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Algier hiss12/14/2023 Most memorable among these papers is Chambers' handwritten admission to the FBI that he had engaged in gay sex. They acknowledge that it might have swayed them towards Hiss. In the film, jurors and one Representative are presented with material that did not come out at the trials and that favors Hiss. When he revealed his spying, he lost his job at Time, the only decent and decently paying job he ever had. ![]() Chambers, in fact, was Senior Editor of Time Magazine, a respected translator of French and German literature into English, and friends with (or admired by) many of the leading public intellectuals of mid-20th Century America. It presents him simply as a grotesque and possibly insane. In the end, Hiss brings to mind the character Eddie Haskell in Leave It To Beaver. Of the spy documents in his own handwriting, Hiss says simply "How Chambers got them I still don't know." The obvious explanation, of course, is that Hiss gave them to Chambers in the spy ring. Hiss loses not only the viewer's attention, but also credibility, as he attempts to justify his chameleon-like changes of story in 1948-50 and spins out conspiracy theories of how someone (Chambers, the FBI, Nixon) made a fake typewriter that typed just like Hiss's typewriter. After a while, however, he is so dry and unemotional that you get lost in his maze of detail and have to fight off sleep. At times, he can be quite charming, a grown up Mama's boy. Hiss comes across at first as smart, precise, polite, and believable. He takes the viewer meticulously through his defense and allegations of government misconduct. The largest single component of the movie, however, is Hiss speaking to credulous college students and a sympathetic interviewer. ![]() I do wish the film had included two major Hiss lawyers, William Marbury of Piper & Marbury and Edward McLean of Debevoise, Plimpton & McLean. The filmmaker, to his credit, included a few people who are unfavorable to Hiss. The interviews capture the words and body language of these minor players before they died and, as such, are valuable historical records. One wonders who financed this very professional effort, which included much travel to interview many people involved in the Case The film consists in large part of newsreels from 1948-50 and interviews in the 70s with witnesses, lawyers, jurors, journalists who covered the House hearings and trials in which the drama unfolded, and other secondary figures in the Case. It lasts almost three hours – not for the faint of heart. The film appears to have been made in the late 1970s, when Hiss could have hoped for vindication after Nixon's disgrace and revelations of FBI misconduct. The Establishment, liberals especially, never forgave Nixon or Chambers for exposing their soft underbelly – their weakness at pursuing Soviet spies. At the very beginning of the scandal, almost the only man who believed Chambers was a freshman Representative, Richard Nixon. Chambers produced 4 pages of confidential State Department documents in Hiss's handwriting, 64 more spy papers typed on Hiss's home typewriter, and films of more documents (from Hiss and others). He ran the spy ring in which Hiss labored. Hiss's main accuser was a man named Whittaker Chambers. Despite appeals that ended only in 1983, Hiss failed to convince a single judge who ruled on the merits that there was anything wrong with his conviction or the process by which it was reached. ![]() The conviction destroyed his life and proved that there were traitors high in our government. ![]() In 1950 Hiss was convicted of perjury for denying that he had spied for the Soviet Union in 19. This movie is a paean of praise to Alger Hiss – a distinguished lawyer, diplomat, and foundation head, a symbol of the New Deal and American Establishment.
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