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To: "H-Net Network on American communism and anticommunism" <H-HOAC@H-NET.MSU.EDU> Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 12:43 PM Subject: Subject: McCarthy(ism) and liberal discourse (Schwartz) Are people really saying anymore that the AFI top 100 films are worthless pap and propaganda? I would say, however, that many of the films, while excellent, aren't exactly full of incisive social commentary. And if they are, they are deliberately ambiguous, as in the case of HIGH NOON and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHER, or set in other countries (PATHS OF GLORY), or the past (THE CRUCIBLE). Is it merely coincidental that film-makers found it hard to set films directly in their contemporary US context lest anyone actually got the analogy? And why then did Kubrick leave the States and make the rest of his films in England, in particular, his best and most cutting film DR STRANGELOVE? SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, REAR WINDOW, SUNSET BOULEVARD, SOME LIKE IT HOT, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and VERTIGO are hardly savage indictments either. At least two of them are Hollywood navel-gazing, while the others explore psychoanalytical territory. And why are films like BEN HUR, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, OKLAHOMA, SHOWBOAT, THE ROBE, ETC. left out of the survey? Nathan Abrams
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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