Guilty by Suspicion

David Merrill, played by Robert De Niro, comes back from Europe to find Hollywood changed: he is expected to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee and name his friends. When he refuses, the doors close quietly. The character draws on the experience of the blacklisted director John Berry. The story behind the film is more interesting than the film. The screenplay was written by Abraham Polonsky, who had been blacklisted himself. When producer Irwin Winkler rewrote it, converting Merrill from a Communist into a generically liberal man, Polonsky had his name removed from the credits. His reasoning to the New York Times was blunt: that is how it actually happened, and nobody needed another story about a man falsely accused. Bertrand Tavernier had been attached to direct; when he left, Winkler made his own debut instead. That dispute maps exactly onto the film's subject and explains the finished work: sincere, well acted, and softened at precisely the point that mattered. Annette Bening and George Wendt round out the cast. Who it is for: viewers working through films about the Hollywood blacklist. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a reckoning as hard as the politics it depicts.