Gabriel Miller,
The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
ISBN: 157806 277 2
224 pp
US$18.00
(Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi)

Uploaded 1 December 2001

Film scholarship on the work of director Martin Ritt has been spartan at best, and this is a lack of analysis that Gabriel Miller aims to address in his new book The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man. His prefatory remarks identify his main focus for his research as a desire to, at the very least, rectify a perceived imbalance caused by Carlton Jackson’s Picking up the Tab: The Life and Movies of Martin Ritt. This is a text that Miller identifies as “a reliable recounting of events in Ritt’s career”, but which fails to “examine any of the films to gauge their aesthetic dimensions or thematic development”. Miller’s book is, then, intended as an auteurist study, a quest to investigate a “Rittian” stamp upon the work of this director, and Miller sets out to earnestly decode the oeuvre of this filmmaker. To achieve this aim, he reviews Ritt’s full body of work, looking for clues and common threads, analysing the films for their social, stylistic and thematic significance and drawing together his discoveries into some sort of cohesive framework. And certainly there is plenty of interesting material to uncover.

Ritt’s history in theatre as both director and actor, his early television work and subsequent targeting by HUAC, the crossover to film and his concentration on social issues, industrialisation and landscape all promise a depth and scope of research into Ritt’s work that has been long overdue. It is unfortunate, then, that this investigation suffers from a superficiality which stymies the attempt to unlock Ritt and his work, and you come away from The Films of Martin Ritt with a solid, but ultimately generalised overview of his work. Whilst comprehensive in its coverage of all of his films, Miller’s analysis clumsily grapples with a few concepts and runs with them, leaving many other significant questions unanswered.

The book proceeds in a chronological format, beginning with a brief summation of Ritt’s early career in theatre and his blacklisting during the early days of television. This seems to be an opportunity for considerable insight and analysis, but the research on this quite interesting sideline in his career remains resolutely shallow. This is a pity, simply because Miller makes such a case for the significance of this experience in his discussion of the films later on in the book, and a solid background in the events and impact such an experience had upon the director would have proven beneficial. So whilst he aims to exploit Ritt’s first hand experiences with the blacklist and issues of “informing” in directorial efforts like The Front (USA 1976)and The Molly Maguires (USA 1970), Miller does not provide us with a firm context for these investigations. The lack of comprehensive research into the man and his view of the world, the significant forces which shaped him means that the discussion of his films and their relevance to some personal vision become shaky and nebulous, rather than a clear connection between the man and the film. Whilst recognising both the worth and the limitations of Jackson’s earlier book, Miller only succeeds in giving us half the story as well. Even if he conceives the position of his book to be a companion piece to another, it still must stand on its own, and The Films of Martin Ritt struggles to do this.

The schematic approach Miller utilises within each chapter also becomes an ultimately reductive exercise, paring the discussion down to a few neat avenues which are ticked off as you progress through the his analysis. For each film there is a brief statement on how Ritt became involved with the project, which is then followed by a lengthy plot summary where Miller aims to cast light on the basic themes and character motivations that Ritt has evoked in the film. This commentary for each film can sometimes be effective in identifying some major concerns of the director – like in Hud (USA 1963) or The Molly Maguires for instance, but often becomes more of a quick primer on what happens in the story, with some highlighted sections of detected subtext. This approach is perhaps not a surprise; Miller’s previous books have looked at writer John Irving, playwright Clifford Odets and the process of adaptation from novel to film, so his interest in the written word and a prior history in the discussion of literature is already apparent. A byproduct of this, though, is that in some ways these commentaries on Ritt’s films tend to read a bit like a student’s dog-eared and underlined copy of The Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick. His discussion of the films have a similar feel to high school literary scholarship, with the awkward exposition and discussion of the “significance” of certain elements so that we can understand the narrative more fully. Miller’s discussion of the stylistic modes in The Films of Martin Ritt centre almost exclusively on the camera, and he tirelessly tracks movements and positioning in each film, and comments upon what such directorial decisions suggest. But there is no real sense of the author grappling with form and style as a mode of expression, or for pure aesthetic power – it just functions as subtext, as a way to understand the plot. An example, from his discussion of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (USA 1965):

the following scene with Control (Cyril Cusack) functions as one of the thematic centrepieces of both novel and film. The sequence begins as Leamas gets out of the car, the camera following his movement from a high angle as he enters the building. Again, the camera’s positioning emphasises Leamas’s entrapment: although he thinks himself in control of his actions, Leamas is in fact being manipulated by Control, as will be revealed to him and to the audience later. Ritt’s high angle camera placement thus provides a subtle visual clue to his predicament

So whilst Miller is quite methodical in his analysis and “reading” of the film, the revelations that he yields from this analysis seem superficial and not too revelatory. He also aims to place the director’s work in some sort of generic context, and draws lengthy parallels between one of Ritt’s films, and another film he feels is closely allied to it. This encourages mostly superficial, sometimes insightful discussions on Hud / Shane (USA 1953) comparisons, and an Edge of the City (USA 1957)/ On the Waterfront (USA 1954) analogy, as well as several novel/film comparisons in relation to adaptations such as The Long Hot Summer (USA 1958) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. These are certainly interesting, but may not necessarily cast much light on Ritt the director, or indeed the forces which shape him as a director. Similarly, the films are never placed with any skill in an historical context, apart from the occasional passing reference to other popular films of the time. This means that his study of Ritt’s work never fully takes into account the social forces, the impact of contemporary concerns and events upon his cinema; it’s a bit like they exist in a vacuum without the inclusion of this framework. And since one of his main aims is to look at Ritt’s work as social commentary and as a spotlight on such concerns, the ineffectiveness of these contexts lessens the force and breadth of his investigations. There are some chapters that are more insightful than others: certainly his discussion of Hud, The Molly Maguires and Norma Rae (USA 1979) are handled well, and he includes some interesting gossipy production detail on Ritt’s collaboration with Barbra Streisand on Nuts (USA 1987). But generally his discussion of the work of Martin Ritt suffers from a lack of bite and depth. His focus on social problems within Ritt’s body of work is a little more successful, and he aims to provide links throughout each of the films, points of comparison between films that follow or precede the one under discussion. So his analysis of Ritt’s attention to the African-American experience is quite effective, as he charts Ritt’s progress through The Great White Hope (USA 1970), Sounder (USA 1972) and Conrack (USA 1970). These discussions, and his comments on the social conditions reflected in films such as Norma Rae and The Molly Maguires do succeed in some respects to place Ritt’s work in a rough thematic framework, even if the construction of this is not backed up with the depth of research and analysis that would have made this a far sturdier proposition.

But perhaps the cause of the fairly aimless and superficial discussion of the films is in Miller’s inability to set himself a clear goal. He clearly perceives a lack, which he dutifully aims to rectify, but in filling in this gap, he has not set himself a clear task. Obviously an admirer of his films, Miller doesn’t establish a question or a problem to be solved by a reading of Ritt’s work, there’s no central conflict or dilemma that Miller is working through to reach a conclusion. Instead it has that vagueness of someone writing “about” someone, without identifiable parameters, or indeed clear goals or direction. So whilst The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man offers a brisk and sometimes diverting exploration of the films of this man, little of any depth or substance is unearthed in the process. It is effective for an overview, a generalised “feel” for the director and his concerns, as well as detailing the major issues and significant elements within each of his films. But in terms of film scholarship, of forwarding ideas, perspectives, of encouraging discourse on the work of this neglected director, it appears the definitive text is yet to be written.

Mark Freeman