About the film
“From 1975 through 1978, as newspaper headlines revealed one sordid story after an-other about America’s most dreaded “multinational corporation,” the Central Intelligence Agency, filmmakers Howard Dratch and Allan Francovich were painstakingly assembling a cinematic portrait of that secret body. They pored over thousands of hours of government and news library film and conducted some 50 film interviews with people who planned or implemented American foreign policy, or suffered at the hands of those who did—people like Edward Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile from 1967 to 1971, David Atlee Phillips, former chief C.I.A. Western Hemisphere Division, and Isabel Letelier, outspoken Chilean exile.
What emerged was a three-hour retelling of a 30-year-long story, examining the myths, premises, and forces which brought America and the world the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, the Korean War, the Cold War skirmishes in Iran and Guatemala, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the full-fledged military coups in Brazil and Indonesia, the 20-year-long agony of Vietnam, the brutalization of Chile, and finally a conflict in Iran again, this time with a very different outcome”. –Colman Andrews, for FILMEX, the 1980 Los Angeles Film Festival
Reviews
“Powerful.. the film achieves a valuable overview of “The Company” from its inception in 1947…the message is clear: The C.I.A. cannot be condemned as an isolated band of renegade spooks. It is and has always been carrying out the policies of the White House and the multinational corporations.” –David Ansen, Newsweek
“…the accumulation of all this material in such a lucid narrative is overwhelmingly powerful…On Company Business is an admirably calm, balanced and non-didactic work…Nevertheless it fills you with a sense of rage and shame.” –Stephen Farber, New West
“…should be required seeing for every responsible thinking citizen of this country. It raises tremendous questions about our taking sides, so often on the wrong dictator’s side, so often on the side of our international corporations…” –Archer Winsten, New York Post
“ … a probing, often shocking study of covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency from the postwar years to the present, On Company Business is full of painful revelations and should be seen by anyone who is concerned about this country’s mistakes and worried about its future.” –Kathleen Caroll, New York Daily News
“…the very choice of subject, indeed the very carefulness of the balance, ironically leaves little doubt about the filmmakers’ sympathies …But the film’s final effect is terribly disquieting …Anyone who isn’t sickened by much of On Company Business can’t be much concerned with the moral quality of this country …” –Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic
Special Award
Awarded the Prix de la Critique Internationale: “The Jury of the International Federation of Cinema Press composed representative film critics from 16 different countries, on the occasion of the 1980 Berlin Film Festival, awards the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize to On Company Business, produced by Howard Dratch and Allan Francovich, for the quality and seriousness of its information on a political theme of great interest.”
