Which film demonstrates best cold war paranoia

Never Let Me Go (1953)

Clark Gable and Gene Tierney

Cold War vs True Love

Thirteen Days (2000)

My favorite would be the Kremlin Letter. That presents the paranoia and the confusion very well, especially with the final revelation of where the letter ended up.
It is also my favorite spy movie. Richard Boone is amazing.


I am trying to think of a true anti-communist film I have seen. The one I can think of is Who Dares Win, a 1982 UK film. I am shocked it was made because it is so fiercely anti-communist for the 1980s. The communist hostage-takers are shown to be willing to kill babies for their cause.

The scene where Judy Davis is arguing with Richard Widmark about nuclear disarmament and she says "we are committed to disarming the world" and Widmark replies, "but the western democracies first, correct?" It is unusually deep for this sort of thing.

And it ends with all the communists being blown away by SAS soldiers! There's no sympathy for them at all.


RED PLANET MARS 1952 comes to mind as being anti-communist but that is rather ridiculous.

If you examine the message of 1960s Cold War films--they can be quite friendly to the USSR.

First indication of that I noticed was THE BURGLAR 1957. There is a scene where Dan Duryea is in a house and a radio is playing a news broadcast. The announcer says "The US has violated a treaty with the USSR on arms reduction."
Seemed weird to me because it was a fake broadcast--why would they choose that kind of news story?

Seven Days in May--what it is really about? A fascist-nationalist general who seeks to takeover the government to prevent a peace treaty with the USSR.
And Fail Safe--what is that about? American military posture leading to the destruction of Moscow and New York. The Walter Matthau character is the radical anti-communist and clearly presented in a negative light.

The Shoes of the Fisherman is rather friendly to the USSR too. Laurence Olivier is cold but not evil.

The Chairman 1969 is very friendly to the USSR--in fact it presents the US and UK governments as downright corrupt and sinister.

And the Games 1970, this is extraordinary because the story is about 4 Olympic runners--one from the US, one from the UK, one from a Soviet bloc country and one Australian aborigine. This is a Hollywood-made film which presumably was aimed at the uS and UK--and yet the US and UK runners lose--and lose badly. Ryan O'Neal runs into a wall and the UK guy is hysterical and collapses just short of the finish line because his fascist trainer Stanley Baker pushed him too hard. Not a subtle message since Baker is obviously meant to remind one of Hitler.
The aborigine runner wins the gold--he is not interested in politics but the silver winner is the Soviet bloc runner and he was forced to compete---as an older runner. And he thanks his handler for forcing him to run.
It's bizarre-it is so pro-Soviet.


Billion Dollar Brain would also be a noteworthy one for Cold War paranoia because it is Ken Russell--and thus it has some interesting layers to it.
On the surface, it is presenting the USSR in a favorable light--stern but well-meaning--the Ed Begley character is an over the top caricature anti-communist, but he makes a reference to how Hungary was abandoned by the West when it tried to revolt against communism in 1956. That was an interesting remark--and there is a scene where Michael Caine is with some anti-communist dissidents and we see them later piled up dead in a bathtub.
I think there is a message in there somewhere.

One other oddity that I can think of is the Bamboo Saucer 1968, which is similar to 2010--the 1984 film--since it is about US and Russian scientists seeking to investigate a crashed UFO inside China. And there is a dissident Chinese agent portrayed by James Hong which is interesting because usually when they presented Red China in a movie, they never talk about opposition.
And there is a friendly discussion between the American and Russian scientists about politics. They talk about the role of women in each society-etc.

The kid brother to ‘North by Northwest’.