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Donal Scully

The Molly Maguires
Sean Connery,  Richard Harris, Samantha Eggar
Director: Martin Ritt
The Pennsylvania coalfields of  the 1870s were scene of a violent struggle for workers' rights against unyielding mine owners and  their brutal private police forces.  In other words, perfect fodder for  a Martin Ritt film.
Ritt's socially conscious repertoire included The Great White Hope, Sounder, The Front and Oscar-winning Norma Rae -  all dealing with injustice, exploitation and discrimination,  the underside of the American dream - so The Molly Maguires' subject matter fits his bill.
Set in 1876 it tells how a group  of Irish Catholic mineworkers - frustrated by a failed strike for better pay and conditions - resort to sabotage and murder against  the company that employs them. The company responds by sending a detective undercover to infiltrate the secret organisation and bring  it down.
Ritt brings this controversial episode of US labour history to life as a powerful story of violence, murder, intrigue and betrayal.
The militant Molly Maguires,  led by Jack Kehoe (Sean Connery, right), are hard, bitter men driven by desperation. Their actions are frequently condemned by the village priest (Philip Bourneuf). But there is plenty of judgment to go around and the man sent to win the Mollies' trust before exposing them, Detective James McParlan (Richard Harris) of the Pinkertons, may be the most damned character of all.
Harris and Connery played together in one other film, Robin and Marian (1976), but this is the only chance to see them clash in  a top-billing context. And neither actor disappoints.
Connery's Kehoe is tightlipped (his first spoken word comes 40 minutes in) and brooding while Harris' McParlan (who uses the alias McKenna) is a quick-witted charmer.
As McParlan wheedles his way into the Mollies' inner circle, he also bonds with the men he must eventually bust.
He experiences the back-breaking, dangerous work and the humiliation that goes with it.
Even though McParlan has sympathy with the rebels' cause, that will never trump his main purpose - to advance himself in the world at any cost.
Therein lies the crux - the different choices made by Kehoe and McParlan.
McParlan expresses his credo bluntly to his police handler: 'I've failed enough in this country already. I'm tired of empty pockets. I'm tired of looking up. I want to be the one looking down.'
Kehoe admits to McParlan that his quest for social justice through violence is probably futile but insists the act of fighting back is enough. 'At least make a sound. Use your powder. Let them know you're alive.'
There are solid performances throughout, notably by Frank Finlay as Davies the sinister police captain, Samantha Eggar as the want-away lodging-house matron whom McParlan woos, and Anthony Zerbe as a firebrand Molly.
Guangzhou-born cinematographer James Wong Howe contributes to the authentic feel of the film with an atmospheric presentation of the main locale - Eckley, a mining village that was virtually unchanged since the era depicted in the film.
Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein, both victims of the anti-communist witch hunts, were blacklisted for years in the 1950s. And McParlan's position at the end of the film, condemned by those he betrayed ('You'll never be free. There's no punishment this side of hell for what you did') is analogous to those who named names to the McCarthyite committees.
Ritt rated this his best movie  but it flopped on release.
It's due for reconsideration as an under-appreciated American classic.



FILM (1970)