Cradle Will Rock (1999) on Netflix
During the Great Depression, Marc Blitzstein finishes The Cradle Will Rock, a musical about labor, and the Federal Theatre Project puts it into production. Anti-communist pressure builds.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.7/109,865 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes65%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the Great Depression, Hallie Flanagan leads the Federal Theatre Project, bringing low-cost theater to millions while anti-communist pressure from Washington threatens its funding. In New York, the playwright Marc Blitzstein is struggling to finish The Cradle Will Rock, a musical about labor, until he is pushed to make it speak to the times; Flanagan approves it and assigns it to Orson Welles and John Houseman. Meanwhile the Federal Theatre Project clerk Hazel Huffman gathers like-minded Works Progress Administration employees against communism, and the ventriloquist Tommy Crickshaw, assigned to train an untalented duo, is drawn to her. Margherita Sarfatti, an envoy of Mussolini's government, arrives to court American industrialists, and it is she who brings Nelson Rockefeller and the painter Diego Rivera together for a mural commission at Rockefeller Center.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cradle Will Rock (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film presents events that happened years apart as simultaneous: the 1933-34 destruction of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads in the RCA Building, the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the 1937 Little Steel labor strikes and the 1938 Dies Committee assault on the Federal Theatre Project.
- The 1937 children's play Revolt of the Beavers, written by Oscar Saul, was scrutinized by the House Committee on Un-American Activities for promoting a communistic ideal of equal work and equal rewards, and it was featured in the film. Saul later wrote the screenplay for A Streetcar Named Desire.
