The Molly Maguires

If Hollywood is chary of addressing political revolutions, they've generally shied away from labor disputes. The late 19th Century saw labor-capital relations rendered into pitiless Social Darwinism. Among the more violent disturbances were the Haymarket Square Riot in 1886 Chicago; the Pullman railway strikes of 1893; and, in Groggy's own backyard, the Homestead steel strike of 1892. Few of these have made it onto film; one exception, John Sayles' Matewan (1987), depicts a bloody conflict in 1920s West Virginia.

From 1970 comes The Molly Maguires. Director Martin Ritt abandons safely-framed message films like Norma Rae and Hombre for a scabrous look at coal mining circa 1876. Dramatically uneven, it's mainly impressive for its grimly realistic staging.

Ne'er-do-well James MacParland (Richard Harris) arrives in a Pennsylvania mining town. Miner Jack Kehoe (Sean Connery) distrusts him, and with good reason: MacParland is a Pinkerton detective, assigned to infiltrate the Molly Maguires. The Mollies are a secret society of Irish miners who engage in sabotage and against the mine bosses. MacParland joins their activities, growing increasingly sympathetic as he witnesses the deprivation of the mining life. But MacParland soldiers on, realizing treachery is his only means of advancement.

The Molly Maguires confronts this subject matter head-on. We see children toiling in mines, employees bilked out of wages, impudent employees beaten by police. Realizing mass strikes only generate massive retaliations, the Mollies rely on subtle subversion. MacParland serves not only as informant but agent provocateur, spurring them on while tipping off his police handler (Frank Finlay). Each action only stacks the deck further: the mine bosses can call on police, Pinkertons and even soldiers to enforce their will. The smug local priest (Philip Bourneuf) inveighs against violence. But terrorism becomes the only means of protest against bosses who regard them as barely human.


More than the message, it's the dirtiness that sticks in the mind. Ritt provides several showy set pieces like the prolonged, wordless opening as Kehoe's men sabotage a mine, while James Wong Howe conjures some gorgeous widescreen photography. But Maguires' main impression is quiet desperation. Scenes impress with their authentic grubbiness, from the claustrophobic mines to the rough-hewn pub or the tiny company town. At one point, James takes lover Mary (Samantha Eggar) for a romantic picnic amidst a barren slagheap. Mining consumes every facet of their lives.

Such despair makes Maguires true to life, but it's not entirely satisfying. Dramatically the movie's rigged like a funnel, the downbeat conclusion essentially inevitable. Ritt and Bernstein work the standard informer plot through its usual paces, while James' romance with Mary merely eats up screen time. Maguires is less effective telling a story than being a slice-of-19th Century life - though it does the latter very well.

Richard Harris gives one of his best performances, uncannily subdued and tormented. Sean Connery matches him; his intense glowers speak more than pages of dialogue. Frank Finlay (The Three Musketeers) makes a pitiless villain. Samantha Eggar does respectable work as the required love interest; Anthony Zerbe gets a rare sympathetic part.

The Molly Maguires flopped big time in 1970 and remains obscure today. Understandably: it's relentlessly morose, unrelieved by humor or cathartic violence. Handsomely produced and well-acted, certainly memorable for all its flaws.

Hombre

Martin Ritt made six films with Paul Newman, including The Long Hot Summer (1958), Hud (1963) and today's feature, Hombre (1967). This adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel is a solid if somewhat derivative Western.

John Russell (Paul Newman) is a white man raised by Apaches. After his father passes away, Russell returns to claim his inheritance, immediately facing prejudice and distrust from his white neighbors. He joins a stagecoach party, hoping to sell his property in the nearest town, but the coach is hijacked by Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone), a repulsive, sadistic bandit. After being robbed, Russell and his fellow passengers must escape or fight off Grimes's gang, with Russell extremely reluctant to help his prejudiced, self-serving colleagues.

Hombre is heavily steeped in the Civil Rights atmosphere of the late Sixties, but can't help but recycle scenes from previous Westerns. Newman and his Apache friends square off with bigoted bar flies in a lift from Anthony Mann's Devil's Doorway, and the individualist forced to help a none-too-friendly society seems cribbed from The Far Country. Heck, the whole movie is a cynical revision of Stagecoach, with its complement of diverse passengers at each other's throats in crunchtime. Its message of cooperation and tolerance isn't particularly profound or original, as plot mechanics dictate Russell will come around eventually.

Still, Hombre is a solid film even with the liberal baggage. The film stops for lots of talk and exposition but Ritt and writers Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. handle it well. Its characters are the strength, with Russell one of the Western anti-heroes, his reluctance to help out his colleagues and general bitterness far more believable than James Stewart's similar character in The Far Country. Cicero Grimes is a particularly hateful bad guy, a schoolyard bully with a sadistic streak: his browbeating a soldier (Larry Ward) into giving up his ticket is a chillingly believable sequence, marking Grimes as irredeemably evil yet all-too-real. With its wonderfully enigmatic protagonist and hateful bad guy, Hombre hits all the right dramatic notes.

Hombre probably could have used a bit of dramatic economy, with too many characters cluttering up the narrative: the squabbling young couple in particular does little to justify their existence, and Cameron Mitchell's crooked Sheriff is too underdeveloped for his treachery to have any affect. Still, Ritt keeps the story moving at a crisp pace and the film is never less than interesting. The shootouts are kept modestly-scaled and believable, with some shocking bits of violence: Russell shooting an unarmed Grimes in the back is a nastiness beyond even Clint Eastwood's darkest roles.

Paul Newman gives a solid turn, playing Russell as a tough, laconic, quietly conflicted anti-hero. Richard Boone (The Shootist) is a superlative villain, easily one of the big screen's most hateful, intimidating bad guys. Barbara Rush gets to dispense sanity and wit in her choice role, and Frederic March (Inherit the Wind) does well against-type as the slimy Indian agent. Frank Silvera (Killer's Kiss) is memorable as Boone's talky second-banana and Martin Balsam (Al Capone) has a nice supporting rurn. The rest of the cast is disposable, especially Peter Lazer and Margaret Blye's obnoxious couple.

For all its flaws, Hombre is still a solid, well-structured oater and definitely worth a look. Its message and plot are pretty straight-forward but it's a familiar tale well-told.