The Burning Cross / Open Secret

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

The Burning Cross

U.S., 1947

World restoration premiere!

One of the boldest films of the postwar period to tackle homegrown facism, the independent production, The Burning Cross, was the first anti-Klan film to explicitly depict Black Americans as victims of KKK terror on screen. A newly discharged veteran disgruntled by the changes he finds in his small town gravitates to the brutes of a Klan front group, the American Only Association. The brutal realism of the film’s depiction of the rhetoric and tactics culminates in the murder of a Black family burned in their home. The film, however, is not without compromise as an opening prologue restored in this version suggests that the Klan was originally founded by “men of good intentions” who would be betrayed by a corrupt, greedy few.

35mm, b&w, 77 min. Director: Walter Colmes. Screenwriter: Aubrey Wisberg. With: Henry H. Daniels Jr., Virginia Patton, Dick Rich.

35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by The Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Open Secret

U.S., 1948

Released the year after both Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Crossfire (1947) made anti-semitism their explicit subject, this independently produced film noir takes a grittier approach to the social problem despite never mentioning the word, although the implications are clear. Directed by Austrian-born émigre John Reinhardt, Open Secret unfolds as a small town mystery with a newlywed couple investigating the disappearance of the friend they’ve come to visit. What they discover is a community so corrupted by hate even children join in victimizing anyone who isn’t “the right kind of people.” Ironically, a sweaty cabal stands behind it all with ambitions to take their violent campaign to the national political stage.

35mm, b&w, 68 min. Director: John Reinhardt. Screenwriters: Henry Blankfort, Max Wilk. With: John Ireland, Jane Randolph, Sheldon Leonard.

35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Packard Humanities Institute.

—Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm

Part of: From John Doe to Lonesome Rhodes: Antifacism from the Archive