It is a film defined by its political context. A piece from Cold war, maybe naif today , maybe too simplistic and, no doubts, too American but seductive for the try to discover to public , in large traits, a dark reality.
This film aptly portrays how the Russians and Americans tried to bore each other to death during the cold war.Unfortunately, this kind of anti-Russian propaganda is almost impossible to sit through.
Although the film Guilty Of Treason takes place in the late 40s when I was too little to comprehend the events, I well remember the coda on the Mindzsenty story in 1956. I was all of 9 years old when the Hungarian Revolution took place.
"Guilty of Treason" is a Cold War era film about the Soviet-dominated Hungarian government's prosecution of a Cardinal because he was critical of the regime installed by Stalin. It's told from the standpoint of an American reporter (Paul Kelly) and the churchman is played by Charles Bickford.
When this was released students attending Roman Catholic grammar schools were encouraged to see it, since it was an account of the Hungarian prelate, Joszef Cardinal Mindzenty's courageous stand against the Communist regime that had his native land within its ruthlessly cruel clutches. Charles Bickford, an actor of considerable gravitas, was a good choice to play the Cardinal, and, among the cast, Bonita Granville, the wife of this film's producer, Jack Wrather, was another of those arrested, interrogated and tortured by the Hungarian Communist regime, then still firmly in place at the time of this film's release.
This movie came out 63 years before the release of "Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism," by Ronald Rychlak and Lt. Gen.
I had never heard of this one before coming across it (via the Alpha DVD) at a local rental outlet; though I had expressed interest in watching it at the time, I did not get hold of the film until acquiring the more renowned later version of the same events – THE PRISONER (1955) – but, then, am only checking out either in time for the pious Easter season. The film deals with the famous trial in which Josef Mindszenty, a Hungarian Cardinal played here by Charles Bickford, is victimized for daring to stand up against Communism.
