Blue Collar: 1978

[MilitantWorker]

Has anyone seen this?

Richard Pryor..Harvey Keitel..Yaphet Kotto

Highly Recommended

[MilitantWorker]

If you go see it after you've read this thread, let me know what you guys thought

great film

[Niccolò Rossi]

Yeah, I saw it for the first time about 6 months ago. They were playing it on ABC2. I had never heard about it before. I was very pleasantly surprised. A really, really good film. Very powerful in alot of parts aswell.

[RHIZOMES]

I'm a big fan of Paul Shrader (Taxi Driver and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters are two of my all-time favourite films), I should check it out.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Taxi Driver is a pretty crazy movie. I read somewhere that Paul Shrader is a right-winger? Do you know if that's true - not that it matters regarding the films, just curious.

[MilitantWorker]

I was particularly amazed at the politics of the film. Although it could be argued that the film makers didn't take any sides, their gritty portrayal of shop floor politics was almost historical fact rather than Hollywood fiction.

It had an anti-union, anti-racism, pro-worker message..which I think is great.

[RHIZOMES]

I was particularly amazed at the politics of the film. Although it could be argued that the film makers didn't take any sides, their gritty portrayal of shop floor politics was almost historical fact rather than Hollywood fiction.

It had an anti-union, anti-racism, pro-worker message..which I think is great.

Well sounds more like an anti-union bureaucracy message from what I've read about the film.

[brigadista]

i started a thread about this film a few months ago to no response - it is one of my favorite films also with the added great soundtrack - filmed in the now dead Detroit

[x359594]

Taxi Driver is a pretty crazy movie. I read somewhere that Paul Shrader is a right-winger?...

Schrader is a Hollywood liberal but conservative on some issues.

Taxi Driver owes as much to Scorsese as it does to Schrader (arguably more.)

Blue Collar is probably Schrader's best film even though it can be construed as anti-union. But if it's seen as a critique of the typical American business union of that era then its implicit message is actually progressive.

[brigadista]

its a great film on how racism is used to divide and rule the working class- the last scene being heartbreaking

[RHIZOMES]

Schrader is a Hollywood liberal but conservative on some issues.

While his film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is one of my fave films of all time, I've always felt it was told from this sort of Orientalized Western view, like instead of seeing Mishima's politics for what they were - fascist, it's all like "oh isn't he so noble and exotic wanting to restore the power of the emperor and the ways of the samurai". What saves the film for me is the ingenious way it's structured, the set design, the score by Philip Glass, and the really in-depth psychological analysis into how it was his own personal insecurities/bad childhood/closet homosexuality that made him an ultra-rightist (and isn't that the case with most fascists, lol). it's a great character piece and shows how a writer's psyche influences what they write about, but I feel neither Shrader, or Coppola and Lucas (who produced the film) really got how dangerous his politics actually were.

Soz for hijacking this topic I just absolutely love that film.

[x359594]

Anomic, that's the best summary critique I've read of Mishima. Spot on.

[bayano]

I haven't watched it in years, but I just got a copy the other day. What a coincidence. It's a great flick on the alienation and attempted resistance of Michigan factory workers. Great because it came even before Reagan, but revealed themes that became more prominent in the 80s. Sort of an historical marker to disprove baloney like Michael Moore's silly claim that capitalism went bad with the ascent of Reagan.

[Psy]

I was particularly amazed at the politics of the film. Although it could be argued that the film makers didn't take any sides, their gritty portrayal of shop floor politics was almost historical fact rather than Hollywood fiction.

It had an anti-union, anti-racism, pro-worker message..which I think is great.
The one think I noticed is in the film there is no worker solidarity yes the film points out the bosses wants to divide the workers but in the film it portrays workers as already for the most part divided.

Think about how class docile the autoworkers would have to be not to strike over one of their own getting killed and for the union to think it could murder a worker on the job sight without their members turning militant (regardless if they learned it was the union that murdered him or just industrial accident).

Man I wished there was a labor movie that used Paris 1968 as a climax, imagine the same kind of basic plot of a corrupt union with climax being Paris 1968 with the workers taking over the plant.

[Devrim]

Has anyone see Stallone's F.I.S.T., which came out at about the same time?

Devrim

[brigadista]

Has anyone see Stallone's F.I.S.T., which came out at about the same time?

Devrim


no - is it worth a watch ?

[Devrim]

no - is it worth a watch ?

Yes, it is pretty good. Sly is a victimized worker who along with his mate gets involved in union organising and brings in the mafia for a bit of muscle in a strike.

Devrim

[brigadista]

hey thanks Devrim

[soyonstout]

I just recently watched both films after I got netflix. Politically I thought Blue Collar was better--especially in the end how the white worker ended up going back to the state (the cops/FBI), and the black worker ended up going back to the state (the union) because there was no solidarity beyond their group of three. I also think the 70s was a time when much of the official left's propaganda about the unions (and the democrats) was being disproved in the daily experience of not just the working class internationally, but also most individual workers. I was really excited to see a movie about workers that portrayed the reality of workers' demoralization when confronted with the bosses on the one hand and seeing the union present itself as the only means of struggle.

I saw F.I.S.T. as well but I thought it's union critique was considerably weaker than blue collar's (even though blue collar's was not very explicit--perhaps that film just made drawing one's own conclusions easier), because the mob influence is a somewhat obvious thing about the functioning of those unions which are also very obviously bourgeois--which doesn't speak much to trade unions in general, I don't think.

As a left communist, I am of course biased toward the movie that showed the complete distrust and scorn of the union to the point that stealing its funds (not that I think there's anything political or positive about that act in itself) would not actually be an injury against any of ones coworkers in the slightest. But both are really good.

Yet as Psy points out, Blue Collar doesn't really show the other alternative: class struggle. It shows being divided and corralled into different parts of the state machine, and the "way out" that the workers think of is to rob the union and get rich, not to take up the class struggle on the working class' own terms.

I also thought the acting in F.I.S.T. was worse, and Schrader, whatever his actual politics are (from Taxi-Driver one can only assume something very anti-humanist or omnicidal), is a terrific writer and also a Grand Rapids boy, and likely grew up reading about and hearing about Detroit first-hand.

and I gotta love that Cpt. Beefheart "Hard Workin', Fucked-Over Man" Bo-Diddley remake in Blue Collar's soundtrack.

[milk]

Good film.