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Black Fury

1935, Movie, NR, 95 mins

Black Fury: Review

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Like OUR DAILY BREAD, this film packs a walloping social message. It is intensely dramatic, in large part due to the performance of Paul Muni as a crude, unthinking miner, scarcely able to write his own name. When his sweetheart, Karen Morley, runs away with William Gargan, Muni gets drunk and then staggers out to a miners' meeting. J. Carroll Naish, an agitator trying to get the miners to reorganize their union, is addressing the workers, and Muni dumbly begins to echo his hortatory talk, his voice gradually louder and louder until the miners respond to his wild passion. Ultimately half of them break away from the old union and form a new one under Muni's leadership. This group finds itself locked out of the mine the next day, barred by company goons headed by brutal Barton MacLane who, as one wag pointed out, never talked when shouting would do. Muni and his friend, John Qualen, go to the rescue after thugs attack Qualen's daughter; Qualen, in turn, is killed by MacLane, and Muni is beaten so badly he must be hospitalized. He learns that the strikebreakers have smashed the resolve of the union and the men are about to go back to work. He staggers from his bed, finds some dynamite and, aided by Morley, blows up the power plant and barricades himself inside the mine. Newsmen make his stand famous overnight, and Morley visits him inside the shaft, explaining that the world is now with him, that it is safe to come out. He emerges to the cheers of his followers, and MacLane, who has been held captive in the shaft by Muni, is turned over to the police and charged with Qualen's murder. Morley and Muni are in each other's arms at the finish. The film offers a slice of real life, based on a story about three company cops who killed a rebellious miner in Imperial, Pennsylvania, in 1929. It also draws on a hard-hitting play on the same subject by Henry R. Irving. Muni, as was his habit, researched his role with a frenzy, going to Pennsylvania and working among miners for weeks to learn their accent and mannerisms. The result is a distinguished and powerful performance. Muni's meticulousness in building his own character was equalled by his demands on those who supported him. He had been annoyed by the clowning of Vince Barnett as a fumbling little sidekick in SCARFACE, and when he learned that Barnett was again to appear with him, Muni went to director Michael Curtiz to have the actor removed from the cast. Curtiz, ever ironwilled, refused and Barnett stayed in the film to provide vital comic relief in an otherwise heavy drama. Curtiz directed this film with his usual gusto, moving his scenes along with a ferocity that earned him the deserved reputation of Hollywood's top action director in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Shot at the Warner Brothers ranch where intricate mine shafts and heavy equipment were created and installed, BLACK FURY received a top budget and exhibits high-end production values, yet it failed at the box office. Too dreary, too brutal, too realistic, said customers and critics alike. Moreover, the State of Pennsylvania officially banned the film because of its uncompromising profile of a mining city that could be none other than Pittsburgh. The Gargan-Morley-Muni lovemaking scenes were too torrid for many other states, so local censorship boards refused to allow the film into theaters. The film remains, nevertheless, a great historic profile of the struggle of early unions to gain safe working conditions and decent wages for their members. leave a comment
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