Cradle Will Rock

Cradle Will Rock (1999) is Tim Robbins' period drama you can watch online on iFILM — a sprawling retelling of how art and power collided in 1937 America.

A young Orson Welles and producer John Houseman are days from opening Marc Blitzstein's fiery pro-labor musical. Then the government freezes the funding, padlocks the theater, and the actors' union bars the cast from performing — so the company improvises a defiant opening night that passed into legend. Around this swirl Hearst, the painter Diego Rivera, and Nelson Rockefeller. The cast is enormous: Bill Murray, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, Emily Watson, John Turturro and Vanessa Redgrave among them.

Robbins braids a dozen threads about censorship, the Red Scare and the price of free speech into one frantic evening. It's for viewers who like talky, crowded ensemble pieces about why art rattles the powerful. Stream Cradle Will Rock online on iFILM.