In the 50's, in New York City, the screenplay writer Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) meets his apolitical friend, the cashier of restaurant and smalltime bookmaker Howard Prince (Woody Allen) and tells him that he can not work anymore since he is blacklisted. Prince offers to sell his scripts to the producer of a TV station using his own name and Alfred offers a 10% commission to Prince.
Prince uses the money to pay his debts and improve his life and soon he offers his name to two other blacklisted writers. Meanwhile he dates the TV screenplay editor Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). When the veteran actor Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel) is blacklisted and fired by the producer Phil Sussman (Herschel Bernardi), the idealistic Florence quits her job. But when Hecky Brown commits suicide, Prince takes a stand against the unjust system.
Today I have just watched "The Front" on VHS maybe for the third or fourth time (last time was on 31 May 2002). This fairytale about the dark period of the North America history known as McCarthyism is wrongly categorized as "comedy" and is actually one of the most important and a serious movie by Woody Allen that perfectly works with the situation of a figurehead that realizes the damage caused by the Powers that Be to the careers and lives of his compatriots and decides to react against them.
Another attraction is that the director Martin Ritt; the writer Walter Bernstein and the stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi and Lloyd Gough had been blacklisted in the 50's. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "Testa de Ferro por Acaso" ("Figurehead by Chance")
