Cradle Will Rock is a 1999 historical drama film written, produced, and directed by Tim Robbins. The film is set in the 1930s United States and details the production and surrounding controversy of the musical drama The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein.
The film follows a cast of characters, including Blitzstein himself, industrialist Nelson Rockefeller, theatre producer John Houseman, and labour activist and theatre director Orson Welles. The film goes back and forth between the multiple storylines that eventually converge in the climactic scene of the show's opening night.
The Cradle Will Rock is a left-leaning work that portrays a pro-union and anti-capitalist message, which made it a target for censorship and suppression by the conservative federal government. The play was initially produced by the Federal Theatre Project, a program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, but was subsequently shut down by the FTP for its controversial content.
Undeterred, Welles and Houseman secured a new theatre and secretly staged a stripped-down version of the play, with Blitzstein playing all the piano accompaniments from the stage. The action of the film culminates with the opening night of the new production, dubbed "The Cradle Will Rock", which becomes a public defiance against censorship and political repression.
Cradle Will Rock features an all-star cast, including Angus Macfadyen as Orson Welles, Emily Watson as Marc Blitzstein's wife, Joan Cusack as a labour activist, John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Murray as ventriloquist Tommy Crickshaw. The film showcases the intersection of politics, art, and activism, and portrays the importance of artistic expression and freedom of speech in a democratic society.