From CNN Interactive Writer Jeremy Church
(CNN) -- Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is an unambitious sort who works as the cashier at a diner and books bets on the side.
A television writer and boyhood friend named Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) walks into the diner one day and explains a predicament he shares with many of his friends in the business: They have been blacklisted by the industry for sympathizing with communists.
Eager to help and with nothing particularly better to do with his time, Prince agrees to be a front for Miller. He gets 10 percent of all proceeds in the deal, though he says he would do it free of charge to help his friend.
"Well, how much you get for a script?" Prince asks.
"Seven-fifty, a thousand bucks, it depends on the show."
"Go home and write," Prince chimes. "Your troubles are over."
Prince becomes the network's star writer, falls for the show's producer and before long fronts for two of Miller's friends. To a fault, Prince relishes his pseudo-occupation and the newfound prosperity that comes with it. We see vintage Allen in this comedic aspect of "The Front," as in one scene when Prince is having lunch with the writers and suggests they try to be more like the playwright Eugene O'Neill in their writing styles.
But it isn't until Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), the show's star, is called in to the office of Francis Hennessey of the Freedom of Information Service that we get our first real glimpse of the paranoia surrounding the entertainment business in early 1950s America. The network and advertisers have hired Hennessey because they are afraid to lose viewership by employing anyone with an un-American past.
In a spare office where a team of secretaries screens all calls, the icy Hennessey is a crusader against the First Amendment, willing and able to squash careers with the power vested in him by the networks and advertisers. Hennessey is the communist here, though it is easy now to scoff at the suggestion that the seemingly harmless artists were part of a great conspiracy to bring communism stateside. At one point Hennessey says: "We are in a war, Mr. Brown, against a ruthless and tricky enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy our way of life."
Brown is accused of attending a communist parade and putting his name on petitions, among other things, but claims he is an actor who doesn't know from politics. Hennessey tells Brown that redemption is the ticket for a sympathizer, and tells him to write a letter and repent his sins, as well as name people he has associated with in his supposed dealings. "Sincerity is the key Mr. Brown. Anyone can make a mistake. The man who repents sincerely ..."
"The Front" could stand alone as a portrayal of the McCarthy era and simply leave Prince to fight for himself at the hands of Hennessey and the bad guys. It is far more compelling, though, in its development of the friendship between Prince and Brown, who "gets close" to Prince as a way to repent.
Pushed to the brink as an entertainer who can barely work (a performance in the Catskills that used to net Brown $3,000 now brings $250 and an outburst from the club's owner, who screams, "You'll crawl in the gutter you red bastard, you commie son of a bitch!" after Brown accuses him of reneging on the initial deal of $300), Brown spies on Prince with tragic consequences.
The only question remaining is what Prince will do when he is inevitably called to testify before the "committee" (presumably a reference to the McCarthy hearings).
Perhaps because he did not also direct this movie, Allen focuses on acting in "The Front," putting together one of the most dramatic performances of his career. With a camera close-up on Prince in one scene where the reality of the blacklist and its effect on those so maligned finally hits him, a look of concern streaked across his face tells us the charade is over. Innocence shed and now with a resolve to match the injustice of the committee, Prince intones the First Amendment when they ask him to name names, in this case his friend Hecky Brown.
As the credits roll, we are reminded that a handful of the actors in "The Front" (including Mostel), as well as director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein, were blacklisted in the early '50s. We are left with the sense that this sincere effort to expose the hypocrisy of McCarthyism was also a liberating film for those involved, particularly Zero Mostel, who turns in an outstanding performance.
