilted Elana falsely accuses Bruton of knocking her up and abusing her, inspiring the involvement of her enraged brothers, Bruton makes a decision to defend himself that lands him a 10-year sentence in the Lake Butler correctional facility.
“Bruton,” which was written by Grashaw, is based on a true story, which lends the film a truer-than-fiction quality. There’s a version of this film that could be a “Goodfellas” riff, especially as Bruton gives us the step-by-step of how to survive in prison, introduces us to the fast friend group he forms behind bars, and takes pleasure in explaining how he began skirting behind the rules and the abuses doled out by the guards by starting a sexual relationship with one of them: Maura Willis (Tammy Blanchard, who acutely understands the brokenness of this character). I won’t spoil the film by filling you in on all the wild happenings by Bruton, but it’s worth noting that Grashaw tries to toe the line between fun prison break flick and a serious conversation about the rotten, soul-breaking systematic trauma experienced by the incarcerated that makes recidivism all but impossible to avoid.
Rossi is game for those shaky tonal shifts, bringing his prototypical mix of charm and moxie to this juicy role. But Grashaw’s well-intentioned aims result in a mawkish final act that feels more like an overly formulated sprint to the end rather than a true reckoning. All of the groundedness he conjured through his unvarnished lens evaporates, and what we’re left with is something too willing to beg the audience for an emotional response via schmaltzy score and twee lighting to wholly feel as truthfully as Grashaw hoped.
