TRUMBO

I watched “Trumbo” this weekend. It was a documentary about the life of Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood screenwriter and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. This documentary was filmed on 2008 and it is an interesting film which gives a picture of the McCarthyism and the times and life of this interesting person.

In 1947, Trumbo, along with nine other writers and directors, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an unfriendly witness to testify on the presence of communist influence in Hollywood. Trumbo refused to give information. After conviction for contempt of Congress, he was blacklisted, and in 1950, spent 11 months in prison, and later he moved to Mexico and continued writing scripts for Hollywood with a friend as a “front” for his writings.

Trumbo and others refuse to answer the Congress inquiry on their membership of the communist party, this supported by the first amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Trumbo said that the sentence for contempt of the Congress was just, since he really feel contempt for such Congress. Well, I think they could have said “acknowledgement from the parties make discoveries non-essential”.

He was right to have contempt for that Congress, however he was really aligned with the communist party at that time, and later he officially joined it. In my opinion, if we analyze this with the perspective that gives the time passed, and the distance that I have to the facts. And my admiration for the United States as Nation, it is very simple to draw some conclusions that may be not very popular:

That was time of Cold War; USA was threatened by the Soviet Union. Many communists and idealists felt loyalty to the international principles of communism. The representative of communism was the Soviet Union, hence they were a clear danger, even if the idea of prosecute them was not pretty. It is the same danger that today represent Islamic fundamentalism inside the USA borders. Forbid it is un-democratic, but it could turn to be a real danger.

Freedom and democracy will be always threatened by their own philosophy: freedom of speech and freedom of assembly facilitate the work of the enemy, internal or external. On the other hand, if that system defends itself creating organisms for its protection and performing defensive actions it look also as acts against the democratic system.

This ambiguity also is fed by the protagonists. In 1939 Trumbo wrote a prize winning anti-war novel “Johnny Got His Gun” which was quite in synchrony with the feeling of the times. During the beginning years of WWII communist were against the involvement of the US in the war beside England because the USSR was at peace with Germany. In 1941 Trumbo wrote “The Remarkable Andrew”, supporting the neutrality of the United States. However after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union American communists change their minds, and Trumbo decided to suspend the reprint of is previous anti-war novel “Johnny Got His Gun”. After receiving several letters from people who were against the involvement of the US in the war, and wanted a new issue of the novel, Trumbo contacted the FBI and turned these letters to them. What a different in the stand he would have years later when he refused to give information to the Congress on Communist activities!

The movie fail in giving an impartial view of the facts, I agree that Trumbo was quite a personage, and had a very interesting life, but it shows the government and those who were anti-communists at the time as the evil ones. In conclusion: nothing new, the film supports the common idea that McCarthyism was evil and Communism was not a real threat. Things were not that Black and White.