When, at the height of Expressionism, Fritz Lang imagined Metropolis, Europe was still shaking from the Great War, the bloody fall of the tzars, and the series of internal wars in Russia. A mere four years separate the consolidation of Russia as a communist nation to the birth of Metropolis, in 1927. Silent, beautiful, and bold, Lang’s vision of the future offers all the issues of a world that has yet to resolve the inequality between workers and princes, peasants and lords, haves and have-nots. In Lang’s film –  written by novelist, screenwriter, filmmaker, and actress Thea von Harbou, based on her own book – workers live in a paltry underground tenement, while the wealthy enjoy a shining city of the future, crisscrossed by expressways and dotted with lush parks. The theme of Lang’s movie, included in one of its cards, offers a solution to the very core of the story: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart”.

At the time, Metropolis was received with some applause – mainly for the rich esthetic and the special effects, and equal criticism- for what many called “communist”, “silly” and “ludicrously simplistic”.

 

 

Nine years later, Charles Chaplin would offer a lighter version of the same issues in his Modern Times, with his Little Tramp facing the very same industrialized world of Metropolis. A darker world, actually, with the beloved Tramp face to face with a never-ending assembly line and monstrous machines. His extraordinary talent to tell stories with his body makes us laugh from his adventures in this never-ending, exhausting workday, but the core of the movie remains – work is scarce and cheap in the years after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Has it improved all these years later?

On International Workers’ Day, we celebrate the power of work through a variety of films that embraced this theme from the very beginning of this industry. They are all worth watching – and thinking about. 

 

The Land

 

 

A perfect meeting of talent, from John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize book to John Ford’s direction, Greg Toland’s powerful black and white and a truck full of top actors, led by a young Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Expelled from their Oklahoma family farm as a result of the Great Depression, the Toads pile their bodies and their meager possessions and take the road to California, where, they think, work and prosperity await.  At the end of the road, however, there are just desperate migrants like them, jobless and starving. Tom Joad, however, will not give up.

Available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime

 

 

In an early 1930s Egypt, officially independent but still occupied by English troops and local landowners,  poor peasants still farm on the Delta Nile, sustaining themselves and their families with a meager part of their harvest. When the village Mayor and a rich landlord join in their projects to “modernize” the area – a road that will cut the fields, and less water for the plantations – the livelihood of dozens of families is at risk. Master Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine adapted the semi-autobiography by Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi and took Al Ard all the way to the 1970 Cannes Film Festival

Available on Netflix

 

 

 

Diego Luna took the reins of his second feature film to tell the story of agricultural labor leader César Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers, the farmworkers’ union. Filmed mostly in Mexico, with Michael Peña in the title role, Luna focused on the three strikes in the 1960s and 70s  that shaped a better future for the braceros, the temporary workers who could be deported if they stopped working. The script is from Oscar nominee Keir Pearson  (Hotel Rwanda), based on material ceded by the family and the César Chavez Foundation – after years of back and forth with Chavez’s relatives, who, until this project, had never allowed access to Chavez’s personal papers.

Available on Cinemax

 

 

The Mines

 

John Ford comes back to the struggles of workers – this time in the mines of Wales, with a family tale narrated by the youngest child of the Huws, a long generation of miners. Adapted from the novel by Richard Llewellyn, the life of the village is told through the eyes of Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), who, at the same time, mourns and honors not only the dangerous and never-ending work of the miners, but also the destruction of the valley itself. “I am packing my belongings in the shawl my other used  to wear when she went to the market. And I’m going from my valley. And this time, I shall never return”, says young Huw, in book and movie. How Green Was My Valley received 10 nominations for the Oscars, and won five, beating, among others, Citizen Kane.

Available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime

 

 

A 1954 black and white film rarely seen, Salt of the Earth is inspired by and follows closely the events of the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. Mixing actors with real-life miners and their relatives, director Herbert  Biberman – one of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted both by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the studios – weaves between documentary and feature. For instance – the film was shot in the very place where the clash between miners and authorities took place, and the top actor, Juan Chacón, was actually a real union local president of the miners’ union. In its brief life in 1954, Salt of the Earth was beaten to a pulp by critics – in Sight and Sound Pauline Kael defined the picture as “a simplistic left-wing morality play”. Now it has a 100% positive review by Rotten Tomatoes.

 

 

Previously adapted to the big screen twice the 1885 novel by Émile Zola, Germinal was nominated for practically everything for the 1994 César Awards, and it was the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. With Gérard Depardieu and Miou-Miou leading the cast, the tale of coal miners living in abject poverty and violently suppressed by authorities, the film becomes a constant panel of color and movement, thanks in great part to cinematographer Yves Angelo.

 

The Factory

 

 

The late 19^th century has created a new environment for films: the factory. For filmmaker Mario Monicelli, 19^th century Turin, in the north of Italy,  would be the ideal ambient for what anti-fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci defined as “the challenge of modernity”. Written by Monicelli (with Agenore Icrocci and Furio Scarpelli), I compagni is a neorealist drama of exhausted workers against the machines, in the rapidly growing industrialization of northern Italy. At times dramatic, funny, and violent, the film counts on the precise talent of Marcello Mastroianni as a labor activist, the bold cinematography of Giuseppe Rotunno, and crowds of real Turin workers in the background.

 

 

Fresh from the success – and the ordeals – of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader took the reins of one of his own scripts (with Leonard Schrader and Sydney A. Glass) with a completely different point of view – three steelworkers decide to rob their union’s safe and find out that the union is corrupted to the bone. It would be his first film as a director. The cast was brilliant bur rather complex: Richard Pryor, at the height of his career, was not easy on the set, to the point of punching his acting partner Harvey Keitel and hitting his other partner, Yaphet Kotto, with a chair. Schrader had a nervous breakdown, but in spite of everything, has created a smart, bold take on the life of factory workers. Spike Lee and Bruce Springsteen are major fans of Blue Collar.

 

 

 

Directed by also actor Bill Duke (Hill Street Blues, A Rage in Harlem, Hoodlum), The Killing Floor was part of the American Playhouse series of made-for-TV films for PBS. Working from an original script, Duke brings a new element to the narrative about the challenges of workers at the turn of century: race and racism. In the early 20^th century, a poor Black sharecropper from Mississippi (Damien Leake) travels to Chicago in search of a better life in the industrialized North.  He scores a job in the meatpacking industry, triggering the dislike of the then all-white workforce. The winner of the first Sundance Film Festival, and featured at the International Critics Week of Cannes, The Killing Floor features Alfre Woodard in the lead.

 

The Women

 

 

Winner of a Golden Globe, two Oscars, and many other awards, Norma Rae introduced women in the until-then all-male universe of movies about work, workers, and unions. Based on the real-life of Crystal Lee Sutton, a textile worker in North Caroline, Norma Rae (Sally Field, who got all possible awards that year), exhausted and surrounded by poorly maintained machines decides to organize her colleagues and challenge the mill to improve the quality of their workplace. Besides being a well-paced and perfectly written picture, Norma Rae showcases Sally Field – until then a TV actor in light shows- in the best place to demonstrate the depth of her work.

Available in Blu-Ray and DVD.

 

 

 

Karen Silkwood was not very different from Crystal Lee/Norma Rae: she was a worker in an Oklahoma nuclear plant, and her relentless efforts to improve the security of the facility led to a still-unsolved death. Meryl Streep plays her in Silkwood, clever and carefully directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, based on the book “Who Killed Karen Silkwood?” by Rolling Stone journalist Howard Kohn. Any industrial facility can be dangerous, and a nuclear plan can be deathly – and Silkwood’s relentless effort to protect the health of the workers would eventually lead to a strange encounter on a highway at night. Silkwood is part of the American Film Institute list of “100 Years… 100 Heroes and Villains”.

Available in Blu-Ray and DVD.

 

 

The struggle for security, equality and better pay doesn’t have to be always dramatic. Nile Cole’s Made in Dagenham makes the 1968 strike at the Ford auto factory in Dagenham, UK, at the same time powerful and delightful. The wonderful Sally Hawkins as the leader of the movement demanding equal pay for women and made at the factory makes the fight to the point – and fun.

Available at Starz

 

 

Shot on the streets of Dhaka with a diminutive budget, Rubaiyat Hossain’s third film is a gem that covers all the elements of the unfair exploitation of work – especially women’s work. Written by Hossain, the movie follows the natural leader, Shimu (Rikita Nandini Shimu) in her struggle to build her own life working grueling hours for very little pay, in the 24-hour textile mills of Dhaka. Fearless and bold, Shimu organizes her colleagues and discovers the pratfalls of bureaucracy – but never gives up. Keeping in mind the number of textile items we use every day with the label “made in Bangladesh”, Hossain’s film offers us a new point of view.

Available on Prime Video to rent/buy.