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               With Lessons for Today, Movies Bring Back the '50s

   by Associated Press

   Fear of unexpected strikes from overseas. Battles over First Amendment
   rights. Simmering tensions of inequality.
   It's no wonder the 1950s are all over movie screens.

   Whether by fortune or fate, movie theaters are alive with stories -
   from the communist witch hunt of "Trumbo'' to the lesbian injustice of
   "Carol'' - that plunge back into the paranoia of the Cold War and the
   social suffocations of the decade synonymous with Eisenhower, the
   suburbs and the ever-present threat of the bomb. By returning to the
   '50s, filmmakers are finding stories that illuminate the politics of
   today.
   First came Steve Spielberg's "Bridge of Spies,'' a spy thriller that,
   at its heart, is about the justice America affords captured enemy
   combatants and the strength of a morally strong individual (Tom Hanks,
   who else?) to stand up against a national tide of overzealous
   patriotism.
   After the 1957 capture of Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), James
   B. Donovan (Hanks) struggles to give Abel a legitimate legal defense, a
   right that few agree he deserves. The film's second half, when American
   pilot Gary Powers is downed in the Soviet Union, serves as a reminder -
   with clear echoes for the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay - of the value of
   treating prisoners of war the way a nation would want their POWs
   treated.
   For Spielberg, who vividly recalls crouching under his desk at school
   during duck-and-cover drills, the time of his youth is linked to the
   present.
   "There's so much relevance between the late '50s and today,'' Spielberg
   said. "I lived through the Cold War and I was very aware of the
   possibility of walking down the street and seeing a white flash and
   being atomized. I was very, very aware of what a tentative and insecure
   time it was, especially for young people.''
   In "Trumbo,'' director Jay Roach resurrects Hollywood's darkest
   chapter, when Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston) and other
   screenwriters and directors - the Hollywood Ten - were blacklisted by
   the studios after refusing to answer questions about their involvement
   with the Communist Party in a congressional committee investigation
   dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee.
   Suspected of "un-American'' political beliefs, hundreds of other
   artists were refused work for years. HUAC presaged Joseph McCarthy's
   anti-Communist crusade.
   "There are periods of time when fear takes over, the last time being
   these last 14 years,'' said Cranston, drawing a parallel to post-9/11
   surveillance.
   While the '50s climate of "Trumbo'' was more feverish than it is today,
   recent rhetoric on Syrian refugees and the rights of Muslims in the
   United States has, for some, recalled the era's pitched politics.
   "In our political environment these days, the use of fear and outrage
   and victimization is very common,'' Roach said. "I feel like it's just
   as much a film about today as it is about what it was back then.''
   Boycotts are also again being called for some of Hollywood's biggest
   names. Police groups have said they will boycott Quentin Tarantino's
   "The Hateful Eight'' after the director protested police brutality.
   Tarantino has defended himself by citing his First Amendment rights.
   "It's still happening in different forms,'' said Nikola Trumbo,
   daughter of Trumbo. "I mean African-American kids being shot by the
   police on a regular basis. This country building a wall to keep out our
   Latino neighbors is shocking and appalling. And then there's Edward
   Snowden.''
   "Carol'' is director Todd Haynes' second trip to the '50s following his
   Oscar-nominated "Far From Heaven'' (2002), a story in the style of a
   Douglas Sirk melodrama about a Connecticut housewife (Julianne Moore)
   whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and who begins an affair with a
   black man (Dennis Haysbert).
   In "Carol,'' adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel first published
   under a pseudonym and titled "The Price of Salt,'' Haynes again mines
   the tragedies of the decade's social constrictions. Cate Blanchett and
   Rooney Mara star as two women drawn together - a romance later cited in
   a "morality clause'' when Blanchett's husband seeks custody of their
   child.
   "We probably are at our own peril underestimating how much was really
   brewing in the '50s that became evident in the '60s,'' Haynes said.
   "There were a lot of questions being asked as well as a lot of
   anxieties and conformity being expressed.''
   Those underlying strains are also at play in "Brooklyn,'' the Colm
   Toibin adaptation of an Irish immigrant (Saoirse Ronan) who lands in a
   New York not so different than the midtown of "Carol'' - one where both
   freedom and restriction surround women trying to go their own way.
   That these films have arrived all in the space of a few weeks owes much
   to coincidence. (The script for "Carol'' was first penned 18 years
   ago.) But after the stylish '50s resurrections of "Mad Men'' and Tom
   Ford's "A Single Man,'' it's apparent that no decade offers the same
   mysterious blend of convention and nonconformity, in quiet collision,
   as the '50s.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/with-lessons-for-today-movies-bring-back-the-1950s/3084598.html