At Sea at the Cinema

On the occasion of national review’s 15th anniversary, I wrote in these pages [Dec. 1, 1970]—and I beg pardon for the Rand-like quotation of self—this seemingly hyperbolic piece of crystal- ball-gazing: “Don’t be surprised if at the time of NR’s twentieth anniversary, 1975’s most revered film has successfully evoked our sympathy for an opium-vending, alleyway-abortionist Black Panther who gets his kicks by ravaging three-year-olds.”

This must be the place. Consider a few of the most acclaimed or at least most remarked films of the past year. In April, Hearts and Minds received an Academy Award and the adulatory shrieks of the Hollywood Four Hundred gathered for Oscar night, the sole possible reason for either being the movie’s fashionably distorted portrayal of a vile American gone bonkers in Vietnam. When producer Bert Schneider scurried up to the rostrum to receive his Best Documentary award, he read a telegram of “greetings” to the American people written, said he, by Dinh Da Thi, head of the Vietcong delegation to the Paris peace talks, though eventually word got out in left-wing circles that the telegram was conceived and drafted by Cora Weiss, the energetic real-life Maude of anti-war left-liberalism. To this phony telegram a response was hastily pieced together by Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, and passed off as written by “the Academy.” Result? Widespread condemnation of the Hope- Sinatra ploy, total media disinterest in the “Dinh Da Thi” telegram con. Score: Pro-Communists 1, Patriots 0.

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David Brudnoy

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On the occasion of national review’s 15th anniversary, I wrote in these pages [Dec. 1, 1970]—and I beg pardon for the Rand-like quotation of self—this seemingly hyperbolic piece of crystal- ball-gazing: “Don’t be surprised if at the time of NR’s twentieth anniversary, 1975’s most revered film has successfully evoked our sympathy for an opium-vending, alleyway-abortionist Black Panther who gets his kicks by ravaging three-year-olds.”

This must be the place. Consider a few of the most acclaimed or at least most remarked films of the past year. In April, Hearts and Minds received an Academy Award and the adulatory shrieks of the Hollywood Four Hundred gathered for Oscar night, the sole possible reason for either being the movie’s fashionably distorted portrayal of a vile American gone bonkers in Vietnam. When producer Bert Schneider scurried up to the rostrum to receive his Best Documentary award, he read a telegram of “greetings” to the American people written, said he, by Dinh Da Thi, head of the Vietcong delegation to the Paris peace talks, though eventually word got out in left-wing circles that the telegram was conceived and drafted by Cora Weiss, the energetic real-life Maude of anti-war left-liberalism. To this phony telegram a response was hastily pieced together by Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, and passed off as written by “the Academy.” Result? Widespread condemnation of the Hope- Sinatra ploy, total media disinterest in the “Dinh Da Thi” telegram con. Score: Pro-Communists 1, Patriots 0.