USA,
1987, 132 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
-
John Sayles
- prod
-
Peggy Rajski, Maggie Renzi
- scr
-
John Sayles
- cam
-
Haskell Wexler
- editor
-
Sonya Polonski
- mus
-
Mason Daring
- cast
-
Chris Cooper, Will Oldham, Mary McDonnell, Bob Gunton, James Earl Jones, Kevin Tighe, David Strathairn
-
COMMENTS
An Evening with Chris Cooper (2004 recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award), with on-stage interview.
Chris Cooper made a memorable debut in this hard-hitting tale of labor organizing in the coal mines of 1920s West Virginia that “runs its course like a train coming down the track” (Variety). Cooper’s intensity and weathered good looks lend an immediate realism to his portrayal of firebrand union organizer Joe Kenehan, who arrives in the backwaters of West Virginia to unite the area’s coal miners. Gaining the miner’s trust will be struggle enough, but helping them win a strike against their ruthless employers may break Kenehan, and the town, in two. The company first imports Black and Italian scabs to end the strike and fuel race-based fights between the workers, rather than against the employers. Kenehan, aided by the burly Spanish American War veteran known as “Few Clothes” (James Earl Jones), works to bridge the racial divide and unite the workers, but soon they are faced with far more insidious company devices: spies, double agents, threats and, finally, physical violence. Based on a real-life incident, synchronized to a soundtrack of mournful Appalachian spirituals by Hazel Dickens (who also makes a cameo appearance) and others, and filmed on location in the fogbound foothills of West Virginia (it’s one of cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s great achievements), Matewan is as committed and direct a film about the history of American labor as anything Hollywood is likely to make; thanks to the performance of Cooper, a man of constant sorrow and rage, it’s invested with a power, and a humanity, as moving as any ballad.
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
