The culture of suspicion and hysteria during the Second Red Scare in the United States made its mark on Hollywood, producing some of the defining movies of the 1950s. In this series, we present four — a corruption drama, a science fiction horror, and two westerns—with starkly different reactions to the anxieties of the era. Paranoid-inducing, profound, and prescient, these films have much to say about our current times.
Nicholas Ray’s mesmerisingly strange western takes the stock idea of ranchers trying to keep out newcomers and turns it into a heady allegorical fable about xenophobic persecution centred on the sexual rivalries of saloon owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) and repressed, vengeful and well-named harpy Emma Smalls (Mercedes McCambridge). It’s a splendid, elemental drama ripe for feminist, Freudian and Marxist interpretation.
Learn MoreWinner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, On the Waterfront is nonetheless one of Hollywood’s most controversial masterpieces. The story of a dockworker breaking the stranglehold that his corrupt union boss has over the waterfront, Kazan’s film has been seen by some critics as a dramatized justification for ‘naming names’, as both Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg had done during the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee witch-hunts.
Learn More“They’re already here! You’re next!” With these chilling words, Invasion of the Body Snatchers sounded the clarion call to the dangers of conformity, paranoia and mass hysteria at the heart of 1950s American life. Made in 23 days, on a budget of $380,000, the film continues to influence filmmakers and novelists with its combination of plausibility and surrealism.
Learn MoreA decade after Red River (1947), Howard Hawks reteamed with John Wayne for this rambling western riffing on the director’s usual themes of friendship and professionalism. Both one of the essential westerns and one of the all-time great hangout movies, this classic tale is pure Hawks in its wonderfully relaxed, loose-limbed look at a band of unlikely heroes thrown together by fate and united in a dangerous pursuit.
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