One of my favorite movies is written and directed by Tim Robbins. "Cradle Will Rock" is a fascinating look at the WPA in New York in the 1930s, during the Depression, when writers and directors and other artists were paid to create and develop. This film features a play written about unionizing and the rights of workers, and Orson Welles and John Houseman figure in it. The story is intrinsically riveting, an easy dose of history that is little known these days.
Starring John Turturro as a down and out worker, Emily Watson as a girl on the streets, Ruben Blades as Diego Rivera, John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller, Joan Cusack as a girl with a crush on an Edgar Bergen ventriolquist played by Bill Murray, and with ahost of other familiar faces such as Susan Sarandon, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, Jack Black, Paul Giamatti, and Hank Azaria.
Turturro and Watson are heartbreaking and passionate, and Angus Macfadyen as Orson Welles and Cary Elwes as John Houseman steal the show. There is humor, drama, love, tragedy and the whole human spectacle on display.
It is touching to see a time when the arts were supported, admired, considered essential to who we are as a nation. I'd like to see high school students watching this in history class. It's the best argument I've seen presented on the importance of creativity and the opportunity for expressing oneself.
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