Martin Ritt Movies

In this socially conscious drama with romantic overtones, Iris (Jane Fonda) is a working mother with a job at a large commercial bakery who is still getting over the death of her husband, though her circumstances don't give her much time to grieve. She's sharing her house with her two children, Kelly (Martha Plimpton) and Richard (Harley Cross), her unemployed sister Sharon (Swoosie Kurtz), and her thuggish brother-in-law. The tensions at home become even greater when teenage Kelly announces that she's pregnant. One of the few bright spots in her life is her blossoming friendship with Stanley (Robert DeNiro), a nice guy who works in the bakery's cafeteria. However, Iris starts noticing a few odd things about Stanley and it slowly dawns on her that he can't read. When the boss figures this out, Stanley loses his job -- an especially troubling development, as Stanley has just had to put his father in a retirement home. Homeless and out of work, Stanley turns to Iris with a special request -- he'd like her to teach him how to read. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Newly divorced Emma Moriarty (Sally Field) moves herself and her young son to a small Arizona town, hoping to establish a horse farm. Town pharmacist Murphy Jones (James Garner), the town's most eligible bachelor, develops a platonic friendship with Emma, but he decides to keep his distance when her ex-husband Bobby Jack (Brian Kerwin), who claims he's changed his irresponsible ways, moves back in with her. At a party at Emma's ranch, Murphy and Bobby Jack get into a verbal row, but nothing is settled until Wanda (Anna Levine) shows up with two babies in tow, claiming that Bobby Jack is the father. Once rid of her ex, Emma commisserates with her friend Murphy at his drug store--and is quite surprised to discover that she's fallen in love with the older man, and he with her. Murphy's Romance is a very gentle romantic comedy; even Murphy's cast-away lady friend (Georgann Johnson) behaves like a civilized human being instead of a woman scorned. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Martin Ritt's bucolic rural environments of Norma Rae, Conrack, and Sounder, are re-visited once again in Cross Creek, based on author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' memoirs of her times on a remote Florida bayou. Mary Steenburgen plays Rawlings, author of The Yearling, who, in 1928, makes the abrupt decision to leave her husband and move to an isolated orange grove to concentrate on her writing. Rawlings buys a run-down house covered with cobwebs that she restores with quick dispatch. In these desolate surroundings, Rawlings pauses in her housecleaning to listen reflectively to the otherworldly noises of the swamp. But suddenly out of this loneliness, people emerge. There is Geechee (Alfre Woodard), Rawlings' devoted servant; Marsh Turner (Rip Torn), a liquor-guzzling swamp rat; Floyd Turner (Cary Guffey), a cute harmonica-playing boy; and Ellie Turner (Dana Hill), a little girl whose fawn becomes the basis of Rawlings' Yearling book. Rawlings becomes involved with Norton Baskin (Peter Coyote), the owner of the local hotel, and, as she settles into life on the bayou and her friendship with Norton and Geechee, she is inspired to begin writing. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Norma Rae finds Sally Field cast in the title role, a minimum-wage worker in a cotton mill. The factory has taken too much of a toll on the health of Norma Rae's family for her to ignore her Dickensian working conditions. After hearing a speech by New York union organizer Reuben (Ron Leibman), Norma Rae decides to join the effort to unionize her shop. This causes dissension at home when Norma Rae's husband, Sonny (Beau Bridges), assumes that her activism is a result of a romance between herself and Reuben. Despite the pressure brought to bear by management, Norma Rae successfully orchestrates a shutdown of the mill, resulting in victory for the union and capitulation to its demands. Based on a true story, Norma Rae is the film for which Sally Field won her first Oscar; an additional Oscar went to David Shire and Norman Gimbel for the film's theme song, "It Goes Like It Goes." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The McCarthy-era "witch hunts" in the entertainment industry set the stage for this comedy drama set in the 1950s. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a cashier at a corner bar who works as a small-time bookie on the side, with little success. One day, Howard's old friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), a successful television writer, makes a business proposal to him; Alfred's leftist political views have resulted in him being blacklisted from the major television networks, and he can no longer get work. Alfred asks Howard to act as a "front" -- Howard puts his name on Alfred's scripts, sells them, and takes a cut of the payment for his trouble. Howard's new career as a "writer" is an instant success, and soon Howard is fronting for a handful of blacklisted scribes while earning a healthy income and becoming the toast of the television industry; another fringe benefit is a romance with beautiful network employee Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). However, comic Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), who had a brief fling with socialism years before, now finds his past catching up with him, and he's told in order to save his job as host of a weekly television show, he has to get the goods on some suspicious figures, among them Howard Prince, whose background looks a little too clean for comfort. The Front was written by Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the 1950s, as were co-stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Jon Voight stars in this story, based on fact, about a teacher determined to make a difference in the lives of his students. In the late 1960s, Pat Conroy (Jon Voight) is given a teaching position on a small island off the coast of South Carolina. Conroy discovers that the school is little more than a shack and his students are functionally illiterate, can't count, and don't even know what country they're in. (They also mispronounce his name as "Conrack," a name that sticks.) The school's principal, Mrs. Scott (Madge Sinclair), has taught the students to believe that they're lazy and stupid, and the result is a group of kids who've been ignored and have no useful skills. Conroy responds by throwing out the rule book and teaching lessons that will be useful in their daily lives. The students respond eagerly as Conroy plays classical music, shows them movies, teaches them to swim, and explains the importance of brushing their teeth. However, many local leaders are unhappy with Conroy and his methods, while Conroy is not afraid to say that institutional racism is largely to blame for the neglect heaped on the students. The real Pat Conroy, whose book The Water is Wide was the basis for this picture, later became a respected novelist; his fiction includes The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, both later made into films. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Based on Peter DeVries' novel Witch's Milk, Pete 'n' Tillie stars Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett in the title roles. Middle-aged when they first meet, eternally joking Pete and repressed "old maid" Tillie don't immediately hit it off. Gradually, their friendship deepens into love and culminates (reluctantly, on Pete's part) in marriage, eleven years of which is explored in this film. Throughout the funny and tragic moments, and despite the many breakups, their love endures. Oscar nominations went to screenwriter Julius J. Epstein and supporting actress Geraldine Page. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although the characters' names were changed, The Great White Hope was a thinly veiled account of the trials and tribulations of boxer Jack Johnson, based on the play by Howard Sackler and directed by Martin Ritt. James Earl Jones stars as boxing great Jack Jefferson, who defeats Frank Bardy Larry Pennell in a Reno, Nevada bout to become the world's first black heavyweight champion. After crossing a state line with his white girlfriend Eleanor (Jane Alexander in her feature debut), however, Jack is arrested and tried under the miscegenation-barring Mann Act. Found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, Jack escapes and leaves the U.S., but he's dogged by his now bad reputation and can't get honest work as a fighter. Offered his freedom from criminal charges if he'll agree to a fixed fight in Cuba that will restore the title to a white contender, Jack refuses and Eleanor commits suicide, their life on the run overwhelming her. Jack finally accepts the bout in Havana, but he fights his opponent with everything he's got. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

In Martin Ritt's The Brotherhood, Kirk Douglas plays Frank Ginetta, an old-line Mafioso who resents the newer policies encouraged by his younger brother Vince (Alex Cord). Frank resists all attempts at modernizing his operation, whereupon Vince cajoles his father-in-law Dominick Bertolo (Luther Adler) to spearhead an inter-mob rebellion. Summing up Bertolo as a rat and a liar, Frank has the man murdered in a graphically brutal fashion. It is up to Vince to exact retribution by killing his own brother. Lewis John Carlino's screenplay includes many of the elements that would gain legendary status upon the release of The Godfather, including the dreaded "kiss of death." Star Kirk Douglas also served as producer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold stars Richard Burton as a dispirited, end-of-tether British secret agent. He comes in from "the cold" (meaning he is pulled out of field operations) to act as a undercover man behind the Iron Curtain. To make his staged defection seem genuine, Burton goes on an alcoholic toot and is imprisoned and publicly humiliated. Once he has been accepted into East German espionage circles, Burton discovers that what he thought was his mission was a mere subterfuge--and that he's been set up as a pawn for an entirely different operation. Though Ireland and England "stand in" for East Berlin, Spy Who Came In From the Cold has the air of authenticity throughout, thanks in great part to the bleak black and white photography by Oswald Morris. The film was condemned as incomprehensible by those filmgoers accustomed to the simplistic melodramatics of James Bond; seen today, the double-crosses and double-double crosses seem all too clear and credible. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having been burned by compromises to censors on his earlier films Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, Paul Newman decided to star in as uncompromising a property as he could find. That property was Hud, inspired by a portion of Larry McMurtry's novel, Horseman Pass By. Hud Bannon (Newman) is a young Texas rancher who lives with his cattleman father Homer (Melvyn Douglas) and his hero-worshipping nephew Lon (Brandon DeWilde). Hud is an amoral, cold-hearted creature; his father, who holds Hud responsible for the death of his other son, tries to imbue Lon with a sense of decency and responsibility to others, but Lon is devoted to Hud and isn't inclined to listen. When hoof and mouth disease shows up in one of the elder Bannon's cows, Hud is all for selling the herd before the government inspectors find out. But Homer orders the cattle destroyed (the film's most harrowing sequence), driving an even deeper wedge between himself and Hud. Finally, Hud steps over the line by attempting to rape Alma (Patricia Neal), the earthy but warm-hearted housekeeper. Paul Newman was so repellantly brilliant as an unregenerate heel that his Oscar nomination for Hud was a foregone conclusion. Although Newman lost the Oscar to Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field, Oscars did go to Neal for Best Actress, Douglas for Best Supporting Actor, and cinematographer James Wong Howe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second film of director Martin Ritt with both Paul Newmanand Sidney Poitier, it's set in a city that has long been a haven for black musicians eager to escape the racism of the U.S. Newman is Ram Bowen, a trombone player who makes his living in a jazz group, which also includes tenor man Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier), while studying music and aspiring to a career as a "serious" composer. Eddie stays in Paris to bask in the respect that its people feel for his music, a respect rarely accorded him in the States. A pair of tourists, Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll) and Lillian Corning (Joanne Woodward) arrive in the city for a two-week vacation, and the two musicians lose no time in hooking up. Soon both relationships take a serious turn and the musicians are forced to make some important decisions about the possibility of returning to their native soil. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide