"Black Fury" was the only time Paul Muni worked with Michael Curtiz. Potentially, this film could have been great but it is far from that. Muni wasn't very keen on acting in films, his preference was always going to be the theatre. He wasn't able to tone down his acting style for the cinema for the most part and he often appeared to be playing a caricature. He is guilty of this in the film "Black Fury." He is too theatrical in his facial expressions, his body language etc. Paul Muni plays a simple but honest coal miner who unwittingly becomes involved in a bitter dispute between the workers and the management. Muni, along with other miners, is subjected to intimidation. Barton MacLane is cast as a villain (he usually was) who is sent to destroy the livelihood of all the coal miners in this small community. Technically, the film is a disappointment. It is all too obvious that the sets representing the town in question are all on a soundstage. The sets don't look real and the direction from Michael Curtiz tends to suffer. The story itself is actually quite good and the film maintains a steady pace. The climax is also effective.

During the Thirties Warner Brothers had the reputation of being the working class studio and it was films like Black Fury that made for Warner Brothers that reputation. It was rare indeed to see another studio take stories about ordinary working people. Mostly they concentrated on the middle and upper classes because film was a form of escapism during the Depression. Black Fury coming out as it did in the middle of the New Deal was a timely reminder of the difficulties organized labor faced. Not coincidentally 1935 was the year that the Wagner Labor Relations Act was passed, an effort finally by the government to give labor some kind of equal footing with management. The need of the Wagner Act was to correct some of the abuses shown in films like Black Fury.Paul Muni plays happy go lucky immigrant coal miner Joe Radek. A man admittedly who works hard and no one thinks of as any kind of brain. He gets used good and proper by the company to stir up the miners so they will strike and give the company an excuse to lock out the union and bring in scabs.What you see with those miners living on subsistent wages in company towns was taken right from current headlines. It may be ancient history to us now, but it was very real for those people back in the day. The Pinkertons as represented by brutal and corrupt company policeman Barton MacLane had an unsavory reputation as strikebreakers and enforcers for management. That too is no exaggeration. Muni, aided and abetted by former girl friend Karen Morley now seeing the error of some of her ways, sees what a chump he's been and takes some real direct action against the employers. It's spectacular I'll tell you that.Though his acting style seems to have not worn well with some, not with me mind you, Muni was given a really rare tribute that year. His performance as Joe Radek was the second time a performer had a sustained write-in campaign for him for an acting Oscar. He finished second in the balloting to Victor McLaglen for The Informer and ahead of Mutiny of the Bounty nominees, Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Franchot Tone. The following year the Academy banned write-ins and that's been so ever since. Of course the following year Muni won his Oscar for The Story of Louis Pasteur.We've moved on in America from an industrial to an information based society and films like Black Fury are now part of history. But it's a history we should not forget.

**SPOILERS** Socially minded 1935 drama involving the attempted breaking of a coal-miners union in Coaltown PA. by using underhanded tactics on the part of management. Getting a trouble-making mole, or provocateur, into the labor union the union busting racketeers plan to have the union workers go on a disastrous labor strike in order to break their previous labor contract. Thus lose all the pay and benefits that they got through labor-management negotiations over the last twenty years.The provocateur Croner, J. Carrol Nash, making himself out to be a man of the people, or working men, starts to get things going as soon as possible. Croner disrupts a union meeting with the miners there throwing away their union badges and walking out in disgust determined to form a rival union electing the very drunk and heart-broken Joe Radek, Paul Muni. Unknow to Radek he's Croner's and his boss' choice for union president. Joe's been on a drinking binge since his sweetheart Anna Novak, Karen Morley, left him for another man union company policemen Slim Johnson, William Gargan, whom she took off with for Pittsburg and a better life; Anna has this thing about a man in uniform.Joe being used by the unscrupulous and union-busting Croner & co., and with him doing their dirty work, mindlessly starts a strike that leads the mine to be shut down. With all he workers unable to support themselves and their families make the unknowing pasty Joe Radek, Croner had since taken a powder and checked out of town, the most hated man in Coaltown. Things start to get really ugly when Croner's boss Jenkins, Purnell Pratt, sends in an army of scabs protected, from the angry unemployed miners, by company police lead by his second in command McGee, Barton MacLane. This leaves the strikers no choice, since they broke their contract, but to get back to work only with them signing away their hard fought rights and making them and their families nothing but slaves and indentured servants to "The Man", Jenkins, and his band of strike breaking thugs.It's when Joe's former best friend Mike Shemasnski(John Qualen), he had since thrown him out of his home because of his involvement with the union busting Croner, was brutally murdered by McGee that he finally came to his senses and stopped drinking. With Anna also and unexpectedly coming back to Joe, Slim & Pittsburg didn't turn out to be the bargain that she thought that they would be, Joe finally took matters into is own hands.Barricading himself in the coal mine Joe had it booby-trapped with explosives. Keeping the miners from coming back to work Joe thus throws their rights benefit's and away. Joe desperately holds off McGee and his police, in fact Joe later took Mcgee hostage, until the truth came out about the Jenkins/McGee attempt to destroy the miners union and then take it over. Making the coal mine a cash-cow for themselves and a prison for those who worked there.Tension packed final as Joe puts his life on the line holding off McGee and his "boys" who tried to smoke and blast him out of the mineshaft with tear-gas and bullets. The truth is finally brought out into the open to not only the public and local miners but the entire nation of the sleazy attempt to destroy the Coaltown Miners Workers Union by Jenkins & Co. In the end even the US Government, from the President of the United States himself on down, and Federal Courts get into the mix by restoring all the rights that Jenkins and his ilk tried to take away from the miners. And yes both Joe & Anna get married at the end of the movie and live happily ever after on a farm, that Joe bought from the late Mike Shermanski, raising both pigs and a family of little Joe's and Anna's.

In 'Black Fury', Paul Muni gives one of his best performances, and also appears on screen in one of his more plausible make-ups. This time he plays a Slavic immigrant, uneducated but keenly intelligent, working in an American coal mine. Muni's hair is dyed blond, yet looks realistic, and his own Eastern European facial features work with this characterisation ... not against it, as they did for some of his other roles. The film also features a fine performance from John Qualen, a prolific character actor whose film appearances were often marred by unconvincing and unnecessary foreign accents of the "yumpin' yiminy!" sort. In 'Black Fury', Qualen's flavour-of-the-month accent is less obtrusive than usual, and it actually works for the character he plays: a Polish-American miner.Joe Radek (Muni) is a miner in a 'company town', where all the labourers are poorly-paid and live in squalid shanties. Radek and his fellow miners work in extremely dangerous conditions. The company that owns the mine also owns all the local businesses, and the local police force also work for the mining company. The cops have no interest in justice: they're bullies whose only concern is to keep the locals quiet and subservient to the company. The head cop is a slimy sadist named McGee, well-played by Barton MacLane. Radek's buddy Shemanski (Qualen) gets drunk one night and makes the mistake of criticising company policy: staggering home that night, he has a fatal 'accident' arranged by McGee's goons.To call attention to various grievances, Radek fills the mineshaft with dynamite. He packs several days' worth of food for himself, then he takes McGee hostage at gunpoint and brings him into the mine. Radek chains McGee to the pit face, slightly out of reach of Radek's food supply. If Radek's demands aren't met, he's going to blow up the mine ... with himself and McGee inside. After they've been in the mine for several days, there's one harrowing shot of the starving McGee chained to the wall, begging Radek for food. The film ends with one of those slam-bang action climaxes that Warner Bros did so well, spiced with some social commentary that doesn't get too preachy.The film boasts an excellent supporting cast, filled with actors who are (mostly) more obscure than usual, which helps us to immerse ourselves in the action. Karen Morley, quietly beautiful, gives a fine performance, and Michael Curtiz (a very underrated director) does his usual superlative work.'Black Fury' is based on a story by Michael A. Musmanno, a Pennsylvania lawyer of Italian descent. Late in his life, Musmanno devoted several decades to writing a book called 'Columbus *WAS* First' (his emphasis), which purported to prove that no European explorers reached the Americas before Columbus. Musmanno's claims for Columbus have long since been disproven, but 'Black Fury' is an excellent film. I'll rate this movie 9 points out of 10.Trivia note: Shortly after this movie was released, Warner Brothers released a Loony Toon starring Porky Pig as a hunter who had a dog named Black Fury. What a shameless plug!