In a Hollywood career that spanned more than thirty years,
Martin Ritt (1914-1990) directed twenty-six films. Among them were
some of Hollywood's most enduring works--"Hud," "Hombre," "The Spy
Who Came in from the Cold," "The Molly Maguires," "The Front," and
"Norma Rae."
In addition to displaying a passionate commitment to social
issues, Ritt's body of work represents a sustained exploration of
the American myth and American national character. This study of
his films shows how his work articulates the communal, agrarian
ideal and its perversion as industrialism and urbanism have
denatured the landscape.
Encompassing a hundred years of American life, these films
follow the common man through the chronology of social history,
including the arrival of the railroads in the West, coal mining in
nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jack Johnson's rise as the first
black heavyweight champion of the boxing world, the television
blacklist, spying and the Cold War, trade unions, and the war in
Vietnam. The subjects he treats project a cultural framework for
examining what America means as a nation and as an experience.
The sixties was the decade of Ritt's most sustained achievement.
This period culminated in his masterpiece, "The Molly Maguires,"
perhaps the finest film ever made on the subject of American labor.
In the first detailed analysis of this great realistic film "The
Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man" shows that its
greatness lies in Ritt's complex interweaving of love and
friendship, the labor struggle, the story of the immigrant dream,
and the ideal of upward mobility.
The book includes analyses of all twenty-six films, including
such early works as "Edge of the City" and "The Long Hot Summer,"
as well as such later successes as "Norma Rae," "Sounder," and
"Murphy's Romance." Ritt's work in theater, notably in the Group
Theatre, which he joined in 1937, and his being blacklisted from
television during the 1950s, informed his directorial philosophy
throughout his career. Many recognize him as America's finest
director of social films.
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