`HOLLYWOOD' TELLS ONE MAN'S QUEST FOR TRUTH.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

In one of the many rave reviews for Herbert Biberman's 1954 film ``Salt of the Earth'' on the Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com), one fan sagely suggests that the story of the making of the film is worthy of a film itself. Starz! cable network answers that observation tonight with ``One of the Hollywood Ten,'' which begins as a torpid retread of Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch hunts of the 1940s and '50s and then blossoms into an absorbing drama of passionate filmmakers bucking all odds to create art.

When first released, ``Salt of the Earth'' was the first American movie to be censored in America; in 1992, it was one of the first admitted into the Library of Congress' National Registry of culturally important films. ``One of the Hollywood Ten'' dramatizes what went into making the film, and even if it may overstate the issue somewhat, it's nonetheless true that making the film took a considerable amount of courage and, yes, patriotism.

``One of the Hollywood Ten'' opens in 1937, when Biberman's wife, Gale Sondergaard (Greta Scacchi), wins an Oscar and makes an impassioned plea for an anti-Nazi group. Eventually, the FBI reinterprets this band as a Communist front, and as champions such as Humphrey Bogart and Jack Warner fall away, Biberman (Jeff Goldblum) is one of the men both imprisoned and blacklisted.

A handful of blacklisted filmmakers decide to make a film, independently of the Hollywood studio system and under vaguely hush-hush conditions, depicting a labor strike among Latino miners in New Mexico, and opt to use some of the strikers as actors (they can't really afford real thespians). The Starz! film, written and directed by Karl Francis, makes a bit too much of the drama behind Biberman and Sondergaard's relationship in the making of ``Salt of the Earth,'' but he nails the essential fortitude that was necessary to make that movie at that time.

Francis may overstate his case in the film, and he too easily interprets the film's proto-feminist slant as a statement on Biberman and Sondergaard's relationship, but things were indeed dire for the filmmakers. Some reports suggest that Biberman had to offer some of his direction from jail, which is not depicted in the film; instead, there's an FBI-inspired vigilante conflagration - when folks are shot at, the human targets single-mindedly (and a little sillily) inquire, ``Is the film OK?''

In truth, the situation was almost as dangerous. The Hollywood Reporter at the time announced that a ``Commie'' film was being made in New Mexico under ``direct orders from the Kremlin.'' Pauline Kael, one of our country's most revered critics, derided the film as ``as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years.'' Variety griped, ``It is a propaganda picture which belongs in union halls rather than theaters,'' but added, ``as a piece of film artistry, 'Salt' achieves moments of true pictorial excellence.'' Rosaura Revueltas (Angela Molina), the Mexican actress in the lead, was deported during filming and never worked again. Though it won a Best Picture award in France in 1955, American union projectionists largely refused to screen it; it wasn't seen here until the late `60s (Biberman died in 1971, at which point his Oscar-winning wife was able to resume her career after an imposed 20-year hiatus).

Virtually none of the aforementioned facts are mentioned in the film, and yet, it's still impressive in its depiction of history. Goldblum's naturalistic, halting stammering is well-served here; his humane take on Biberman, flaws and all, still seems, through Goldblum's innate likability, like a form of hagiography. Despite some occasional clunky production values, ``One of the Hollywood Ten'' is as eloquent and impassioned a celebration of the First Amendment as Hollywood has managed in quite some time.

Even, miraculously, when Goldblum righteously intones, ``We want a Hollywood that produces films of quality, that respect the intelligence of the American working man and woman - and that's only possible if we can act and write and direct with freedom and integrity.'' Now that those conditions have been met, where are those intelligence-respecting films of quality?

``ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD TEN''

What: Docudrama about Herbert Biberman, one of the filmmakers persecuted during the Communist witch hunts of the 1940s and '50s, and his efforts to make the then-condemned/now-exalted film ``Salt of the Earth.''

The stars: Jeff Goldblum, Greta Scacchi, Angela Molina.

Where: Starz!

When: 8 tonight.

Our rating: Three stars

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Jeff Goldblum is the blacklisted Herbert Biberman and Greta Sacchi plays his wife, actress Gale Sondergaard, in ``One of the Hollywood Ten.