Word: ritts
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...opening shot of the sun on the horizon is reminiscent of John Ford and the parallels do not stop there. Director Martin Ritt (Hud) and writer Walter Bernstein are as successful as Ford in exploring and defining Irish tradition and character. A comparison with The Informer is also illuminating: the informer in Ford's film is primitive and worthy of pity: the informer in The Molly Maguires is a conscious human being and deserves our contempt...
...productions. Some 200 tons of anthracite coal were shipped from Mahoney, Pennsylvania to the studio in Hollywood for a coal wall. Paramount Studios built the longest interior setting ever constructed on a Hollywood sound stage to simulate the interior of the coal mine. With a passion for realistic detail Ritt shot the film in a coal town in Eckley, Pennsylvania. All the homes in the town were repainted slate gray, the color of coal dust, giving a sense of the misery of the time...
...vehicle for describing the political situation. But Widerburg's sets and shooting are too beautiful to convince the viewer of the miserable conditions of the workers. He makes it easy to get caught up in the aesthestic brilliance of his film at the expense of the drama. Martin Ritt was so anxious to portray the dismal realities of the coal town that he originally shot in black and white, taking obvious risks at the box office. The film finally became so expensive that Paramount insisted that he shoot in color...
...Working with Lewis John Carlino's spare script, Director Martin Ritt has fashioned a film like grappa, with a raw kick and a bitter aftertaste. Seldom has a movie so resembled its characters. Like them, it has a primitive volatility, churning from glee to fury in the space of a second. Like them, it has aspects of a legend that has outlived its time. Like them, it strains for respectability-and never makes it. For all its sober posture, the film is hooked on its participants. It stays too long at the graphic garroting; it details too lovingly...
...monotone, he grunts his unrelenting hatred of the world. Caucasian by birth but raised by Indians-possibly the cigar-store kind, judging by the immobility of his features -he has suffered at the hands of both. One white man who has certainly made him suffer is Martin Ritt, the film's director...