Word: rosenberg
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DANIEL, the much-touted "Rosenberg trial movie" of August, is simultaneously a nightmare, a documentary, and a work of pure fiction. The producers, Sidney Lumet and E.L. Doctorow, walk a tightrope between ideology and reality, fiction and non-fiction--and the balance they achieve is precarious at best...
Based on E.L. Doctorow's novel The Book of Daniel. Daniel was inspired by the 1953 trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the Communist Party executed for selling bomb secrets to the Soviets. Their guilt or innocence of espionage remains a subject of debate today, fueled by the appearances of several books about the case this summer. Daniel tells the story of the fictional Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse), 1940's Communists executed for the same charges, and under the same ambiguous circumstances, as the Rosenbergs. The story is told by Daniel, the Isaacsons...
Audiences will undoubtedly walk into Daniel thinking about the Rosenberg case and view the movie as a statement about the Rosenbergs. Ironically though, both Lumet and Doctorow downplay the parallel with the Rosenberg case, and consequently any social or political aspects of the film. For instance, they insist that the opening scene--a striking closeup of Daniel detachedly and encyclopedically describing the procedure of electrocution--is an artistic device. Lumet, who directed the film in addition to co-producing with Doctorow, calls the scene an interior monologue, designed to reveal how Daniel is objectively attempting to make sense of what...
...Ethel Rosenberg Appel New York City...
NONFICTION: Andropov. Zhores A. Medvedev •The Book of America, Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom Gorillas in the Mist, Dian Fossey Lost in the Cosmos. Walker Percy Marcel Proust: Selected Letters, Philip Kolb, editor •The Rosenberg File, Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton