Cold War Cinema – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Cold War Cinema team returns to discuss the 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Something is off in the sleepy little town of Santa Mira, California. As residents begin worrying that their family and friends no longer seem to be who they say they are, Dr. Miles Bennell and his former flame Becky Driscoll slowly uncover an alien plot to replace every person on earth with otherworldly duplicates. Directed by Don Siegel (Riot on Cell Block 11, Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz) and written by Daneil Mainwaring (Out of the Past), and with uncredited work by blacklisted screenwriter Richard Collins (Song of Russia), Invasion explores myriad maladies in midcentury American culture.  

 Join hosts Jason Christian, Tony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein as we discuss: 

• The many complicated—and often contradictory—political allegories often read into the film from both the left and the right, including anti-communist and anti-conformist messages.

• The political and discursive handwringing done by Invasion's creative team to distance themselves and the film from its most potent politics.

• Invasion's other formal and narrative critiques of psychoanalysis, middle-class nuclear family values, professional expertise, and the Hollywood studio system.

• Why movies are not riddles to be solved.

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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 

Paul recommends Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, Tommy Lee Wallace).

Tony recommends, The Burbs (1989, Joe Dante).

Jason recommends No Down Payment (1957, Martin Ritt).

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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 

For more from your hosts:

• Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. 

• Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X at @tonyjballas.

• Follow Paul on Bluesky at @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed at @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 

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Logo by Jason Christian 

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 

Happy listening!

This week on Cold War Cinema, we look at Boris Barnet's Poet (sometimes refered to as The Poet), a 1956 feature about the role of art and literature in war and revolution. 

Join hosts Jason Christian, Tony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein for a broad-ranging conversation about the film and the politics of form and style. Throughout, we consider:

• The challenges of context-dependent domestic filmmaking and international spectatorship

• How film narrative and aesthetic modes like Socialist Realism participate in the construction of national myths, imaginaries, and ideologies

• Barnet's dynamic use of framing, blocking, color, and light to advance Poet's plot and politics

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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 

Paul recommends A History of Russian Cinema by Birgit Beumers.

Tony recommends, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott. Tony emphatically does not recommend Literature and Revolution by Leon Trotsky. 

Jason recommends Miklós Janscó's 1967 Hungarian war film, The Red and the White. 

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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 

For more from your hosts:

• Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. 

• Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X at @tonyjballas.

• Follow Paul on Bluesky at @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed at @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 

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Logo by Jason Christian 

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 

Happy listening!

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 dismantling of a Soviet "atomic spy ring," and the arrests or numerous people both in Canada and the United States.

At a time of relative peace post-WWII, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther considered The Iron Curtain "a highly inflamatory film" and a dangerous provocation. "Hollywood fired its first shot in the 'cold war' against Russia yesterday," Crowther writtes in his review, "just when a faint hope was glimmering that maybe moderation in fact might be achieved." 

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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 

Paul recommends the pro-Soviet Hollywood propaganda film Mission to Moscow (1943; dir. Michael Curtiz) 

Jason recommends the 2000 book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders 

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Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas (same handles on  BlueSky). Follow Paul on BlueSky at @ptklein.com. Paul writes about movies at www.howtoreadmovies.com. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/. 

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Logo by Jason Christian 

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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 suppression of the second part. Our discussion touches on this history and many other topics, including Soviet montage, dialectical art construction, Eisenstein's queerness, his fraught relationship with Stalin, and more. 

This is the first episode of a new format in which we take book or movie recommendations from each of us, which are found below: 

Tony's book recommendations:

1. Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict by Ronald Bergan (2016)
2. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Philip Rosen (1986)
3. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein (1949)

Paul's book and film recommendations:

1. This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalinist Russia by Joan Neuberger (2019)
2. Ivan the Terrible by Joan Neuberger 
3. Battleship Potemkin (1925; dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

Jason's movie recommendations:

1. Come and See (1985; dir. Elem Klimov)
2.  The Ascent (1977; dir. Larisa Shepitko) 
3. Wings (1966; dir. Larisa Shepitko) 

Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas; follow Paul on BlueSky at @ptklein.com. Paul writes about movies at www.howtoreadmovies.com. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/. 

Our logo is by Jason Christian 

The theme music for this episode and all forthcoming episodes is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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 writer John Howard Lawson, who went uncredited. 

Felicia is the host of the wondeful film podcast Seeing Faces in the Movies, which focuses on either a director or cinemtagrapher and how their aesthetic approach changes (or doesn't) across their ouevre. You can follow Felicia on social media at these sites: 

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review! And follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas (same handles at Bluesky). Jason's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

Our logo is by Jason Christian 

Theme music is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt)

Please drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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 articles mentioned:

• Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders
• The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten by Gerald Horne
• Aesthetic Theory by Theodor Adorno
• "Fascinating Fascism" by Susan Sontag

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review! And follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian, Anthony at @tonyjballas, and Paul at @ptklein, and the same handles at BlueSky. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

Our logo is by Jason Christian 

The theme music for this episode and all forthcoming episodes is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 

Please drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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, he hardly needs an introduction, but many people don't realize that he was a victim of Red Scare harrassment from the media and feds and was eventually exiled from the United States. Monsieur Verdoux is a bold film in that it asks a viewer, just two years after the end of WWII, to consider state-sponsored mass murder (e.g. war) and what Engels calls "social murder" (murder by deprivation), as opposed to individual crimes, which are easier to identify and denounce.  It's also a Chaplin film full of his signiture gags. The combination of these two registers, deadly serious and comical, makes for a fascinating but jarring cinematic experience. 

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian, Anthony at @tonyjballas, and Paul at @ptklein, the latter two are also on BlueSky. 

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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 nevertheless blacklisted after his name was mentioned in the right-wing anticommunist newsletter Counterattack, along with 150 of other Hollywood workers. These experiences were satirized in The Front, the first film that confronts the blacklist era directly. 

Sally Field, the star of Norma Rae, once wrote of Ritt that "he felt it was important to stand for something, to have a moral point of view—especially if you work in the arts." That committment to justice is present all through Ritt's work. He boldly tackled labor issues and racism in a number of films, going as far as critiquing the all-white suburbian "utopias" in the overlooked gem No Down Payment (1957). 

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review! Drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com Happy listening!

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 to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980; and Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985. His writing on film, books, and culture has appeared in a variety of print and online publications. He has also contributed video and print essays and commentaries to a number of DVD/Blu-ray releases. He writes a regular newsletter under his name on Substack. Follow him on Twitter (X), Instagram, and Bluesky: @pulpcurry. Nette is also on Letterboxd, and he made a list of all 353 films mentioned in Revolution in 35mm. 

As always please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review! Send us tips or ideas or anything else at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com. We hope you enjoy!

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 terms of its scrappy production, dialectical sctructure, and Marxist themes. (You can hear him gush about that film on another podcast, linked here.) Biberman was one of the Hollywood Ten and he was blacklisted, as were the screenwriter, Michael Wilson, and the producer, Paul Jarrico. The Hollywood apparatus and law enforcement attempted to sabotage the production of Salt of the Earth on numerous occasions, going as far as getting the lead actress, Rosaura Revueltas, deported to Mexico on trumped up charges. Although she was from a prominent family of artists and writers, she was blacklisted and never acted in another Mexican film. 

As always please suscribe to the podcast if you like what you hear, and don't forget to leave us a review! Happy listening!