IslandGuru Who payed the critics

TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Ploydsge just watch it!

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

sddavis63 I became familiar with "I Was A Communist For The FBI" through listening to some of the old radio episodes of the show (of the same name) broadcast over satellite radio. I've always found the radio show interesting, and when I stumbled upon a movie based on the same story there was never any doubt in my mind that I wanted to watch it. It's the story of Matt Cvetic, an FBI operative who infiltrates the Pittsburgh branch of the United States Communist Party during World War II and remains as an FBI mole for almost 10 years - at the beginning of the Cold War, when the Red Scare was taking possession of America.It's obvious - as you'd expect - that this movie seeks to portray communists and communism in a bad light. That becomes clear right from the start. A meeting of the party leaders is held in a fancy hotel, where they indulge in wine and caviar and other luxuries. The proletariat? Workers of the world unite, indeed! The point is made there by one of the leaders that once the communists take over America this is how the leaders will always live. And, as for the workers, well - "they'll always be workers." So much for communist idealism! The point is also made that the communist leaders are racists, using the "n-word" to refer to black workers and seeing them only as useful pawns but of little real importance. The communists portrayed here are basically rabble-rousers, wanting to spark illegal strikes and riots, and fiercely loyal to and controlled by Stalin and the Soviet Union (toasts are offered to both.) They're suspicious of each other, and ruthless toward those they suspect of betraying them - which obviously makes Cvetic's life a perilous one. He rises (in the movie) to a significant position of leadership in the Party - always vaguely under suspicion (but it seems that every communist was vaguely suspicious of every other communist, so no big deal, really) but nothing ever gets pinned on him. In the meantime, having to live publicly as a "red" he's alienated from his own family (his son and brothers can't stand to be in the same room with him) and he has basically no friends. It's a lonely life. Cvetic is torn between his loyalty to his country and his desire to live a normal life. Things really start to be torn apart when he discovers that his son's teacher Eve (Dorothy Hart) is a fellow communist, who becomes something of a love interest for him. (As an aside, I thought it interesting that Eve revealed that there were a lot of communist teachers - so the right- wing suspicion of teachers being out to subvert rather than educate American youth goes back at least to the Red Scare.) The movie also portrays the communists as a much bigger threat than they really were - infiltrating every aspect of American society, with tentacles stretching across the country and the world. It is most certainly a product of the Red Scare.I thought Frank Lovejoy did a decent if unspectacular job as Cvetic, and I don't doubt that Cvetic's life undercover must have been difficult. Having said that, the movie (and the earlier radio show) grossly exaggerates things. The reality is that there's no real evidence that Cvetic rose as high in the communist hierarchy as this suggests. Once he came out from his undercover role he did testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he did name lots of people as communists, but in spite of that he wasn't considered a particularly reliable or effective witness, and was even considered a bit of a loose cannon. The very wide liberties that the story takes with Cvetic's life make it a bit funny (and perhaps say something about the anti-communist hysteria of the time) to realize that "I Was A Communist For The FBI" was actually nominated for an Oscar - for Best Documentary! It's a decent if not especially exciting red scare cloak and dagger type film, but there's nothing Oscar-worthy about it - and it's certainly not a documentary! The movie ends not in documentary style, but with straight emotional propaganda, as the strains of "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" play, and the camera zeroes in to a closeup of a bust of Abraham Lincoln.As for Cvetic, after testifying against the communists he tried to enter politics as a Republican, but failed, and spent the rest of his life (he died in 1962) involved in various ways with the anti- communist movement. (6/10)

bkoganbing There are so very few films where just the title tells you all you need to know about the film. Such a film is I Was A Communist For The FBI. Another example would be I Married A Monster From Outer Space.The really interesting thing about this film is how in heaven's name did this get nominated for an Oscar in the documentary category? It is not a documentary in any sense of the word, it's not even in that hybrid category of docudrama. It's just a rather exploitive film about the work of an FBI undercover agent named Matt Cvetic who infiltrated the Communist Party in Pittsburgh and got active in trying to take over the Steelworker's Union for the Communists and reporting on said activities to his handlers in the FBI.A documentary of that work might have been interesting, but what we got was a film to fit those paranoid times. I found it fascinating that when Cvetic finally broke his cover it was to the House Un-American Activities Committee rather than the trial in New York of the Communist Party leaders. There was a moment in the film where head Communist James Millican tells his followers to start spreading the word that the House Un American Activities Committee was composed of a bunch of right wing yahoos looking to get their names in front of the camera. Now what could have given him that idea? Anyway just connect the dots and no doubt the word their came from J. Edgar Hoover trying to give some credence to HUAC by having an effective undercover come out there rather than at an actual trial. Little thing there called cross examination.Warner Brothers who produced I Was A Communist For The FBI later produced Big Jim McLain which starred John Wayne about a HUAC investigator in Hawaii. HUAC did grab on to credit for the work done by the Honolulu PD in breaking up a Communist spy ring there among the dockworkers. But at least in John Wayne's film nobody claimed it was a documentary.Frank Lovejoy is in the title role as Cvetic and his FBI handlers are Richard Webb and Philip Carey. Dorothy Hart plays a Pittsburgh school teacher who says that there are 30 or so like here in that school system indoctrinating the young among whom is Ron Hagerthy, Lovejoy's son. She has a change of heart about the Communists and Lovejoy has to save her from a homicidal fate planned by his superiors. Ironically Hart left the movies and went to work for all places, the United Nations which as we know has been accused often of being a Communist nest in the USA.Over half a century later and we really have very few objective works on film or in print about the Communist Party of the USA. They were in fact a very active bunch in the labor movement. The real heroes in stopping them were labor organizers like Walter Reuther in the UAW or David Dubinsky in the ILGWU. But since they were people of the left they just don't have the following on the right to be suitable propaganda material.Anyway I Was A Communist For The FBI is an exploitive work based on a real life character and a testament to those paranoid times.

browser-4 I'm tired of people coming up with the idea of communism being a harmless little flirtation.It was a serious threat to America and our way of life for many years. I spent many years of my life to defeat it. To minimilize the threat of communism is nothing but sophistry and needs to be called such.The movie needs to be seen as such, as did the TV series which I remember from my younger years.Is communism good? Look at what it has done ... it builds walls to keep people in. There are only two countries that still practice it ... China and Cuba. Does that say anything?

KuRt-33 Frank Lovejoy starred in two classics: he had a minor part in "House of Wax" and was one of the main characters in Ida Lupino's film noir "The Hitch-Hiker". In "I Was A Communist For The FBI" he plays Matt Cvetic, a Slovenian last name which makes it all the more likely that Cvetic would turn into a communist. Well, that's at least what the film tries to tell you.It is 1951 and McCarthy has started the war on the new enemy, the communists. It was a 'war' that would mark lots of 50s movies. Some movies had subtle criticism (e.g. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"), some were overtly against communism: in "Invaders from Mars" the communists were evil aliens, in "I Was A Communist For The FBI" they were just evil. The communists wanted to start riots which would lead to Americans fighting other Americans according to this movie by Gordon Douglas (who is also the director of the Frank Sinatra thriller "The Lady in Cement" and the giant ants movie "Them!"). Why? Well, if everyone would fight, one would applaud communism for being the new order that would have brought peace to the streets of America. Well, if they say so.The movie is so anti-communism that at times you are feeling you are watching a parody. Well, it isn't, all is meant with a straight face. We follow the life of Matt Cvetic, an FBI agent who pretends to be a communist. We see how he is despised by his family (even his son) and how he can't tell anyone of the Great Mission he is on. He cannot tell them he is risking his neck to save the country.As ridiculous as all this might seem, if you can ignore the propaganda of this movie, you are left with a fairly decent movie. It may be difficult to watch this film nowadays and think lots of people believed the message of this movie, but it's even more difficult that this movie was nominated for an Oscar in 1952. The category? Best Documentary. Really.