Cradle Will Rock

Set in New York in 1936, amid the lingering hardship of the Great Depression, Cradle Will Rock follows the staging of a leftist musical drama by composer Marc Blitzstein and the efforts mounted to shut its production down. Around that struggle the film gathers a broad cross-section of the era: a young Orson Welles at work on a socially minded show, the wealthy backer Nelson Rockefeller, the painter Diego Rivera, the Mussolini emissary Margherita Sarfatti, and organized workers pressing for their rights. The result is a portrait of a city in which art, money and politics collide, and questions of censorship and free expression move to the centre.

Tim Robbins wrote, produced and directed the film, his third feature after Bob Roberts and Dead Man Walking. Hank Azaria plays Blitzstein, with Rubén Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cary Elwes and Philip Baker Hall among a credited cast of 105. Touchstone Pictures backed the production on a budget of roughly 36 million dollars, and it took about 3 million dollars worldwide.

Critics rated the film 6.5 out of 10 from 72 reviews, close to its audience scores of 6.7 on IMDb from 9,900 votes and 6.5 on TMDB from 102 votes, so reception was mixed and broadly consistent across critics and viewers.