Cradle Will Rock (1999)
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Super 35 134m
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Emily Watson, Bill Murray
Synopsis:
I936-37: Marc Blitzstein completes a musical drama about workers' unionism which Orson Welles and John Houseman put on and the Federal Theatre Project backs but is then forced into suppressing. Meanwhile Nelson Rockefeller commissions Diego Rivera to paint a mural in the lobby of his building and purchases old masters from an emissary of Mussolini's looking for cash to fund his fascist war machine.
Review:
The chaotic canvas in question could itself be a metaphor for this huge tapestry of a movie, which, in the manner of an Altman film, focuses on so many characters and stories that scene length is inevitably shortened, with some loss of narrative drive. What all the stories have in common, however, is a revealing aspect of pre-war American politics, which are not a million miles from the post-war variety.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Super 35 134m
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Emily Watson, Bill Murray
Synopsis:
I936-37: Marc Blitzstein completes a musical drama about workers' unionism which Orson Welles and John Houseman put on and the Federal Theatre Project backs but is then forced into suppressing. Meanwhile Nelson Rockefeller commissions Diego Rivera to paint a mural in the lobby of his building and purchases old masters from an emissary of Mussolini's looking for cash to fund his fascist war machine.
Review:
The chaotic canvas in question could itself be a metaphor for this huge tapestry of a movie, which, in the manner of an Altman film, focuses on so many characters and stories that scene length is inevitably shortened, with some loss of narrative drive. What all the stories have in common, however, is a revealing aspect of pre-war American politics, which are not a million miles from the post-war variety.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Super 35 134m
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Emily Watson, Bill Murray
Synopsis:
I936-37: Marc Blitzstein completes a musical drama about workers' unionism which Orson Welles and John Houseman put on and the Federal Theatre Project backs but is then forced into suppressing. Meanwhile Nelson Rockefeller commissions Diego Rivera to paint a mural in the lobby of his building and purchases old masters from an emissary of Mussolini's looking for cash to fund his fascist war machine.
Review:
The chaotic canvas in question could itself be a metaphor for this huge tapestry of a movie, which, in the manner of an Altman film, focuses on so many characters and stories that scene length is inevitably shortened, with some loss of narrative drive. What all the stories have in common, however, is a revealing aspect of pre-war American politics, which are not a million miles from the post-war variety.