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Post by topbilled on Aug 30, 2023 10:38:03 GMT
I associate several different films with this holiday...
THE PAJAMA GAME (1957) and NORMA RAE (1979) if we're talking about workplace labor.
And A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN (1973) and JUNIOR (1994) if it's about giving birth. NINE MONTHS (1995) is also another fun one.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Aug 30, 2023 15:53:33 GMT
Does anyone recall the discussion at the old TCM forum related to Labor Day and On The Waterfront. It was one of the best!
Most people (like me), assumed the film was a very pro-labor film and thus a perfect one for this holiday. But one guy (I can't remember who), made a case that this was folly. He made very convincing arguments. After days of this, my head was spinning!
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Post by BingFan on Sept 3, 2023 17:00:12 GMT
I’M ALL RIGHT, JACK (1959) is a very funny British workplace movie starring Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Margaret Rutherford, and Dennis Price. It’s about an upper class university graduate (Carmichael) who decides to go to work at a factory instead of relying on family connections to get himself a cushy job. He can’t understand the illogical practices that both management and labor have accepted (e.g., incompetence does not justify dismissal), which upends the uneasy truce between the two sides. Sellers plays the local union leader, and Terry-Thomas is a management representative.
THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES (1941) is another workplace comedy that’s very, very good. Charles Coburn stars as a very wealthy department store owner who goes undercover as an employee to investigate unionizing activities, and ends up gaining an entirely new perspective on his employees. Jean Arthur, Spring Byington, and Robert Cummings are among the workers at the store, and Edmund Gwenn and S.Z. Sakall provide excellent support.
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Post by topbilled on Sept 4, 2023 15:50:50 GMT
I’M ALL RIGHT, JACK (1959) is a very funny British workplace movie starring Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, Margaret Rutherford, and Dennis Price. It’s about an upper class university graduate (Carmichael) who decides to go to work at a factory instead of relying on family connections to get himself a cushy job. He can’t understand the illogical practices that both management and labor have accepted (e.g., incompetence does not justify dismissal), which upends the uneasy truce between the two sides. Sellers plays the local union leader, and Terry-Thomas is a management representative.
THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES (1941) is another workplace comedy that’s very, very good. Charles Coburn stars as a very wealthy department store owner who goes undercover as an employee to investigate unionizing activities, and ends up gaining an entirely new perspective on his employees. Jean Arthur, Spring Byington, and Robert Cummings are among the workers at the store, and Edmund Gwenn and S.Z. Sakall provide excellent support.
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Post by BingFan on Sept 4, 2023 18:17:52 GMT
Does anyone recall the discussion at the old TCM forum related to Labor Day and On The Waterfront. It was one of the best! Most people (like me), assumed the film was a very pro-labor film and thus a perfect one for this holiday. But one guy (I can't remember who), made a case that this was folly. He made very convincing arguments. After days of this, my head was spinning!
Taken at face value, ON THE WATERFRONT is about organized crime taking over the longshoremen’s union and using it for the benefit of the gangsters instead of the workers. I’ve always thought the film works well as a straightforward story of this labor corruption and the scrupulous people who fight (in this case, literally) to remove the racketeers so that the union can stand up for its members.
Another interpretation of the story is that it’s an allegory about how the communist party, represented here by the gangsters, uses the union to infiltrate America and control the workers to build the power of the party. Both director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg were former communist party members who became disillusioned and quit the party, at least in part because the party had attempted to exert control over their work. I believe both ended up as friendly witnesses before HUAC and “named names,” although Kazan refused to at first (if I remember correctly). I haven’t seen the movie for a while, but didn’t it raise the question of whether the longshoremen (e.g., Terry Malloy as played by Brando) should testify against the gangsters before a legislative committee?
I don’t recall whether this latter interpretation is the one put forward on the old TCM Message Board, but it does seem to be a well-accepted reading of the film. Even though, in my view, Kazan’s and Schulberg’s cooperation with HUAC is pretty sad (if not outright reprehensible) because they were being used by politicians to harm people (sometimes their own friends) for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, I still find their work on WATERFRONT to be very compelling.
By the way, I wish TCM were showing some labor-oriented movies during the day today, rather than cheesy 60s sex comedies. But at least they’re showing some documentaries and features on labor/workplace issues tonight. |
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