Rather standard working-class drama of the sort that Warner Brothers was turning out, though with more emphasis on the issue of unions and union-breaking than was usual. The usual stalwart support is present, such as Ward Bond and even Akim Tamirov.
Maybe part of the reason it doesn't have more impact on viewers these days is that the working class audience, living on the edge of poverty, doesn't really exist as a social consideration anymore.
The people who made this movie and the audience who lived this kind of life are now all dead. Far fewer people know what existence was like when it was constantly overcast by the threat of imminent poverty. In the Great Depression, during which the generation described by Tom Brokaw in his book "The Greatest Generation" grew up, unions were still controversial and there was a good deal of violence involved in the development of collective bargaining. Goons might bash in your head. A union organizer might be (and at least in one case was) castrated and murdered. And a miner might blow up a mine. One third of the nation was unemployed and there was no Social Security or Unemployment Benefits.
Well, no time for a history lesson here. And it's just as well because I know practically nothing of the history of industrial relations.
Considering it as a film, I can only echo what another reviewer, "Howdymax", in still another of his unusually perspicacious comments, has already said. The movie is Dreck.
Try to think of it as an historical artifact, like a Leni Lenape tomahawk or a Roman coin. It's no longer useful but it's oddly fascinating to see and handle. That may help you get past Mr. Paul Muni's outrageous overacting. If he could do it, he would chew up not only the scenery but the walls of the mine shaft, the Miner's Bar, his supporting players, the script, the director, the camera, and the viewer.
Maybe part of the reason it doesn't have more impact on viewers these days is that the working class audience, living on the edge of poverty, doesn't really exist as a social consideration anymore.
The people who made this movie and the audience who lived this kind of life are now all dead. Far fewer people know what existence was like when it was constantly overcast by the threat of imminent poverty. In the Great Depression, during which the generation described by Tom Brokaw in his book "The Greatest Generation" grew up, unions were still controversial and there was a good deal of violence involved in the development of collective bargaining. Goons might bash in your head. A union organizer might be (and at least in one case was) castrated and murdered. And a miner might blow up a mine. One third of the nation was unemployed and there was no Social Security or Unemployment Benefits.
Well, no time for a history lesson here. And it's just as well because I know practically nothing of the history of industrial relations.
Considering it as a film, I can only echo what another reviewer, "Howdymax", in still another of his unusually perspicacious comments, has already said. The movie is Dreck.
Try to think of it as an historical artifact, like a Leni Lenape tomahawk or a Roman coin. It's no longer useful but it's oddly fascinating to see and handle. That may help you get past Mr. Paul Muni's outrageous overacting. If he could do it, he would chew up not only the scenery but the walls of the mine shaft, the Miner's Bar, his supporting players, the script, the director, the camera, and the viewer.