RED & BLACK — Ehsan Khoshbakht (dir.)

RED & BLACK

Hollywood Left and The Blacklist

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18,1 x 22 cm / 288 pages / July 2026

English texts / Textes en anglais

isbn: 978-2-35137-406-1

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Published to coincide with the Retrospective of the 79th Locarno Film Festival (2026)

 

Edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Authors: Ehsan Khoshbakht, Rebecca Prime, Farran Smith Nehme, Imogen Sara Smith, James Bell, Chris Fujiwara, Melanie Williams, Pamela Hutchinson, Phuong Le, Haden Guest, Tanya Goldman, Cecilia Cenciarelli, Bernard Eisenschitz, David Cairns, Adrian Martin, Neil Sinyard, Hannah McGill

 

In the period now known as the McCarthy era, a climate of fear bordering on paranoia took root. Communists, it was claimed, had infiltrated Hollywood for its profits and its immense global propaganda power. They had to be purged. A series of governmental “hearings” followed, deliberately designed as, and functioning like trials. Hundreds suspected of being leftist “subversives” or “un-American” were effectively barred from employment in the film and television industries.

Red and Black, featuring a dozen new essays – several by leading scholars in the field – revisits the work of the Hollywood Left and the blacklist that haunted American cinema from 1947 well into the 1960s. It traces the careers of the blacklistees – from radical communists to committed liberals – before and during the witch-hunt, following them through years of anonymous work behind pseudonyms and, for some, exile.

The book presents a group portrait of figures such as Charles Chaplin, Dalton Trumbo, Joseph Losey, Adrian Scott, Paul Jarrico, John Berry, Hugo Butler, Cy Endfield, Bernard Vorhaus, and Irving Lerner at a moment when their civil liberties were under attack by the very institutions meant to protect them.

Featuring 140 stills from the collection of the BFI National Archive.