This documentary parallels the careers of director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller, based on their responses to the HUAC, where Kazan named names but Miller refused. Friends and artistic collaborators - Kazan had directed Miller's production of Death of a Salesman - Kazan being an informant ended contact between the men for 10 years.
What is interesting here is how each used his experience in his work. Miller wrote The Crucible as a metaphor for the witchhunts, with Abigail as Kazan. Kazan made the film On the Waterfront which turned the stool pigeon into a hero. Miller responded by showing an informant punished in A View from the Bridge, and their comeback production of After the Fall also covers the story of an informant.
The Marilyn Monroe connection in After the Fall (produced after her death) echoes Monroe's entanglements with both men. Before she hit in big in Hollywood and when Kazan and Miller first arrived, Miller was interested but it was Kazan who had the affair with her. Marilyn would keep in touch with Miller, and eventually marry him after he had divorced his wife.
Kazan defends his informing by a hatred of the Communist Party, the fact that the Committee already had the names he named anyway, that he asked and got permission for those her named, and because not naming would have meant the end of his Hollywood career. When Miller is later asked to name names, he uses his association with Monroe and the press to re-focus attention away from his refusal.
This doco opens with the recent protests over Kazan being awarded an honorary Oscar, uses period footage of the Academy Awards, and fascinating HUAC testimony, though the extended soundtrack to the Crucible stage production is a bit much.
What is interesting here is how each used his experience in his work. Miller wrote The Crucible as a metaphor for the witchhunts, with Abigail as Kazan. Kazan made the film On the Waterfront which turned the stool pigeon into a hero. Miller responded by showing an informant punished in A View from the Bridge, and their comeback production of After the Fall also covers the story of an informant.
The Marilyn Monroe connection in After the Fall (produced after her death) echoes Monroe's entanglements with both men. Before she hit in big in Hollywood and when Kazan and Miller first arrived, Miller was interested but it was Kazan who had the affair with her. Marilyn would keep in touch with Miller, and eventually marry him after he had divorced his wife.
Kazan defends his informing by a hatred of the Communist Party, the fact that the Committee already had the names he named anyway, that he asked and got permission for those her named, and because not naming would have meant the end of his Hollywood career. When Miller is later asked to name names, he uses his association with Monroe and the press to re-focus attention away from his refusal.
This doco opens with the recent protests over Kazan being awarded an honorary Oscar, uses period footage of the Academy Awards, and fascinating HUAC testimony, though the extended soundtrack to the Crucible stage production is a bit much.
