Customer Reviews

The Molly Maguires

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This is as good a movie about coal mining as you get until Matewan comes along. Connery, Harris and Eggar are excellent; Ritt's direction is wonderful. I am the descendent of Irish immigrant miners who worked the same fields as the film portrays, and I do not detect a false note in the portrayal of "patch" life, even after numerous viewings. BTW, the "patch" portrayed in this film is an actual town in Pennsylvania -- Eckley, about 10 miles outside of Hazelton -- and has been restored by the State Museum Commission as a bit of living history.

That being said, a few additional comments:

1. "It's dark and gloomy..." -- DUH! IT'S ABOUT LIFE IN A COAL MINE!

2. Walter Bernstein's script did not have the benefit of Kevin Kenny's "Making Sense of the Molly Maguires" (1997). If he had, his script would have been very different, because the Mollies were, to a large degree, a fiction devised by Franklin Gowan to justify the virtual slavery of Irish immigrants in his coalfields. Yes, many Irish miners were hung for murder. No, these murders were never proven. These men were labor martyrs.

3. The myth of Molly violence led to the hiring of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which made its money in the 19th century by infiltrating labor organizations and framing their members (who had the temerity to suggest things like a living wage) on any number of trumped up charges to the authorities. McKenna was a particularly loathsome example of the sort of human dregs they hired.

In short, this is a lost American film classic, as good in its way as John Ford's "Grapes of Wrath". It has the power to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable -- and what better can be said of a work of art?

James Wong Howe's cinematography looks beautiful on the restored DVD version of this underrated film, an unearthly intervention which brings us the actual physicality of the 19th century in light and radiance. It was an era in which electric light was just being invented and candles and gaslight were still the norm, that is, among people with the money to afford them. The unwashed faces of the coal miners and the families they supported form a canvas from Brueghel, but even the whole weight of the mining companies cannot extinguish the inner spark in their eyes.

Filmed by the Left-leaning director Martin Ritt, freed up from the blacklist that crippled the earlier part of his career, THE MOLLY MAGUIRES finds Ritt at a curious place, picking at the ugly scab of US history that the scandalous MOLLY MAGUIRES represents. Indeed historians argue whether or not there was ever a conspiracy among Fenians to bring down the oligarchy of the oppressive coal mining companies through so-called "shillelagh law." Ritt was able to attract not only Richard Harris but top-billed Sean Connery to this project; for each of them a commercial risk. Indeed the movie, re-edited at the studio by nervous bosses, probably doesn't represent the script that Connery and Harris read. Samantha Eggar, one of the loveliest of 60s screen actresses, took the leading women's role which was turned down by Anjanette (LOVED ONE) Comer. Oddly enough, thirty years later, Comer took the minor part of "Sue" in TV's recreation of the nine miners in Pennsylvania who were rescued from the Quecreek cave-in in the summer of 2002.

Yes, the film is depressing. Yes, it is slow-moving, sparked by moments of intense brutality. But give it a chance and savor its unique blend of 1870s locations and 1970 radical filmmaking.

Martin Ritt has a central theme that he explores in almost every film he makes. What unites and seperates us? He's become the master of that extremely difficult question and this film, for my money, was one of his best explorations of that theme/question.

It's about the workers and the company- 'the ones who push up or push down- who has more push?', as Connery's character sums up. It's about the choices people make to get up, get ahead or to get out. Ultimately, it's about compromised positions and consequences that come from such compromise.

Connery and Harris are terrific in this movie- the two sides of the coin. Harris has the tough role as the detective 'sent in' who struggles with both sides of the coin. Connery (just as his Bond days were coming to an end), does a slow boil to a funeral scene where he lets it rip. His dad was a soft spoken Irishman, he once said in an interview. I swear he vented something wonderful about the meek and good in this world, in this scene, that rocks with truth. " They haven't even left him with a proper suit to be buried in! " Watch him in this- one of Connery's finest performances.

Mancini captures the Irish flavour with a terrific score and Samantha Edgar and Frank Finlay and Anthony Zerbe lend their talents, as well.

Another buried treasure that deserves the sunlight. If you want a good film with some history, some food for thought and some fine performances, treat yourself to this.

This movie gives viewers insight to the harsh reality of the industrialization of the United States and the exploitation of immigrants in the coal mines. The characters offer a complexity of emotions as they struggle to survive at the mercy of the powerful mining companies and corrupt police system of 1870s. Sean Connery gives a solid performance as Jack Kehoe, a Molly Maguire whose lack of trust of outsiders is penetrated by a company detective posing as a coal miner. The story is not only entertaining but also historically accurate.

This film tells the true story of an Irish gang or 'faction' which was active in the American labour movement in themid to late 1800's. It was brought over from Ireland and further took root among the Irish coal miners of Pennsylvania. Several books have been written about the Molly Maguires, but to understand them in-depth, you need to get the books "Understanding The Molly Maguires", and "Irish Gangs And Stick-Fighting". Martin Scorcese's "Gangs Of New York" is also about Irish gangs like the Mollies, but films usually don't do full justice to this topic. Get this great, very entertaining movie, but for the whole story get the books mentioned above as well.

I saw this movie many years ago and loved it. What I've read in the most recent reviews, however, leaves out that the script is based on a real, historic trial and hanging that took place in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It is notorious in that the man whose character is portrayed by Sean Connery, before being hung, placed his hand on the wall of his cell and swore his innocence. The handprint can still be seen in the jail, which is now an historic landmark. It has been scrubbed, sanded, and even painted over -- yet it still shows through. Now that it is available in DVD form, I am buying it for my husband, who I think will enjoy it. We both decend from Pennsylvania mining stock -- not Irish, but Jewish! In fact, during the mining violence of the 1920s, my uncle delivered payroll to the mines. The rules said he had to carry a gun and ammunition -- so he carried a .23 pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun shell, claiming the rules did not say the ammunition had to match the gun and he had no intention of killing anyone. . . . .

I don't understand why this version cuts out the key scene in the church were Sean Connery stands up in his pew and challenges the priest sermonizing against violence and saying something like "what about the violence against the miners?"

In fact, they appeared to have purposely edited the movie to make the audience think that the comment that Richard Harris makes after the service about "talking back to the priest" refers to the pleasantries that Sean Connery exchanged with the priest after the service on the way out!

I remember this scene vividly since it when I saw this movie almost 40 years ago now, it was cool to see someone stand up in the church and stand up to the church's hypocrisy.

The cut of this scene also distorts the movies development of the close friendship that the priest held with Sean Connery and how each could act within their roles while retaining their bond.

Odd.

Any insight from the fans?

- DP

I was raised in coal region where this movie is about and had grandparents work in the mines. This movie was very personal to me because of this and showed just how life was. All my life I heard stories of the Molly's and the characters portrayed in this film they were brought to life in this film. Richard Harris is excellent and you see him gain understanding and sympathy for the men he is after. Through him you slowly learn their struggle and reason for the course of their actions. Sean Connery, as always, is tremendous in the part and I can easly close my eyes and see him exiting a coal mine, dirty and sweaty after a 12 hour shift. This movie is worth seeing again and again

Having seen this film several times I was very impressed by the acting, particulary Sean Connery and Richard Harris. The Cinemtography was superb, after all James Wong How was easily one of the greatest Cinematographers of the 20th Century. The music was fantascic and Henry Mancini captured the flavor of the 19th Century Irish. However, even though the script as script was powerful and compelling, it was more fiction than fact. Why is it that script writers must take such liberties with history?
The so-called Molly Maguires, a name invented by the publisher of the Miner's Journal newspaper, were in fact a group of men who were fighting for fair conditions in the coal mines, honest pay for honest work. Many of the men, though certainly not all, hanged were, in fact, innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. These brave men gave their lives for a movement that would eventually lead to the United Mine Workers of America. However, this being said, the movie is entertaining and certainly worth watching even if only to watch Connery, Harris and the beautiful Anjanette Comer.

The Molly Maguires is the kind of film that would simply never be made today: a major studio picture about social injustice and betrayal in the coalfields of Pennsylvania in 1876 that became one of the most colossal box-office flops of all time (despite a massive budget and the presence of Sean Connery, it actually grossed even less than John Sayles' low-budget Matewan). Set in the aftermath of a failed strike where a group of miners are trying to win with dynamite what they lost with a strike as their powerlessness turns into violent action, it's a surprisingly bitter film for a studio picture, even in the 1970s. There's no doubting that Richard Harris' infiltrator is damned. Screenwriter Walter Bernstein was blacklisted, and that experience clearly fuels much of the script. Certainly the end, where absolution is denied, recalls Abraham Polonsky's comment that he got through being blacklisted "because I knew for me one day it would end. For those who named names, it will never end."

But there's more to his script than mere words: huge sections of the film are played without dialogue - it's 15 minutes before a single word is spoken and 40 before Sean Connery speaks despite his background presence quietly dominating much of the proceedings. James Wong Howe's astounding scope photography is a major asset, quietly confident as it paints with light a real portrait of a time and place, conveying a sense of the way the pits worked in the beautifully timed establishing shots. There's real intelligence in the framing of the film, whether turning a door frame into an impromptu confessional booth or, in the haunting final shot, turning a rehearsal for one man's execution into another man's silent purgatory. Henry Mancini's score, along with The White Dawn his most beautiful and atypical, is another major plus in a seriously undervalued film.

Paramount's DVD is a bare-bones affair - neither the trailer nor the 10-minute short about the film's making shot at the time are included, with only an optional stereo soundtrack as an extra. The 2.35:1 transfer is good, but not quite as good as the previous laserdisc release.