Abraham Polonsky directed his first feature, “Force of Evil” (which I discuss in this clip), in 1948; he made his second, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here,” in 1969. Between them came the blacklist. He tells the story of his life and his art in an extraordinary interview by Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin that appears in their book “The Director’s Event.” Polonsky establishes on the page a voice that’s as remarkable as the virtual one he confirms on the screen—and expresses his frustration with the difference: “A great deal of just plain living goes into making a film—that’s the pleasure of it—and the interviews never reflect that.” In this clip, I highlight a scene involving a telephone; Polonsky discusses its surprising significance:
Polonsky describes the film (aptly, I think) as “experimental in a way, deliberately experimental”; it’s a tragedy of the cinema that he took so long before getting back to work on his ideas and his feelings (though he reports that, while on the blacklist, he made a good living working as an anonymous script doctor). And he wonders why he “didn’t go right down and start working in the underground-film movement which was in existence then.” I imagine Polonsky coming up all over again in the same way that John Cassavetes began his own directorial career, with “Shadows”—but Polonsky was nineteen years older.
