While The Molly Maguires (1970) isn’t one of the great coal mining movies like How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Stars Look Down (1939) or Matewan (1987), it’s just a small step below them.  It’s a fact-based tale of a secret society (“Molly Maguires”) of militant coal miners who sabotage the mines and ambush mining officials to gain better conditions.  A newcomer (Richard Harris) who proves his mettle is indoctrinated into the group and alters its history with his actions.

Apart from its solid acting from Harris, Sean Connery and Samantha Eggar, the film is an impressively realistic view of mining in 1876.  Paramount basically rebuilt the mining facilities in Eckley, PA to post-Civil War standards and then made the movie on site.  The mining sequences are vivid and utterly authentic.

The film’s drive for social justice for the miners is very effectively presented by director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein, both of whom had been blacklisted in the 1950s.  In this project, Bernstein saw contemporary parallels with the oppression the miners had faced, and Ritt emphasized those parallels with a grim, uncompromising vision that shows the world as it was.  An increasing number of critics are pointing back to the early 1970s and hailing the gritty realism that pervaded that era; this movie is a perfect example of that now rare style of filmmaking.

Due perhaps to its serious nature, its subject and poor advertising choices, The Molly Maguires was a notorious flop in 1970, even while critics were busy recommending it.  Audiences never took the time to watch it; with home video we can avoid their unfortunate aesthetic mistakes.  It didn’t make money, but it’s a darn good movie.  My rating:  ☆ ☆ ☆.  (9:4).