None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist

None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist

None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist (2003)

Directed by Michael Epstein

American Masters (www.pbs.org)

120 min.

The political life of a democracy is, by its very nature, grand theater. But theatricalized politics often take the form of tragedy. None Without Sin: Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and the Blacklist, a documentary in the American Masters PBS series, is a powerful portrait of one such episode. In revisiting the familiar mid-century terrain of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the movie industry's crackdown on communist sympathizers in Hollywood, however, the film brings fresh focus to the moral dilemmas faced by two giants of American art who were swept onto this public stage.

Director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller met in 1947, when Kazan directed a Miller script (All My Sons) on Broadway. Fast friends, their collaborations brought both acclaim - Kazan earned a Tony for All My Sons, while Miller garnered the 1949 Pulitzer for the next play they brought to the stage, Death of a Salesman. On the heels of these successes, the two looked to take their partnership to Hollywood. But in departing the confines of the theater, Miller and Kazan were stepping on to a bigger stage and into a personal and political drama that would destroy their friendship and bring American culture into painful confrontation with itself.

HUAC had eyed Hollywood with suspicion for years, motivated by a mix of old-fashioned anti-Semitism...