The Burning Cross / Open Secret
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series From John Doe to Lonesome Rhodes: Anti-fascism From the Archive. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
The Burning Cross (1947)
World restoration premiere!
One of the boldest films of the postwar period to tackle homegrown facism, the independent production, The Burning Cross, was the first anti-Klan film to explicitly depict Black Americans as victims of KKK terror on screen. A newly discharged veteran disgruntled by the changes he finds in his small town gravitates to the brutes of a Klan front group, the American Only Association. The brutal realism of the film’s depiction of the rhetoric and tactics culminates in the murder of a Black family burned in their home. The film, however, is not without compromise as an opening prologue restored in this version suggests that the Klan was originally founded by “men of good intentions” who would be betrayed by a corrupt, greedy few.
Director: Walter Colmes. Screenwriter: Aubrey Wisberg. With: Henry H. Daniels Jr., Virginia Patton, Dick Rich.
Open Secret (1948)
Released the year after both Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Crossfire (1947) made anti-semitism their explicit subject, this independently produced film noir takes a grittier approach to the social problem despite never mentioning the word, although the implications are clear. Directed by Austrian-born émigre John Reinhardt, Open Secret unfolds as a small town mystery with a newlywed couple investigating the disappearance of the friend they’ve come to visit. What they discover is a community so corrupted by hate even children join in victimizing anyone who isn’t “the right kind of people.” Ironically, a sweaty cabal stands behind it all with ambitions to take their violent campaign to the national political stage.
Director: John Reinhardt. Screenwriters: Henry Blankfort, Max Wilk. With: John Ireland, Jane Randolph, Sheldon Leonard.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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