I Was a Communist for the F.B.I.

The fear of Communism runs high. Truth or propaganda? An FBI agent turns counterspy burrowing his way into the U.S. Communist Party. Documentary style Film-Noir. Watching this fifty some years after its release dilutes the original intentions. A case of do as I say; not as I do. Frank Lovejoy is sometimes stoic but effective. Also featured are Philip Carey, Dorothy Hart and Richard Webb. You may possibly get more into CONFESSIONS of a NAZI SPY(1939)starring Edward G. Robinson.

Slickly produced propaganda film from Warner Bros. Stong-jawed, stone-faced Frank Lovejoy is perfectly cast as true-blue undercover agent for the FBI, Matt Cvetic. Loosely based on Cvetic's book, the movie shows him penetrating upper echelons of the American communist party. Produced in 1951 at the height of the McCarthy purges, the movie's one-dimensional content should surprise no one.

A couple aspects, however, did surprise me. First, the visuals don't really underscore the propaganda content. Communists are not framed in usual low-key shadowy lighting, e.g. The Iron Curtain (1948), which would emphasize their sinister nature. Instead everyone gets the benefit of bright light framing. Also, the commies are just as nice looking, Hollywood style, as the FBI. That's really surprising, given the industry's habit of uglifying baddies. Thus, each aspect tends to humanize the Cold War enemy in unexpected ways, at least visually. Second, note how all the men are clothed in spiffy suits whether workers in union halls or whoever. No proletarian shirts and dungarees here. My guess is the producers wanted a prosperous looking working class no different in dress than their bosses. I doubt that uniform costuming like this happens by accident.

That this Hollywood creation could actually win an Oscar as best documentary is a kind of sick joke and a telling product of its time. My general point is that viewers should be on utmost guard when taking either historical or political wisdom from a Hollywood commercial product. Just because we don't have a ministry of truth doesn't mean our leading institutions don't act in concert when their common interests (here it's private capital) are threatened. And that goes for any developed country, whether communist or capitalist.

Anyway, the movie's now little more than an obscure artifact. Still, for thoughtful folks, it remains a good object lesson in America's 1951 version of Pravda.

****SPOILERS**** Living in the shadows despised and hated by his family and friends Matt Cvetic, Frank Lovejoy, made the ultimate sacrifice in the war against the Communist menace that threatened America and the free world back in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Matt became a Communist but a Communist for the FBI.

Based on the true story of undercover agent Matt Cvetic the movie is about a Pittsburgh steel worker and union representative and member of the Communist party. Matt risked his life and safety as well as the lives and safety of his friends and family for nine years to get the goods on the Communist party and put them behind bars for a long long time. Yet for all that time Matt was not only a man without a country but a man without a soul as well.

Matt working undercover gets the evidence on his commie cohorts but not after he's involved in killing two commies who tried to kill him and his girlfriend Eva; as well as him being charged with the murder of an FBI agent. An FBI man That the commies, that Matt killed in self-defense, really murdered. Matt's also provided in the movie with a fellow traveler love-interest Eve Merrick, Dorothy Heart, who's a teacher, undermining the American youth, in Matt's son's Dick, Ron Hegerthy, high school.

You at first think that Eve is an undercover agent like Matt is when he accidentally drops his wallet, when Matt's brother Joe(Paul Picerni) slugs him for having the nerve to attend their mother's funeral. Matt's wallet has a letter to his son telling him the truth about himself that Eve picked up. You later realize that Eve really was a commie but saw the light and got religious after seeing just how low those rotten Reds can go to achieve their wretched aims.

Watching the Communists in action in the movie shows how their only really interested in creating chaos hatred and destruction among the working-class people. The Commies have not the least interest at all in getting the people to love and respect each other or to help them economically. This is the usual Commie trick that they always like to pull, in helping the working class, like they kept boasting over and over in the movie but to only use them to farther their goals.

The Commies are so cold and unfeeling, even to each other, and were more then willing to rat out and even have fellow members murdered for the slightest infraction against "The Movement". These back-stabbing actions on their part made you wonder why anyone normal would want to join such a sleazy organization in the first place? Even Matt as hard as he tried had trouble convincing people in the movie, as well as the movie audience,that he was really a Communist! Matt acted so forced and phony as a slimly and in your face fanatical Communist that he looked almost embarrassed in his efforts in trying to be one.

It was good to see in the end of the movie Matt get a couple of good licks in by belting his commie comrade boss Blandon, James Millican, who attacked him in the courthouse after exposing him and his Commie organization. It was also good to see Matt put the rest of Baldon's rotten Commie crew away with his undercover testimony as well. And most of all it was also very rewarding for Matt to have his friends and family finally realize just what a really great American he was. In Matt letting them on that he was a Commie only to get the Commies that he was involved with, who were trying to undermine and destroy America, their just reward.

Obviously " I was a Communist for the FBI" is an over-the-top movie about Communism in America back during the Cold War. Yet at the time of it's release, 1951, there was a Hot War going on in Korea not just against the Communist North Koreans but the Communist Chinese. It was the Red Chinese who provided the manpower for the North Korean Communists to the point were they were over 80% of the ground forces fighting the US troops there. There was also USSR, the Evil Cummmunist Empire, also providing the North Koreans with experienced jet-pilots, who shot down hundreds of USAF combat planes and helicopters. Knowing all this one can easily forgive the extreme dislike and antipathy shown against the Communist in the film back in those days.

This film was released in the United States in May 1951, when I was a teenager. This was just five short years after World War II ended, and while nearly destroyed Europe and Asia were still being repaired and rebuilt under America's massive Marshall Plan. As a boy I had watched all the men in my extended family go off to war against nazism/fascism, and then saw only some of them return home. Now I was watching more young American men go off to war against communism.

The first of the many armed conflicts after World War II which became known as the 45-year-long East-West "Cold" War began already a year earlier in June 1950 when Communist North Korean forces, backed by Communist Russian forces occupying the north, drove south across the 38th parallel into US-military occupied South Korea. That aggression started the bloody Korean War, which still raged with high US military casualties when this film was being shown in American theaters. Both Communist China under Mao Zedong and Soviet Communist Russia under Stalin, along with the very ominously growing communist Warsaw Pact military alliance, represented very real threats to the United States and Western Europe - when this film was released. While it is true that the movie is a bit "over the top" by today's dramatic standards, it did have both a context and a purpose that definitely was not laughable.

Most responsible people in 1950 fully recognized that the Communist Party, along with its clandestine intelligence operators, was very active in the United States and benefited from considerable Chinese and Russian clandestine government support. That no one was certain of the degree of influence of the secretive Communist Party in the United States gave rise to much public, academic and media speculation, as well as the need for public education plus secret domestic intelligence and counter-intelligence operations to get a better fix on reality.

It is easy for Americans today who have lived their entire lives in historic safety and comfort to assume that it was all some sort of "unjustified scare" since the communists never succeeded in their objective of subjugating the United States. In 1950 I remember an America that was no more concerned with communist subversives than Americans today are concerned with extremist Muslim militants who might be engineering another 9/11. Threats can be real, but still not engender panic - if the people have faith in their government. But I also remember that in 1950 the United States was the only country of any significance that had been left still largely intact and undamaged after the Second World War. This made the US the last best hope against any further deterioration of freedom in the world, and thus the Number One Target of Communist expansionism.

Due in no small part to very active domestic vigilance, communism never had much success inside the United States. But communism was very successful in employing a wide range of deceptive and duplicitous tactics, including exploiting social discontent and infiltrating key political and social movements, to undermine many other countries.

Communism did succeed in thoroughly disrupting life for much of the planet and killing tens of millions of people over a very long period. Most of the atrocities which we today associate with right-wing extremism under Hitler's Nazism were in fact preceded by equal or greater left-wing extremist atrocities under Stalin's Communism. Those were indeed very dangerous times, and Americans in the 1950s who had spent their entire lives under extremely depressing and deadly times, from 1915-45, were naturally suspicious of and opposed to any extremist ideology that might send them, and their children, back into the abyss.

According to the Wikipedia, "I Was a Communist for the FBI" was the name of a series of articles written by Matt Cvetic that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. The stories were later turned into a best-selling book, an American espionage thriller radio series, and also this motion picture. Mr. Cvetic's articles were the true story of his undercover life, but the radio show and this film were largely fictionalized for dramatic effect. Matt Cvetic was actually an undercover agent for the FBI posing as a Communist for nine years. It is true that he alienated his family and friends as a result of them believing that he was actually a Communist, and even wound up divorced as a result of his assignment, although the divorce is not mentioned in the film. It is not true that the Communists posed as big a threat to the U.S. from within as is shown in the motion picture. The film itself is quite interesting and a pretty good thriller in its own right. It will keep you guessing as to whether or not Cvetic's true identity will be revealed before he is finished collecting information.

You just have to forget about the stretching of the truth that goes on here and enjoy this film for what it is - a window into a particularly paranoid time in America with a good pace to it. A film that is equivalent to it and made about the same time is the better known "Big Jim McLain" starring John Wayne. It too has many wild stereotypes, but the action is good and you just have to remember when and why it was made. If you do that, you should thoroughly enjoy both films.