From a distinguished chronicler of American social history and political culture, An Unfinished Season captures the postwar moment of the 1950s when the modern world lay just over the horizon. In a time of rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and government corruption, even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within".

On a whim, aging director Dixon Greenhouse accepted the three month fellowship in Berlin, with a promise that nothing would be required of him but an interview about his moviemaking career. Thirty years have passed since he directed his greatest film, a cult classic called Summer, about a group of German artists between the wars.