Well…there WERE communists. I don’t know about ties to the USSR, but many of the people called out as communists were actually communists. Abraham Polonsky is one, for example. He wrote “Guilty by Suspicion,” a film with Robert DeNiro, that I kinda liked though it didn’t get great reviews. I show it to my classes whenever I teach The Crucible which isn’t very often. But, anyway, Polonsky had his name pulled from the credits because Irwin Winkler changed the main character from an actual communist to someone falsely accused, and Polonsky said he thought Hollywood had enough of the “falsely accused” stories, and wanted to tell it like it was. So he pulled his name from the credits.
Point is. Being a communist was not, and is not, against the law, nor is it unpatriotic.
So. The McCarthyite fears were not without foundation.
He had no right to pursue those fears the way he did, and he and his crew undoubtedly ruined a lot of lives of totally innocent people. But. Some of those totally innocent people actually were communists.
I promise you, this is played as high spoof. The commies in this film actually connect with a soviet sub to assist a defecting movie star. The entire scene is a hoot, because even if let’s say a movie star defected to the Soviet Union, he would not need to secretly meet a Soviet sub (with its big red star on the conning tower ostentatiously dominating much of the scene). The “defector” would only need to take vacation in Greece and then cross a couple of borders. Nor would the movie star in question have a lapdog named “Engels.”
The Coen Brothers wrote “Bridge of Spies”–a film in which the hero (Tom Hanks) is tormented by the public for being a Soviet spy’s defense attorney. So I trust they know their period stuff. In this case, unlike “Bridge,” this was all deliberately over the top, even campy.
It has the feel of Goodman’s Walter Sobchak character in The Big Lebowski. The character of Walter is based on Red Dawn’s writer and director, John Milius. So when Goodman’s Walter is cautioned by a waitress in a diner because his language is too vulger for a family restaurant, he angrily reminds her that “For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.” It has that tone–it’s too over the top to be an authentic expression of anything, but instead works as spoof.
Anyway I take your point that there were commie Hollywood writers in that era. But they also make fun of those fears.
The commies, btw, come across as hopelessly out of touch, and as irksomely reverent of their Soviet “masters.” But at the same time, the Soviet sub scene undermines McCarthyite fears by giving them a laughably over-earnest (fake) reality.
.
.
