Abstract

Films

This article discusses the motion picture "Cradle Will Rock," directed by Tim Robbins. In 1984, the year before his death, Orson Welles wrote his own account of the premiere of the Blitzstein opera, which he and John Houseman had produced at the Federal Theatre's Project 891. The year was 1937, and Welles was 22. In Chicago, policemen had just shot to death ten strikers at Republic Steel, while in New York, Welles and Houseman were about to present an explicitly Marxist musical "The Cradle Will Rock," about a strike in Steeltown, U.S. Here, as the film's title would suggest, is an account of the legendary opening-night performance of Marc Blitzstein's proletarian opera, The Cradle Will Rock: a work first produced by the government and then presented in defiance of it.