BLACK FURY (1935)

Physically impressive, often quite moving, Michael Curtiz* makes something of an American GERMINAL out of this Pennsylvania coal miners/labor trouble story, touching on many aspects of Emile Zola’s film-ready, novel. (Sadly, French film adaptations of it have missed the mark, ignoring the politics and skimping on Zola’s wild flights of desperation & violence.) Paul Muni oversells his act as the upstanding Slovak coalman, an ‘everyman’ type & natural leader who naively falls in with anti-union agitator J. Carroll Naish, using him to split the union in half, abrogating a weak contract which only makes a bad situation worse. Soon, ‘scabs’ come in and long time workers, now on strike, get evicted from the company town. Hoping to make things right, Muni takes hostage of the mines and threatens to blow it all up. And if too many punches are pulled toward the end, you can still see the greater tragedy behind the uplift. It’s fascinating to watch as Muni, physically perfect but burdening himself with a thick, impenetrable accent, trims his sails as the film progresses.* (Or do we just get used to his outsized scale?) Fine support from Karen Morley, his fiancée whose desertion makes Muni easy pickings for Naish’s phony radicalism; and from John Qualen as the union loyalist who can’t quit his old best pal. Exciting stuff in here.

DOUBLE-BILL: Scripter Abem Finkel was Warners’ left-leaning go-to guy for labor issues, bringing sentiments similar with those found here to the hookers of MARKED WOMAN/’37; prisoners in ROAD GANG/’36 and the heavy-industry machinists of BLACK LEGION/’37.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Between the heavy accent Muni put on and the heavy accent director Curtiz couldn’t take off, communication on the set must have been difficult in the extreme.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *This fits right in with an anecdote from Tony Randall who worked with Muni on his Tony Award winning Clarence Darrow character in B’way’s INHERIT THE WIND/‘56. Per Randall, Muni was so over-the-top in early rehearsal it was embarrassing. Then, day by day, he’d scale back, leaving only the essence, and a bit of fat for flavor. You can see the process going on in films he shot in continuity. It’s particularly noticeable in Howard Hawks' SCARFACE/’32.