The Little Foxes, North Star and the red scare in Hollywood: sociological aspects

• Grant number: 17/20936-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2018
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Mauro Luiz Rovai
• Grantee: Letícia Francolino Nogueira
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research intends to analyze and discuss two films written by Lillian Hellman: "The Little Foxes" (USA, 1941, directed by William Wyler) and "North Star" (USA, 1943, directed by Lewis Milestone). In 1952, during the period known as the "red scare" in United States, the writer Lillian Hellman was blacklisted by the House of Un-American Activities Committee, having trouble to exercise her work as a writer in the film industry of Hollywood. Although both films we selected were made a decade before her name appeared on the blacklist, this research intends to comprehend, through two of her movies, considering them as products in which her scripts were associated and known publicly, both the critical aspects directed to a part of the American society values of the time ("The Little Foxes"), and the way in which the communist world values are represented ("North Star"). The method will be an internal analysis, using the scripts as one of the present elements in the production of meanings on both movies, not using it as object of a textual analysis. (AU)