These films deal with left-wing subjects, which means they usually have a progressive message and most would probably have been labeled “subversive” by red-baiting politicians in reactionary times. A couple of them actually were: the great underground classic Salt of the Earth, and the Hollywood offering of 1943, Action in the North Atlantic (which lucklessly depicted the Soviet Union—an ally at the time of the making of the film—in a favorable light). Most of the others were made by or incorpor...more