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Category Archives: Working Class

The Roof (Il Tetto) (1956)

26 Apr

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Italy; 91m

Natale, an apprentice bricklayer, and Luisa, who has no skill, marry and try to live with Natale’s parents and other relatives in one apartment, what might happen in the poorest classes in Rome about 1950. After a quarrel Natale and Luisa precipitately leave without a place to live. The remainder of the film is devoted to their finding housing. The solution is building a one room brick dwelling as a squat on unused railway land on the outskirts of Rome. As this is illegal Natale gets his workmates to assist him during the night. Provided a dwelling has a door and a roof the householder cannot be evicted. At dawn when the police arrive to remove them the dwelling is complete except for part of the roof, but a humane policeman looks the other way. We suppose that Natale and Luisa, now pregnant, live happily ever after. (Wikipedia)

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Class, Construction Trades, Drama, Working Class

 

Rosetta (1999)

26 Apr

92m; Belguim

Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

Cast: Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione and Anne Yernaux

Synopsis: Young and impulsive Rosetta lives with her alcoholic mother and, moved by despair, she will do anything to maintain a job. Set in Belgium. Both film and actress won major prizes in Cannes.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Unemployment-Wages, Women, Working Class

 

Running Out of Time (1994)

26 Apr

57m; U.S.

Director: John de Graaf

Synopsis (IMDB): The growing problems of “time famine” and overwork.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Working Class

 

Salesman (1969)

26 Apr

91m; U.S.

Director: David and Albert Maysles

Synopsis: This landmark documentary follows four Boston bible salesmen as they struggle to make a living in the cutthroat world of door-to-door sales. The film follows the salesmen as they wheedle, connive and cajole their way into homes and wallets. As the pressure of the job bears down, the film reveals the dark underside of the American Dream.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Self-Employed/Freelance, Working Class

 

Sangre (2005)

26 Apr

90m; Mexico

Director: Amat Escalante

Cast: Cirilo Recio Dávila, Claudia Orozco and Martha Preciado

Synopsis (IMDB): Diego’s job is counting people as they enter a large government building. After work, he and his wife Blanca lie on the couch, watch soap operas, or make love on the kitchen table. Their relationship is based on having sex, watching TV, and fighting, until one day their routine is interrupted. Karina, Diego’s daughter from a previous marriage, arrives in search of her father’s love, but Blanca refuses to accept her. Diego finds himself caught between an extremely jealous wife and a daughter in desperate need of guidance. An astonishing climax will lead Diego to a total loss of control.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Crime-Action, Working Class

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

26 Apr

89m; U.K.

Director: Karel Reisz

Cast:  Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field and Rachel Roberts

Synopsis (IMDB): Arthur, one of Britain’s angry young men of the 1960s, is a hardworking factory worker who slaves all week at his mindless job for his modest wages. Come Saturday night, he’s off to the pub for a loud and rowdy beer session. With him is Brenda, his girlfriend of the moment. Married to a fellow worker, she is nonetheless captivated by his rugged good looks and his devil-may-care attitude. Soon a new love interest Doreen enters and a week later, Brenda announces she’s pregnant. She tells Arthur she needs money for an abortion, and Arthur promises to pay for it. By this time, his relationship with Doreen has ripened and Brenda, hearing of it, confronts him. He denies everything, but it’s obvious that their affair is all but over.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Romance, Working Class

 

Saturday’s Children (1940)

26 Apr

102m; U.S.

Director: Vincent Sherman

Cast: John Garfield, Anne Shirley and Claude Rains

Synopsis (IMDB): Pretty Bobby Halevy loves Rims Rosson, a dreamer and inventor without much going for him. Rims has a scheme of going to Manila to turn hemp into silk and become rich. But when one of her family talks Bobby into tricking Rims into marriage, the real world comes crashing down on the couple

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

Land of Destiny (2010)

20 Apr

78m; U.S.

Director: Brett Story

Synopsis: A hard-working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of deindustrialization and joblessness. In the rich fabric of the city’s landscape – rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars – one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor – the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a mediation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers a poignant and universal story about work, community, and struggle in an era of globalization.

Contact: http://www.bunburyfilms.com/films/trailer/doc/lod.html

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

20 Apr

102m; U.S.

Director: Uli Edel

Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang and Burt Young

Synopsis (IMDB): Taken from Hubert Selby, Jr.’s controversial novel. A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann) [1924]

20 Apr

77m; Germany

Director: F.W. Murnau

Cast: Emil Jannings

Synopsis: An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbors and society.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Working Class

 
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