This week on Cold War Cinema, we discuss the 1953 Soviet science-fiction drama, Silvery Dust, directed by Abram Room and Pavel Armand, a film once again set in the United States. The film concerns an American scientist who has developed a powerful new weapon of mass destruction designed to wipe out populations within a large area while leaving no harmful radioactive residues or traces. In the film, the scientist colludes with a Nazi colleague and various private interests, who all conspire with ...
Aug 14, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Season 2Ep. 5
“Normal people want the basic human rights that accompany citizenship in any sovereign nation. I don't… I don't live anywhere; I'm not a citizen at all. I don't need my human rights.” The Cold War Cinema team is back with special guest Matthew Ellis, a researcher, artist, and cohost of the Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation Movie Film Podcast , for a special bonus episode covering Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme . Recently released on home video and streaming, the film follows the cunn...
Jul 29, 2025•1 hr 36 min
This week on Cold War Cinema, we discuss Robert Stevenson’s 1949 drama, I Married a Communist, also known as Woman on Pier 13. This Hollywood production is one of the most storied—and notorious—anti-communist films of the early Cold War era. The movie revolves around a San Francisco shipping executive who worked his way up from the docks, as a stevedore, only to find himself embroiled in a Communist plot to sabotage a labor contract. Join hosts Jason Christian, Tony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein as ...
Jul 24, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Season 2Ep. 4
“I used to think there was one America, but there are two. There's no place for me in McPherson's and Hearst's America, but there is in Lincoln's and Roosevelts!” This week on Cold War Cinema, we discuss Mikhaill Romm’s 1948 drama, The Russian Question . In this Soviet production, winner of the 1948 Stalin Prize and based on a play of the same name by Konstantin Siminov, a mendacious newspaper editor sends columnist Harry Smith to the Soviet Union to write a book critical of socialism. But when ...
Jul 03, 2025•1 hr 40 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this crossover episode with Rakeem Shabazz of Wise the Dome TV , Cold War Cinema co-host Anthony Ballas discusses the recent documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (dir. Johan Grimonprez 2024). The documentary explores the weaponization of jazz music during the Cold War, the contradictions of using Black art to mask American imperialism, and the legacy of artists like Louis Armstrong, Max Roach, and Nina Simone. Ballas breaks down how the film links Cold War coups and cultural propaganda to ...
Jun 20, 2025•1 hr 9 min
This is a crossover episode with The Socialist Shelf podcast. Our co-host Jason and his wife, Ankita, were invited on the Socialist Shelf to dicuss a radical cinema educational project they run in Atlanta called Resistance Cinema , as well as the role that radical cinema plays in social movemets. Ankita is a Bollywood expert and the co-host of the The Desi Gaze , a podcast about overlooked Hindi cinema. We hope you enjoy this show! Don't forget to subscribe to The Socialist Shelf and The Desi Ga...
Jun 11, 2025•1 hr 17 min
Join hosts Jason and Paul for a discussion of William A. Wellman's 1948 spy thriller The Iron Curtain , starring Dana Andrews and Jean Tierney. Regarded as an anti-communist propaganda film, The Iron Curtain was the first major Hollywood studio production to engage directly with the Cold War. The story is based on the memoirs of the Russian spy Igor Gouzenko, who stole documents from the Soviet embasy in Ottawa, where he worked, and defected to Canada. This act of espionage led to the dismantlin...
May 02, 2025•59 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Join hosts Jason, Tony, and our new co-host, Paul, on Episode One of Season Two! On this episode we discuss Sergei Eisenstein's epic two-part Soviet masterpiece Ivan the Terrible , released in 1945 and 1958 respectively. The films were commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 as a means to rehabilitate Ivan the Terrible's image for a contemporary Soviet audience. Stalin celebrated Part 1, but the state banned Part 2. A third part had been in the works, but was abandoned by Eisenstein after the supp...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Join hosts Jason and Tony, as well as a new guest, Felicia Maroni, for the finale of Season One. On this episode we discuss Zoltán Korda's 1951 drama Cry, the Beloved Country , a film shot on location in South Africa, starring Canada Lee and Sidney Poitier, which aimed to critique the brutal apartheid system just three years after it was codified into law. The film was based on a novel of the same name by Alan Paton, a white South African, and adapted to the screen by Paton and the blacklisted w...
Feb 21, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Grab your sandals and sword and get philosophical with Jason, Tony, and our guest Paul Klein, as we unpack the wonders of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). The film was adapted from Howard Fast's novel of the same title by Dalton Trumbo, and it is considered a major step in the end of the notorious Hollywood blacklist. The film is also read as an allegory for civil rights stuggles, the HUAC hearings, and "Third World" struggles. All of this and more is discussed in the episode. Books and artic...
Jan 31, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Join hosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas, as well as a new guest, Paul Klein, as they discuss the iconic actor and director Charlie Chaplin and his late talkie masterpiece Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Paul is a film scholar who writes at the intersection of film and history. His research focuses on the cultural, political, and technological aspects of Hollywood and American filmgoing practices. He also write about how and why movies matter at Reading Movies (howtoreadmovies.com) As for Chaplin,...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss the celebrated socially conscious Hollywood director, Martin Ritt (1914–1990). Ritt is known for a number of critically aclaimed movies, among them Paris Blues (1961), Hud (1963), and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965). In this episode, we focus on four of Ritt's explicitly pro-worker films: The Molly Maguires (1970), Sounder (1972), The Front (1976), and Norma Rae (1979). Ritt was never brought before HUAC, but he n...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Join us for our first ever interview with the Australian writer and scholar, Andrew Nette, who, along with the film historian Samm Deighan, co-edited the new book Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990 , published by PM Press. Nette is an author of fiction and nonfiction. He is coeditor of three previous books for PM Press, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980 ; Sticking It...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 26 min
Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Herbert J. Biberman's iconic independent masterpiece Salt of the Earth (1954). The film is based on the real-life Empire Zinc strike in 1951 in Grant County, New Mexico, and was self-financed and made entirely outside the studio system using mostly non-professional actors, many of them actual miners playing versions of themselves. Jason compares the the film to Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 masterpiece The Battle of Algiers in t...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Irving Pichel's 1950 crime thriller Quicksand , starring Mickey Rooney, Peter Lorre, Jeanne Cagney, and Barbara Bates. The film's plot revolves around Rooney's character making one bad decision after another, shattering his moral compass along the way. The implicit message, heavy-handed in its delivery, is that poverty breeds crime. Pichel was one of the so-called "unfriendly nineteen" brought before HUAC hearings in 1947....
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Michael Gordon's 1951 drama I Can Get It for You Wholesale , a film that explores the cutthroat fashion industry in New York City's garment district. It was written by Abraham Polonsky and Vera Caspary and stars Susan Hayward, Dan Dailey, and George Sanders. Gordon and Polonsky were blacklisted during the infamous HUAC anti-communist hearings. After the blacklist lifted, Gordon returned to Hollywood to direct several light...
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 8
This episode is a slight departure for this season—and we had fun with it. Rather than taking on a film directed by a blacklisted director, as usual, we're discussing a groundbreaking video essay about blacklisted directors. Thom Andersen's Red Hollywood (1996) discusses several of the directors and films we've discuss so far on the podcast. Andersen's goal in the film is to curate a list of overlooked films and demonstrate the bold themes that many of these directors were attempting to inject i...
Jun 14, 2024•53 min
Join hosts Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Tim Jones as they discuss Abraham Polonsky ’s debut film Force of Evil , a 1948 crime picture starring John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, and Thomas Gomez. Force of Evil is one of thirteen movies the critic and filmmaker Thom Andersen identifies as film gris , or socially conscious crime cinema made from 1947 to 1951, during the height of the notorious House Un-American Activities hearings. In 1951, Polonsky refused to testify before his own HUAC hea...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul , a 1947 boxing film that critic Thom Andersen categorizes as film gris , or socially conscious crime cinema during the film noir years (1940s through the 1950s). Rossen testified at a HUAC hearing in 1951, pleaded the Fifth Amendment, and was blacklisted . Two years later, he testified again and this time he named 57 names and was given his career back in Hollywood. Rossen went on to direct several more features, i...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss John Berry 's He Ran All the Way , a 1951 crime drama in the film noir and film gris traditions. The film stars John Garfield , who was shortly thereafter blacklisted and died of a heart attack at age 39. The screenplay is written by Hugo Butler and Dalton Trumbo , both blacklisted, as was the director, John Berry. We also discuss Berry's short documentary The Hollywood Ten (1950), a fundarising agitprop documentary about the ten Hollywood perso...
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss Bernard Vorhaus's So Young, So Bad , a 1950 drama about a girls' reform school. The film dares to imagine therapy instead of punishment as a tool to "cure" antisocial behavior. Vorhaus was blacklisted in 1951 after his name was mentioned during the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. He subsequently relocated to England, where he lived the rest of his life. The opening clip was taken from a fascinating interview of V...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss Cy Endfield’s Try and Get Me! , also know as The Sound of Fury , a 1950 crime film that critic Thom Andersen includes on his list of film gris movies, o r socially conscious crime cinema during the film noir years (1940s through the 1950s). Endfield was blacklisted in 1951 after his name was mentioned during the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. He subsequently relocated to London, where he went on to make a number...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss Jules Dassin’s 1950 crime film Night and the City , a celebrated film noir picture (and film gris ) shot on location in London. Like all of the directors discussed this season, Dassin was blacklisted during the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. The director subsequently relocated to Paris, where he made his groundbreaking heist film Rififi (1955), and later settled in Greece, where he lived the rest of his life. Da...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Join hosts Jason, Anthony, and Tim as they discuss Joseph Losey’s 1950 crime film The Lawless, an underseen and somewhat uneven example of what the filmmaker and critic Thom Andersen calls film gris, o r socially conscious crime cinema during the film noir years (1940s through the 1950s). Losey was blacklisted in 1952, after his name was mentioned during the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. He subsequently relocated to London, where he had a second (and admittedly...
Jan 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 1
