Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Michael Curtiz, with a screenplay by Abem Finkel and Carl Erickson that was inspired by Harry R. Irving's play Bohunk and an account by Judge M.A. Mussmano of the real-life case of Pennsylvania coal miner Mike Shemanski, this above average drama earned chameleon actor Paul Muni his third (of seven) Best Actor Academy Award nominations. He would go on to win his only Oscar the following year playing the title role in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935).Like in many of his (and Warner Brothers') films, Muni's protagonist is fighting against a societal injustice - in this case, the working conditions and wages of coal miners. The highly recognizable cast includes Karen Morley, William Gargan, Barton MacLane, John Qualen, J. Carrol Naish, Vince Barnett, Henry O'Neill, Joseph Crehan, Sara Haden, Willard Robertson, Ward Bond, and Akim Tamiroff, among others. Mike Mazurki also appears, uncredited, as a security force applicant.Joe Radek (Muni) is a lovable lug of a coal miner who boasts that one day he'll marry Anna Novak (Morley), whom he greets every day on his way to the mines. He's saving his money in order to buy Sokolsky's (Tamiroff) farm, where they'll raise pigs. Radek currently boards in the mining company home of the soft spoken local union representative Mike Shemanski (Qualen) and his wife Sophie (Haden). But not everyone is happy with their pay etc. under the union's current agreement with the mining company's management. Newcomer Steve Croner (Naish) is the most outspoken about the unacceptable conditions. Unbeknownst to the other miners, Croner is really an antagonist paid by a manpower company to cause unrest and force a strike.Even though the illiterate Radek claims to be on the verge of an engagement with "his" Anna, she is really in love with a mining company policeman, Slim Johnson (Gargan, in nothing more than a cameo; Bond plays another policeman), who she sees as her ticket out of an environment and way of life she finds suffocating. Slim, a friend of Radek's, isn't as committed to Anna as she is to him, but agrees to take her with him when he's reassigned to another mine in Pittsburgh. Radek has finally saved enough to buy Sokolsky's pig farm when he learns that Anna has gone. He is heartbroken and Croner exploits Radek's pain, his subsequent drunkenness, and his natural leadership ability to split the union. The miners side with the Croner influenced Radek, against Mike and union leader Johnny Farrell (Crehan), to strike. This leads to a falling out between friends Radek and Mike, who evicts Radek from "his" home.At the time the mining company president John W. Hendricks (O'Neill) learns of the strike, he is unknowing with the responsible manpower company leaders, including McGee (MacLane), who promise to help him by supplying all the workers (e.g. scabs) and security he needs to keep the mine operational. Hendricks hires them; McGee then fulfills this new labor agreement by hiring a bunch of thugs to work with him on the security detail. Radek is disillusioned with it all when Croner disappears and he's expected to step into a role he's completely unprepared and unsuited to perform. He becomes a regular drunk until Kubanda (Barnett) finds him in a bar to tell him that Mike is being beaten up by McGee and company (including Bond's character). Even though Radek tries to prevent it, Mike is killed in the scuffle.Distraught and disillusioned by love lost herself, Anna returns "home" to find changes in the mining town. She then finds Radek, who's been inspired by Mike's death to keep his former friends from ending the strike by returning to work, which Mike would not have wanted. Radek reluctantly shares with her his plan to rig the mine's entrances with dynamite to prevent the miners from working. Anna insists on helping Radek and eventually becomes his voice to persons outside the mine after Radek blows up a couple of the mine's openings and holds up inside it. Mr. Welsh (Robertson) becomes the company's negotiator with Radek; they use a mine telephone to communicate. Meanwhile, McGee is determined to find a way in to Radek. However, once he's inside, Radek dynamites the entrance (miraculously killing no one lest the film's ending would have to be different). McGee then becomes Radek's hostage as he keeps the mine closed for days, surviving by eating the bread he'd stolen beforehand.Meanwhile, the government gets involved; their investigation exposes the manpower company and their illegal tactics such that mining company and union officials agree to restore to the original pre- strike agreement. This successful result from Radek's efforts, especially given his methods, is one reason this film was banned in mining towns around the world.

kinorajah "Black Fury" was the second film Paul Muni made after signing a lucrative and very unusual contract with Warner Brothers that essentially allowed him script approval and a great amount of creative control. Muni had been fascinated by the true story of a miner's strike in Philadelphia, and did extensive research, including meeting with a judge who had presided over the case.I've seen all of Muni's films repeatedly and this is unquestionably one of his most accomplished and most unusual roles. For an actor who wast trained on the Yiddish stage and often played old men (even as a juvenile), it's remarkable that during the height of his film career, Muni never played a Jewish character. Joe Radek, a Hungarian immigrant, is probably the closest Muni ever came to playing a character that he "could have been" in real life -- he, too, was an Eastern European immigrant, of working-class stock, and had his parents been laborers instead of itinerant performers, he could easily have wound up like Radek. Radek is a child-like, life-of-the-party type who speaks in broken English, often in the third person ("Everybody love Joe Radek!") For students of acting history, it's the type of performance that you might expect from a "method" actor of a generation later; indeed, those who cite Brando's Stanley Kowalski as "breaking the rules" by speaking with a mouth full of food in a realistic fashion would do well to note Muni's performance here, as his speech is sometimes imprecise and in an early scene he breaks up a fight and makes a speech while gnawing his lunch.The script is fairly decent -- although politically problematic, as it seems to go a bit far to get Joe elected as president of the new union, and presents unions as ineffective or corrupt (and management as greedy and uncaring, of course). At the time of its release, the film was well-reviewed, but the "controversy" over unionization meant that it was censored or banned in some areas, so it was not a box-office success. Still, Muni's performance was powerful enough that he received a "write-in" nomination for Best Actor -- a practice that has since been discontinued by the Oscars (Muni and Bette Davis, for "Of Human Bondage," were the only actors to receive write-in nominations).It's also worth seeing for the excellent, uncompromising direction of Michael Curtiz; supporting performances (and they are ALL supporting in a Muni film -- he is unquestionably the star) are all well-played. Karen Morley is understated as Joe's would-be girl; John Qualen, who has one of the saddest faces in movie history, is excellent as Joe's best friend. The film's ending is a bit hackneyed from today's perspective, but quite effective."Black Fury" is one of about four dozen films from before 1936 that "should" be available on DVD, but isn't, and it's a shame. It is occasionally aired on cable and well worth a look if you are a fan of Muni or socially conscious films of the depression era (in the vein of "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," "The Grapes of Wrath," etc.)

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

marcslope Paul Muni, David Thomson once wrote, was the '30s' idea of a great actor: He never looked the same twice. Here he's a hail-fellow-well-met Eastern European immigrant coal miner in a dreary Pennsylvania burg, deceived by union busters and weighed down by a ten-ton accent. Indeed the screenplay seldom rises above a fifth-grade literacy level, the better to illustrate the goodheartedness of these poor but honest laborers. But five minutes of Muni, and you've seen the whole performance -- a Zorba-the-miner "life force" who yells all his lines and sounds unfortunately like Steve Martin's wild-and-crazy-guy character from Saturday Night Live in the '70s.Warners does come up with a convincingly grimy set and a capable stock-company supporting cast, but the dramaturgy is connect-the-dots. One miner shouts and sways the whole crowd, then another, then another -- what a gullible bunch this must be. The evil cops and management figures are so absurdly evil that nuance is lost. The third act does whip up to an exciting blow-up-the-mine climax, but then it's resolved in headline montages, as if Warners suddenly ran out of money, or film. And Michael Curtiz -- I didn't think this fine director was capable of this -- stages the crowd scenes clumsily, shifting point of view confusingly and slapping the mise-en-scene together hard, with loud music. Certainly the studio is on the side of the angels, arguing for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, and as a '30s sociological curio the movie is not without interest. But Muni's monotonous bluster and an elementary script combine to create a cinematic cave-in.