A Battle Of Ideology -- `Guilty Of Suspicion' Shows Winkler's Care

XXX 1/2 ``Guilty by Suspicion,'' with Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, George Wendt, Patricia Wettig, Sam Wanamaker, Martin Scorsese. Written and directed by Irwin Winkler. Factoria, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Uptown, Parkway Plaza, Gateway Center 8. ``PG-13'' - Parental guidance advised, due to strong language.

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Every week in grade school, my class was handed a Weekly Reader describing our country's endless battles against communism. Its language was the stuff of demonology. It conjured images of little red devils with pitchforks, evil grins and an uncanny ability to shape one's thoughts.

The paranoia was easy to swallow. We'd never known anything else. It wasn't until fourth or fifth grade that it even dawned on me that communism had something to do with politics.

Certainly we had little idea that through World War II, the Soviets had been our allies. They were the devil, weren't they?

They certainly are in ``Guilty by Suspicion,'' directed by Irwin Winkler. Winkler is the producer of ``GoodFellas,'' ``The Right Stuff,'' and a dozen other classic films (and all five ``Rocky'' movies). This is his directorial debut, and it's obviously a labor of love.

He concentrates on one of the most conspicuous, if not most typical, ideological battles of the era: the showdown between the movie world and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), resulting in the Hollywood blacklist that prevented scores of talented directors, writers and actors from working.

The movie bristles with an insider's knowledge of the film world. It's wry, intelligent, impassioned. It goes slightly wrong in its overly operatic, upbeat finale. But the period feel is right, with the Rosenbergs and Louis Armstrong sharing the flickering black-and-white TV screen, and backlot bitchery about Marilyn Monroe's overnight success providing an amusing running gag. The humorous and human touches lift it well above reportage.

Director David Merrill (Robert De Niro) is the apple of Darryl Zanuck's eye. Just back from Paris, he's ready to start work on a new film. But there's a hitch.

His friend, screenwriter Larry Nolan (Chris Cooper), has been called in by the HUAC as a suspected communist and asked to list any Communist Party members or sympathizers he knows. Merrill is on that list.

No problem, thinks Zanuck (played with crusty verve by Ben Piazza). All Merrill has to do is ``purge'' himself by naming any names he knows. Then work on the picture can begin. Zanuck makes it sound like a mere matter of paperwork.

To everyone's surprise, however, Merrill can't do it. His colleagues and ex-wife Ruth (Annette Bening) assume he'll put his career above everything else. He's tempted, but his own party affiliations were casual (a matter of attending a few meetings in the '30s), and he knows little, if anything, about his friends' Communist Party sympathies.

Soon he's out of work and being followed by a pair of young FBI agents. ``I feel like Joseph Cotten in `The Third Man','' he complains.

As fear takes hold among his professional circle, casualties mount. Actress Dorothy Nolan (Patricia Wettig), Larry's wife, has alcoholic tendencies and can't handle the pressure. When Merrill's best friend, screenwriter Bunny Baxter (George Wendt), is asked to name names, he wants to use Merrill's, reasoning that his reputation is ruined already.

If it comes to a trial, even taking the Fifth Amendment won't help. ``Sure you'll protect yourself from self-incrimination,'' says Merrill. ``But you end up guilty by suspicion - and where does that get you?''

De Niro turns in a low-key, beguiling performance as a reasonable man attempting to make sense of an unreasonable world. Bening, in a change of pace from her recent femme fatale roles, is similarly understated and affecting. Wettig, Piazza and Martin Scorsese (playing an openly Communist director who wastes no time skedaddling to Europe) all add spice to the proceedings in cleverly written minor roles.

Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus gives the screen a glossy, encircling claustrophobia; and the soundtrack is filled with wry touches like Billie Holiday crooning ``They Can't Take That Away From Me'' when that's exactly what ``they'' are going to do.

Winkler makes it clear that the witchhunt had little if anything to do with suspected traitorism. ``This is not about national security,'' Merrill is told. ``It's not about loyalty. It's about power. It's about getting your picture in the paper.''