Labour Films

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Comment by Doug Taylor on July 20, 2011 at 22:28

"Potiche": entertaining film features stars, strikes, class struggle

By Ed Rampell
Peoples World, March 30 2011

Review HERE

 

Comment by Doug Taylor on July 18, 2011 at 1:49

Movie Review:

'Made in Dagenham' a fun history lesson

Link HERE 

 

Comment by Doug Taylor on July 3, 2011 at 3:15

Short Takes: The Canadian Worker on Film

By David Frank
Labour/Le Travail
Fall 2000

Is there a Canadian labour film? After a century of film production in Canada, the answer is uncertain. Canadian workers do appear in a variety of documentary and feature film productions, but their presence often arises from the incidental processes of documentation and fictionalization.

There is also a more purposeful body of work focused on the concerns of labour history, but its promise remains relatively underdeveloped. Although film has become one of the dominant languages of communications at the end of the 20th century, the practice of visual history stands to benefit from closer collaboration between historians and film-makers.

Read more HERE. (pdf)

Comment by Doug Taylor on June 28, 2011 at 6:34

Gold Diggers of 1933

 

"We're in the money!"

 

Gold Diggers of 1933 has the reputation of being fluff - but what beautiful fluff - because it employed the greatest mass-dance choreographer of all time, Busby Berkeley. But if you have never seen it or remember only the fluff, it deserves another look, for it captures the economic contradictions of the Great Depression in a way only rivaled by Preston Sturge;s comedies.

The "gold diggers" are of course the chorus girls who want to make it - not by successufully hoofing it in a big Broadway show - but by marrying rich guys.

Stanley Solomon characterizes this film as one in which "money looms as an obsession, poverty as an ever-present threat", but Arthur Hove emphasizes that the moral of the story is that "chorus girls really do have a heart of gold". And while we remember the gals costumed as gold coins and dancing a capitalist jig, we forget that the film ends with images of unemployed veterans who have been forced to walk the breadlines. Sound familiar? Styles of filmmaking change, of course, but some problems never go away.

- From Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds and Riffraff: An expanded guide t... by Tom Zaniello.

Clips HERE.

Comment by Peter Ølgaard on June 20, 2011 at 10:14

"I could have been someone - I could have been a contender!"

On the Waterfront: Wikipedia

Comment by Mark Gregory on June 20, 2011 at 7:47

anything by Sayles is just great in my book

 

Comment by Doug Taylor on June 20, 2011 at 6:29

Matewan - Another great labour film

NY Times film review

 

Traler below

 

Comment by Tim Dymond on June 11, 2011 at 1:45

Early on in 'On the Waterfront' the script argues that Johnny Friendly's corrupt union is a bad union on its own terms (i.e. it tolerates bad working conditions for its members). Unfortunately the last scene basically involves the workers begging the bosses for forgiveness.

Comment by Doug Taylor on June 10, 2011 at 7:18

On the Waterfront. Union or anti-union. Her is an article from Radiacal America from 1976,
http://nextyearcountrynews.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-waterfront.html

Comment by Tim Dymond on May 29, 2011 at 3:18

Thanks for that book Doug - the link through it to Tom Zaniello's blog is fascinating as well.

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