Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Terence Butler

SOURCE: "Polonsky and Kazan: HUAC and the Violation of Personality," in Sight and Sound, Vol. 57, No. 4, Autumn, 1988, pp. 262-67.

In the following excerpt from an essay in which he compares the works of Polonsky and Elia Kazan—who cooperated with Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), though he shared many of Polonsky's political ideals—Butler examines the main themes of Polonsky's works, focusing on Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here and Romance of a Horse Thief.

Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was one of the many casualties of the House Un-American Activities Committee in Hollywood, Elia Kazan a self-justifying collaborator with the same committee; yet their roots in the Communism of the Depression ensure a strong, if contradictory, relationship between their films. Both are central to the political concerns of postwar American cinema. By their time the populism so dear to Frank Capra and John Ford (the little man assailing...
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