Trumbo

Trumbo (2015) tells the story of the Hollywood blacklist through one screenwriter. Dalton Trumbo was among the highest paid writers of his day and a member of the Communist Party. In 1947 he was one of ten who refused to testify before the congressional committee, served a prison term, and came out to find that no studio could use his name. He did not stop working. He wrote under pseudonyms and under other people's names, turning out scripts for cheap studios at speed. Two films he wrote in that period won Oscars and other people collected them. The blacklist broke around 1960. Kirk Douglas put his name on Spartacus and Otto Preminger put it on Exodus, and by 1961 the system had collapsed. Jay Roach directed from a screenplay by John McNamara. Bryan Cranston plays Trumbo and received nominations for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, SAG and Critics' Choice. The main criticism is political. Some reviewers objected that the film presents the blacklisted as entirely innocent and looks away from what communism actually was and from Soviet atrocities. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and opened on 6 November 2015. It runs 124 minutes. Good for: Hollywood history, censorship and free expression, and Bryan Cranston. Less good for: it simplifies a complicated period and sorts its characters into good and bad. The family story follows a familiar template. The image of Trumbo writing in the bath recurs until it becomes a cliché.