RED & BLACK — Ehsan Khoshbakht (dir.)

RED & BLACK

Hollywood Left and The Blacklist

—

18,1 x 22 cm / 288 pages / July 2026

English texts / Textes en anglais

isbn: 978-2-35137-406-1

—

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

 

Edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht

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.