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Cradle Will Rock
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Bitter ventriloquist Tommy Crickshaw (Bill Murray) knows the true evil of Communism. He tells it to his dummy. He tells it to whoever will listen.
"Reds aren't funny," Crickshaw explains to a like-minded co-worker (Joan Cusack) at the Federal Theater Project. "I don't think they're funny."
Dusting off the Red Scare occupies just one piece in the screwball puzzle in writer/director Tim Robbins' riotous comedy Cradle Will Rock. It's hard to imagine a more colorful backdrop: 1930s New York City is alive with tense excitement. New artists like Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades) and a 22-year-old Orson Welles (Angus MacFadyen) are pushing the boundaries of the art and theater world. Thoughts of a cultural revolution fill the air. The United States is struggling to break out of the Great Depression.
Long lines of unemployed people wait for a chance at government work via The Works Progress Administration. One of its branches is the Federal Theater Project, headed by Hallie Flanagan (Cherry Jones), which aims to bring low-cost theater to millions of Americans. The problem is that some powerful congressmen and capitalist leaders see the Federal Theater Project as a haven for Communist infiltrators.
Tensions reach a breaking point when the producing-directing team of Welles and John Houseman (Cary Elwes) stage the premiere of Marc Blitzstein's 1937 musical, The Cradle Will Rock. Its story reflects the union-management battle raging in the steel industry. In the play, aspiring actor Aldo Silvano (John Turturro) plays a steel union leader who stands up against the corporate boss of Steeltown, U.S.A. The Cradle Will Rock is an inspirational story for a pro-union audience. That's probably why Washington attempted to censor the play by sending soldiers and padlocking the theater.
Knowledge of The Cradle Will Rock's fight for artistic expression has faded over time. This helps put back some of the drama in Robbins' cinematic history lesson. So when Welles leads Blitzstein, his cast members and an opening night audience uptown to a vacant theater, we're not exactly sure what to expect. All that's certain is that Cradle Will Rock will mount a finale worthy of its high-energy storytelling. A film this much fun could never end on a downbeat note.
In a genre-bending tale best described as a political-historical comedy, Robbins wisely keeps Cradle Will Rock from taking itself too seriously. The film spins around its vast cast of characters with the gusto of a Marx Brothers movie. Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) dances drunkenly with Rivera, Frida Kahlo (Corina Katt) and a bevy of nude models in Rivera's downtown studio. Crickshaw struggles to teach the craft of ventriloquism to a pair of wannabe vaudevillians. Welles rants and raves at his Cradle Will Rock troupe, including a stagehand-turned-actress named Olive Stanton (Emily Watson) who's cast in a lead role.
"You're not actors!' Welles screams, while the union rep calls for another break. "You're smokers!"
Robbins fills every inch of Cradle Will Rock with eccentric characters, historical details and interesting subplots. It's admirable how Robbins juggles everything into one cogent story. Of course, it helps that Cradle Will Rock has a common goal: the play itself.
As the film unspools, key members of Cradle Will Rock's comic ensemble step into the limelight. Murray is hilarious as the ventriloquist desperate to rid his vaudeville troupe of Communist forces. MacFadyen's over-the-top blustering as the 22-year-old Welles is perfectly high-pitched. Vanessa Redgrave, as the wealthy Countess La Grange, mixes ditzy charm and well-intended philanthropy into a potent screwball heroine. "I've always wanted to witness the process of art making," she gushes to Welles during a Cradle Will Rock rehearsal.
In fact, only Robbins' real-life wife Susan Sarandon fails to make an impression as Margherita Sarfatti, a cultural emissary for the Italian dictator Mussolini. Well, actually that's not entirely true: Sarandon's European accent was annoying.
Cradle Will Rock confirms Robbins' promise as a filmmaker. He's technically adept. His debut film, 1995's Dead Man Walking, first revealed his talents as a storyteller. What's most impressive about watching Cradle Will Rock is seeing Robbins' knack for different movie genres. He's always excelled as a natural, comic actor -- The Player, Bull Durham and The Hudsucker Proxy. Now Robbins reveals these same traits behind the camera.
Fears of Cradle Will Rock dissolving into preachy didacticism are answered by the film's shameless farce. It's clear that Robbins proudly wears his politics on his sleeves. Class struggles are pushed to the forefront. The glory of theater and artists, and the ongoing friction between artists and the money that funds their work are constant themes. Robbins never shies away from clichés. It helps that Cradle Will Rock portrays the film's villains -- Rockefeller, William Randolph Hearst (John Carpenter), Congressman Dies (Harris Yulin) and industrialist Gray Mathers (Philip Baker Hall) -- as buffoons.
Cradle Will Rock does pause, just briefly, from its comic hijinks to cast a disapproving eye at the conservative forces in Congress and what would later become the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The one thing in Cradle Will Rock that Robbins refrains from treating in comic fashion is the inevitable shutting down of the Federal Theater Project and Flanagan's own defense of its programs.
If there is one complaint, it's the thankless role Robbins creates for Flanagan. Cradle Will Rock is such a winning comedy, it's unfair that Flanagan doesn't receive any funny moments. Compared to her slapstick-minded peers, Flanagan struts through the moviemade frenzy with a long stick firmly planted up her behind.
A concluding image of a modern-day Times Square asks moviegoing audiences to make their own connections between The Cradle Will Rock's long-ago protests and today's battles, whether they be WTO trade meetings in Seattle or the threats against NEA funding in Washington, D.C. Give credit to Robbins for pushing the debate outside the theater walls. He's ready for an argument. Making fun of the situation with a clever screwball comedy like Cradle Will Rock is just his way of gathering momentum. (Rated R.)
CityBeat Grade: B.
