Film Review: Cradle Will Rock (1999)

It is difficult to argue against the notion that most actors, writers, musicians and other artists have their political views firmly aligned to the left. One of the rare Hollywood films to not only admit but actually relish in the fact is Cradle Will Rock, 1999 period drama written and directed by Tim Robbins.

The plot reconstructs one of the most extraordinary events in history of American theatre and begins in 1936. Country is still suffering from Great Depression and administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a part of its New Deal policies, had formed Work Progress Administration with the aim of providing publicly-funded jobs to millions of chronically unemployed people. One of its programs is Federal Theatre Project headed by Hallie Flanagan (played by Cherry Jones) which employs thousands of otherwise struggling writers, actors, artists and stage hands. One of the stage works that is going to be produced under auspices of Federal Theatre is The Cradle Will Rock, ambitious musical drama composed by Marc Blitzstein (played by Hank Azaria). Production, which is going to be directed by young and immensely talented Orson Welles (played by Angus MacFadyen) and produced by his friend John Houseman (played by Cary Elwes) gets threatened due to politics and its strong pro-union content, which becomes increasingly relevant due to number of violent strikes against large steel whose rich and influential owners, like Gray Mathers (played by Philip Baker Hall), don’t hide their sympathies for European fascist dictators like Mussolini and Hitler. Federal Theatre Project, due to left wing views among many of its cadres, is accused of spreading Communist propaganda and newly created House Committee of Un-American Activities led by right-wing Congressman Martin Dies (played by Harris Yulin) begins to hold public hearings about it. Federal Theatre gets its funding slashed and the venue where The Cradle Will Rock was supposed to have its premiere is closed, forcing Blitzstein, Welles and Houseman to quickly find alternative solution. In the meantime, Nelson Rockefeller (played by John Cusack), rich heir of the oil empire hires renowned Mexican artist Diego Rivera (played by Ruben Blades) to paint mural at Rockefeller Center, unaware that Rivera would use it to express his own leftist beliefs.

Production of The Cradle Will Rock is indeed a story worth turning into a feature film. This view was shared by Orson Welles who, shortly before his death, wrote the script about it, hoping to direct a film in which his role would have been played by Rupert Everett. The film was never made because Welles failed to get the funding. Decade a half later the same subject was tackled by Tim Robbins, renowned actor who had twice before tried his hand at directing with political satire Bob Roberts and drama Dead Man Walking. Robbins has toyed with the idea of casting himself as Welles but in the end only brought his long time romantic partner Susan Sarandon, who appears in the film as Italian socialite, art patron and fascist sympathiser Margherita Sarfati. She was the biggest star in the ensemble cast made mostly of dependable character actors. Among the cast British actress Emily Watson, who had some prominent starring roles at the time, is used in overmelodramatic role of struggling street singer Olive Stanton. Bill Murray is good in the role of vaudeville ventriloquist, but his performance is affected by poor makeup and even worse writing.

Apart from great cast, Robbins, who also co-produced the film, also had relatively large budget at his disposal thanks to support of large studio like Disney. It is very likely that he, like Welles in his celebrated film debut Citizen Kane, felt that he was a given expensive toy to play around. Unlike Welles, Robbins lacked proper talent and the result of such experiments is mostly disappointing. At first glance, it seems that the main problem of Cradle Will Rock is author’s left-wing politics and the attempt to depict 1930s America through simplistic division between the Good, represented by struggling, but talented, progressive and socially conscious artists on one hand; and Evil, represented by oppressive right-wing politicians or capitalist tycoons that love fascism. Robbins tries too hard to make the plot and characters fit such narrative and often at the expense of historical accuracy. An example can be found in incident related to Rivera’s mural (later reconstructed in 2002 biopic Frida), which actually happened years before events of Cradle Will Rock. Robbins also fails to mention that some of the protagonists were indeed Communists and further fails to explain how in 1930s America Communism enjoyed relatively strong support for a reason, due to catastrophic failure of capitalism that led many to seek alternatives in form of the most extreme anti-capitalist ideology. But politics isn’t the main reason why this film fails. Robbins directs some scenes well, including Altman-inspired long tracking shots that introduce characters. On the other hand, some of those characters and subplots around them are completely redundant, making Cradle Will Rock simply too long. Some creative choice, like Blitzstein being haunted by the ghost of his recently passed away wife Eva (played by Susan Heimbeinder) and his idol Bertolt Brecht (played by Steven Skybell), are quite unfortunate and only make the film unnecessarily confusing. Although some of the fans of music theatre or Classic Hollywood might appreciate it, Cradle Will Rock ends as failure. An interesting failure, but failure nevertheless.

RATING: 4/10 (++)

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