SOURCE: An interview in The Director's Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Makers, Atheneum, 1970, pp. 3-37.

Sherman is an American educator and screenwriter. In the following interview, conducted in November 1968, Polonsky discusses Force of Evil and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here and reflects on being blacklisted by producers in Hollywood. In the introduction to the interview, Rubin compares the main themes and techniques of the two films.

In 1948, a 39-year-old screenwriter and novelist named Abraham Polonsky directed his first film, Force of Evil. Soon after, he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted by the movie industry. He disappeared completely from the world of over-the-counter motion picture production. The film he left behind him, although quickly forgotten by amnesiac American critics, indicated the loss of one of the most talented post-Wellesian film-makers.

After twenty years of writing left-wing novels, sub-rosa screenplays, and...