Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...because it takes up a previously forbidden subject-the blacklisting of showfolk suspected of Communist leanings during the early '50s-and has the nerve, and grace, to take an absurdist view of that deplorable era. For that, and for Woody Allen's fine performance (against his usual comic grain) in the title role, it deserves respectful attention...
...thing. The friend is gifted, the network execs are pleased, and Allen (who takes a percentage for his services) soon finds himself prospering and enjoying his demi-celebrity. But, of course, a tweed jacket and a book-lined pad do not an author make. The Front's best comic moments occur as Allen, whose character is just barely literate, tries to act the role of author. His worst moment (and one of the film's best comic scenes): an attempt at an on-set rewrite of one of his client's scripts...
Before long, Allen is fronting for more than one talented writer. Then come the investigators. The witch-hunters just cannot believe that a scriptwriter this skillful has not committed an investigatable offense. Along the way Allen becomes involved with a comic named Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), whose career is destroyed by the witch-hunters and who then destroys himself. Allen's consciousness (and his conscience) have been steadily expanding. In the end, he heroically-and funnily -defies the congressional committee that tries to pry from him at least a few suspect names...
FAMILY GATHERINGS do contain comic possibilities. A humorous, built-in tension exists between the piety of the events (religious holidays, weddings) that usually occasion them and the back-biting, excessive drinking or seductions that may ensue. Not only is an alcoholic uncle guaranteed, but there's always the presence of a host of eminently shockable types such as grandparents or mothers of the bride as well--what's the use of being outrageous if no one is scandalized? Add a passel of children to act as the fascinated witnesses of parental duplicity and you have most of the ingredients needed...
...parody must have been temptations difficult to resist. It would have been equally disastrous to play the lines straight with out inflective italics, thus pretending that they are not unutterably silly, which they are. Director Bill Gile has settled on the very sensible alternative of restoring a comic antique so that it does not pitiably creak with age or smack of cosmetic modernity...