Guilty By Suspicion

1951. After a two-month trip to Paris, hotshot film director David Merrill (Robert De Niro) arrives in Los Angeles prepared to begin work on a new film for studio boss Darryl Zanuck (Ben Piazza). But during his absence, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has been conducting hearings into communist influence in Hollywood. Actors, directors and writers threatened with being blacklisted for their alleged communist pasts have been compelled to name names in order to continue to work. One of these victims, Larry Nolan (Chris Cooper) has named David Merrill as having attended a Communist Party meeting during the 1930s. When David meets with Zanuck, Zanuck instructs him to meet with the Committee and confess his communist associations before work begins on the film. David refuses to cooperate after being told that he must also name his friend Bunny Baxter (George Wendt) as being a communist in order to exonerate himself.

David no sooner refuses to cooperate than he finds himself blacklisted--his film with Zanuck falls through, his agency wants him to repay a $50,000 advance, and he is unable to find any type of film work in Los Angeles. Forced to move into a tiny apartment with his son Paulie (Luke Edwards) and his divorced wife, Ruth (Annette Bening), David decides to journey to New York City to find work in the theater. But, tailed by FBI agents, David not only can't find theater work, he can't find regular employment in a film equipment repair shop without being hassled by the FBI.

David returns to California, where Ruth takes a school teaching job to make ends meet. After losing a directing job at Monogram Pictures on a low-budget Western and confronting Bunny Baxter, who is petrified of testifying and begs David to let him use his name in front of the Committee, David decides to agree to testify. In a crowded public hearing, David appears before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. But David has a last-minute change of heart and refuses to name his friends in front of the Committee. After a shouting match, David is told to step away from the microphone. David and Ruth walk out of a tumultuous hearing room. Bunny Baxter is the next witness. Seeing what David has done, Bunny cites his Fifth Amendment rights and refuses to answer any questions.

GUILTY BY SUSPICION unfurls in its own dimsighted way as if films like THE FRONT never existed. The self congratulatory tone of the film blinds it to its own lackluster direction and a dramatic flatness more suited to an instructional film than the searing expose the filmmakers think they are revealing anew. The banal direction is furthered by Robert De Niro's equally banal, zombie-like performance, acting as if on a vacation in preparation for CAPE FEAR's Max Cady. Most of the actors take their cue from De Niro with the exception of Patricia Wettig, whose hysterical outbursts are completely out of place in this low-modulated dramatic vacuum. But the main problem of the film, beyond the mediocrity of the acting and direction, is Irwin Winkler's unthinking screenplay. The script explains everything and nothing, the audience expected to take Winkler at his word and not his image. David Merrill is called Zanuck's "golden boy" but the viewer never gets to see why--i.e. what were the successful films that made Zanuck feel that way? How is David Merrill looked upon by the film community? At another point in the film, Ruth tells him, "Maybe everyone thought that making movies meant more to you than anything else." But where is David Merrill's obssession? Why is he never shown working on a film in disregard of family, friends and society?

This inability to fabricate a cinematic script is further accentuated by the film's depiction of the anti-communist paranoia in Hollywood. David Merrill returns from Paris and finds a Hollywood completely enmeshed in paranoia, something that has apparantly happened during his two months abroad, falling out of the sky like Dorothy's house in THE WIZARD OF OZ. For a hip director, Merrill is either terminally obtuse or insane. When Zanuck recommends that David purge himself in front of the Committee, David exclaims, "I'm sorry Darryl. I don't get this."

This tunnel vision infects the entire film. Untouched by any hint of reality of either 1951 or 1991, the film is hermetically sealed. Outside the Hollywood environs, no indication is given of this paranoia, as if the communist menace were a Hollywood creation. And in a sense it is, since none of the characters in the film are admitted communists. This House Committee of Un-American Activities is investigating communists of the mind. For a film allegedly dealing with communist persecution in Hollywood, there's nary a commie in sight. (At least in THE FRONT, characters admitted to being communist.) At the same time, the film is guilty of the cardinal sin inflicted upon the commie-baiters on the Committee--naming names. Creating a false sense of truthfulness, the script drops the names of well-known, persecuted Hollywood film notables as if Walter Winchell was in earshot for a column. Sterling Hayden, Howard Da Silva and Lionel Stander are mentioned, along with Humphrey Bogart and Jack Warner, to create a mood of realism, but a false realism furthering no plot point, only serving to implicate the poor actors once again. The film has it both ways, naming names but refusing to answer any questions.

GUILTY BY SUSPICION has no mind of its own. By sanitizing this terrible period in American history beyond recognition, caving in to any conceivable objections, the film ends up with a message that doesn't concern blacklisting at all. Rather, David Merrill learns not to become preoccupied with his job at the expense of his family. But in the context of the film, who cares?(Profanity, adult situations, substance abuse) leave a comment