MEDIUM FOR WAR HYSTERIA CAN TRULY progressive films come out of an atmosphere of war hysteria, blacklisting, corrup- tion and terror? The course of film production since Wall Street, aping the Ger- man fascists, set itself the goal of world domination, speaks for one itself, Not only have the most pro- gressive artists been outlawed but virtually all the top film- _ makers, conservatives as well as liberal, have felt the crack of the John Ford, William Wellman, Fritz Lang, William Dieterle, Frank Capra, and Mervyn Leroy are turning out the trashiest films of their careers. In some tain, Ford’s The Fugitive, Vidor's The Fountainhead, the tripe is of an openly fascist character. Yet in the militant thirties when the progressive movement was strong, an artist like Capra could make Mr. Smith Goes, to Washington and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, two of the finest and most democratic films Hollywood has ever produced. ; In this sdme period John Ford made The Informer and Grapes of Wrath, two great American classics. Fritz Lang did the pow- erful anti-lynch film Fury and You Only Live Once, # crime film in which the state rather than the victim was judged guilty. William Wellman directed Wild Boys of the Road, a gripping New Deal film which stirred the na- tion, and The Oxbow Incident, an anti-lynch film in which the vic- minutes after they were hanged. William Dieterle made a whole ‘series of: inspiring social films: Story of Pasteur, Life of Zola, Blockade, .Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, Juarez. King Vidor directed Street Scene from the Elmer Rice play, and The Citadel, a story of a young do tor’s fight against ignorance and bigotry. It is true that these films were few and far between. Most of them came from one studio, War- ner Brothers, and their effect was partly cancelled out by the many, many times that number of rac- ist, militaristic and red-baiting films which invariably followed in their wake. Nevertheless, they showed that Hollywood was cap- able of producng democratic films of real merit. * * * NONE OF THEM could be made today and for the reasons cited by Mervyn Leroy, maker of of these missions. representatives were officially acc over the whole of Yugoslavi ’ gary he was given access to th Secret files. : 1 Referring, to the the Yugoslav leaderhip the espionage activities ° Yugoslav minister and gen Stambolic, Apostolovic and as well ag many others. Brankov mentioned t whip to the point where today § cases, as in Wellman’s Iron Cur- & tims were proved innocent, a few ‘Tokyo Rose’ jailed Mrs, Iva Toguri d'Aquino, the notorious “Tokyo Rose,” “is shown in San Francisco fed- eral court as she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and $10,000 fine for treason against the U.S. Daughter of a Chicago grocer, she was convicted of broadcasting wartime propagan- da for the Japanese. 1 XY Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and They Won't Forget, films against police terror and lynching. In an interview several months ago with Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, Leroy said: “I wouldn’t touch such themes today with a ten- foot pole.” Pressed for an explan- ation, Leroy said: “The screen is under attack... the best thing it can do is to settle for what you critics call escapist en- tertainment until the storm blows over.” handful of men who control the means of film production have suppressed Al- bert Maltz’s new novel, The Jour- ney of Simon McKeever. As Clif- ford Odets recently wrote, we must not expect very much from an industry whose pictures are “eonceived on the cold marble floor of a bank.” \ Nor must we expect very much Since then the Hollywood films prepare way for American dollar invasion deeply affected by the sweeping capitalist economic storm which gathers momentum from the nar- rowing down of areas of imperial- ist exploitation through the tre- mendous achievements in the USSR, China and the East Euro- pean democracies and the libera- tion movements in other lands. x * * HOLLYWOOD is a huge glamor factory which produces and sells a commodity—motion pictures. This commodity resembles all other commodities produced in American factories except for two things: 1) Movies can’t be eaten. They must be carried around inside one’s head. 2) Whereas there are laws against producing poisonous commodities intended for the stomach there are no Capitalist laws restraining the production of poisonous “cul- tural” commodities. Since the end of the war the circulation of poisonous commodi- ties that must be carried around inside the brain has reached the stage where they have become a sinister forte in the destruction of the national cultural life of countries marked down for ec- onomic and political conquest by the almighty dollar. “As opium was once used by British and Japanese imperialists to dull, befuddle and confuse the Chinese victims they sought to colonize and plunder, American films today are being deliberately used to weaken the resistance of western capitalist countries to dollar invasion and te colonize and plunder, American films to- -day are being deliberately used to weaken the resistance of west- ern capitalist countries to dollar invasion and conquest.” So says an article in a recent issue of the progressive news- paper Tribune published in Syd- ney, Australia. As John Howard Lawson once pointed out: “The drive to re- duce other countries to a sort of cultural colonialism .is an essen- tial part of our present foreign policy.” ye But the drive of the American capitalist class is also designed to reduce the United States it- self to a sort of cultural slavery. Just as the people’s movement ‘has been able to win important victories against the monopolies and their courts and institutions, from an industry which is being such as curbing unbridled land- TAKES ISSUE WITH SCOTT x Trial exposes Tito’s part in U.S. Chopin played amid rubble of Warsaw IN HIS COLUMN in the Vancou- ver Sun last Saturday, Jack Scott noted that “Jacques Singer and the Vancouver Symphony Orches- tra are celebrating the Chopin Centenary in their! concert to- morrow.” Then he proceeded to describe Chopin as “effiminate, a self-made snob, neurotic, a dandy who sported patent leather shoes and a raving anti-Semite (who took all the help he could get from Baron de Rothschild).” The effect of Scott’s remarks | was to detract, not only from the modest tribute paid to Chopin in this city but from the national celebration in Poland which, as all music-lovers know, is the big- gest event of the year in that country’s cultural life. ; What Scott says about Chopin may be substantially true. It completely ignores, however, ‘Cho- pin’s patriotism and the connec- tion between his patriotism and his music. Thus it is that Cho- pin’s music is at once expressive of and close to the hearts of the Polish people. It is the greatness of the music, the contribution to a national culture they have fought to preserve and now can at last develop, that the Polish people celebrate—not the failings of the man who created the music. IN A RECENT isssue of the New Yorker I came across a piece by Joseph Wechsberg, a European correspondent of that publication who is by no means distinguished for his progressive outlook. This particular piece, an account of a visit to Warsaw, does capture something of the spirit in which the Polish people are celebrating the Chopin cen- tenary. Wechsberg writes: “Through the open windows of the music room we saw Pro- fessor Staniewicz moving to- ward the piano, and heard him begin the Prelude in E Minor. The people on the lawn stopped. eating, and the yourg couples under the trees put their heads together and closed their eyes. — The red-headed man stopped playing with his braces, left the bench,’ and lay flat on his back on the flagstones. The children sat down without being told 10:- 5 More people arrived, in sil- ence, and sat down on the flag- stone terrace and in the garden. There were no sounds now ex- cept the music and the play of the wind in the trees and the singing of the birds. I conclud- ed that Rakowski was right, that Chopin would have liked having his music performed here. Looking at these people, who had come out of the moist cellars and dusty. attics, away from the ruing and rubble, I realized that to them Chopin meant something more than music.” Jack Scott may also be forgiven ‘his conceit, his aloofness from struggles of which he sometimes writes but plays no part in, when he can turn out a column that ~ wil] so stir people, instead of acting as a foil to hold readers to a paper whose reactionary edi- torial opinions, slanted news and synthetic sensationalism repel — them.—E. L. lordism and the most open mani- festations of employer terror—so can the progressives inside and outside Hollywood prevent the movie trust from converting it- self into an open Hearst editorial. They can and have blocked the # production or release of anti- Semitic and pro-fascist films like Abie’s Irish Rose, Siege of Alca- zar, Portrait of an American Communist. They can and have contributed. to the boxoffice flop of such films as Tennessee John- son, Iron Curtain, and Red Men- ace. They can, as in the past, ex- ercise their influence in the trade unions in the film industry and help to make them progressive. Thoughtful people, however, recognize that the victories won in the fight against monopoly are ‘cold war’ plot — temporary at best, that these gains can be held, consolidated and extended only with the com- ing to power—and the day is not too distant—of a people’s anti- fascist, anti-monopoly coalition— the only political force capable of prioviding the necessary weap- ons for restraining and smashing the trusts and inaugurating an era of peace and prosperity for all. Naturally all this will quickly reflect itself in the changed char-~ acter of the mass communica- — tions media. Only then—and not until them —will it be pospible to speak realistically of writing and mak- ing Hollywood films which ex- press the struggles and aspira- tions of the people. — DAVID PLATT. sent out a special circular to all parti- san headquarters ordering them to’ every possible assistance to the membe : British and American As a rule, the redited a. Brankov testified that when he became Ranko- vie’ esident agent in Hun- $ principle res e UDB UDB documents, Brankoy stated that even during the war was aware of f the present erals Beline, Vukmanovic, his to Milic, who fully aware of this, Brankov declared that Tito, Kardelj, Djilas and Rankovic were undoubtedly agent provocateurs, considering their ties with the Ameri- cang and British. give rs to these partisan headquarters. Here Eager to carry out the orders of their the representatives of the intelligence masters they annihilated a large num-~- i service and the American OSS engaged per of honest people in Yugoslavia and H in recruiting agents, spreading their nets placed provocateurs in key positions. It was with their help that the Tito clique tried to draw Yugoslavia and the other People’s Democracies into the camp of imperialism. Chairman: What do you know of the Tito plans during the post-war period? Brankov: The leaders of Yugoslavia considered that Yugoslavia possessed an enormous strategic significance and that it had a decisive role, to play in the Bal- ans and in Central Europe. In essence, the Tito plan pro ided for the setting up, under the leadership of a powerful told him that Tito and Rankovic were ~ federation in the form of a bourgeois- democratic republic, embracing the Bal- kans and that Central European coun- tries. The federation would orientate on the west. : This plan, which was formulated as early as 1945, was carefully concealed. Only an extremely narrow group knew of its existence—Tito, Kardelj, Djilas and Rankovic. In his (Brankov’s) view, Tito and his clique were merely cargying out) the plan of the American imperialists. Bran- kov stated that the Titoites sought to portray this line as something “new” in Marxism, and Tito as a man who was enriching Marxism. _ The accused Szonyi Szalaly, Korondy, Ogyenovics and Justus also pleaded From their testimony it can be concluded that the present Yugoslav government is simply a carefully organized group of agents provocateurs who have been placed in power. Left phrases are used PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 21, 1949 — PAGE 9 © by them as a screen for concealing their evi] deeds, In 1945 a group of American spies headed by Szonyi was brought to Hungary with the help of the Yugoslav authorities. These spies were given the necessary documents by Lompar, the Yugoslav representative in Switzerland. They were brought to Yugoslavia in a United States army plane. They entered Hungary as members of a Yugoslav mili- tary mission. In Hungary, Szonyi devel- oped extensive espionage activities, guid- ing the work of American and Yugosla agents, a “ On Rankovic’s orders Szonyi and all his agents were placed at the disposal — of Rajk. coh: The court interrogated 19 witnesses — who testified to the espionage and un- dermining activities of the accused. After the interrogation of the accused and the witnesses, speeches were made — by the counsel for the defense and the state prosecutor.