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Working Class Heroes: List of Films
List of Films in the Exhibit
- 9 to 5 (1980, Colin Higgins)
Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are fed up with abuse from their rampantly male chauvinist employer, Dabny Coleman. When they kidnap the boss and take control of the office, productivity and profits rise.
- Baran (2001, Majid Majidi)
At an Iranian construction site where Afghan refugees are illegally employed, an Afghan teenage girl poses an a boy to obtain work after her father is disabled from a fall due to unsafe conditions. A young Iranian worker resents the new employee until he discovers her secret and falls in love. The story follows his heroic and, at times, outlandish efforts to protect her from the vicissitudes of the workplace and the immigration police.
- Billy Elliot (2000, Stephen Daldry)
BillyElliot, the eleven year old son of a coal miner, finds that ballet is his passion and he secretly skips boxing lessons to study dance. It’s a difficult time for the family – his father and brother are out on the picket line (the story takes place during the 1984-85 British miners strike). When Billy’s father learns of the ballet class, he’s furious. A devoted teacher intervenes, but when Billy’s brother is arrested, it seems he’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime – an auditon to attend the Royal Ballet School.
- Bread and Roses (2000, Ken Loach)
After a perilous illegal border crossing, a young Mexican woman plays a central role in organizing the janitors of a major Los Angeles office building. She falls in love with a brash young organizer and learns the terrible price her older sister paid to help support the family in Mexico.
- Coal Miner's Daughter (1980, Michael Apted)
Sissy Spacek won the 1982 Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in this film adaptation of the country singer-songwriter’s autobiography. The film was nominated for six other Academy Awards.
- Cradle Will Rock (1999, Tim Robbins)
Tim Robbin’s tour de force tells the story of Orson Welles’ attempt to use the WPA’s Federal Theater Project for a Broadway musical about a steel strike. The film also depicts depression era politics with a broad brush: subplots include anti-communist Congressional hearings; corporate plotting to aid Mussolini’s war machine; and Mexican muralist Diego Rivera’s famous confrontation with a young Nelson Rockefeller over the artist’s Rockefeller Center fresco.
- Devil and Miss Jones (1941, Sam Wood)
Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings star in this film about a department store owner who poses as a shoe salesman to spy on his employees’ attempt to organize a union. Naturally, romance ensues.
- Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh)
Julia Roberts won the 2001 Oscar for Best Actress for her depiction of single mother Erin Brockovich, who lands a job with a solo practice personal injury lawyer (Albert Finney). She unravels a plot by a major corporation to hide its massive contamination of her community with deadly hexavalent chromium. Finney and Soderbergh were also nominated for Academy Awards; the film was nominated for Best Picture.
- Fast Food Nation (2006, Richard Linklater)
The film is a tough look at working conditions and food safety in the slaughterhouses and meat packing plants that supply fast food chains. The multifaceted story line follows a corporate executive investigating reports of contaminated meat, immigrant workers contending with unsafe conditions and sexual abuse, and animal rights activists hatching schemes to save the cattle.
- The Full Monty (1997, Peter Cattaneo)
The film depicts the trials and tribulations of a group of laid off steelworkers, who, desperate to raise some cash, decide to form an all male striptease revue. The guys are not exactly models and they can’t dance, but a supportive female audience cheers them on and insists on the ‘full monty” (frontal nudity)as a finale. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, the movie won an Oscar for Best Original Score.
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)
Henry Fonda starred in this adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel about migrant workers fleeing drought and failed farms in Oklahoma only to be met with violence and exploitation in California.
- Gung Ho (1986, Ron Howard)
Management and work cultures collide when a Japanese firm takes over an U.S. automobile factory in this comedy starring Michael Keaton.
- Harlan County U.S.A. (1976, Barbara Kopple)
Winner of the 1976 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, this film follows a UMWA strike against a Duke Power Company subsidiary. Kopple filmed on the picket lines, in the miners’ homes, the union hall and corporate offices to produce an incredibly vivid, compelling account. Mountain culture is also front and center with music by Hazel Dickens and an interview with Florence Reece, during which the 76 year old activist sings her 1931 classic “Which Side Are You On?” a cappella.
- Hula Girls (2006, Sang-il Lee)
A Japanese mountain community is devastated when the coal mine that employees most of its workers closes. Village leaders decide to open an Hawaiian style resort to create jobs, When they hire a professional dancer to teach local girls the hula, conservative parents are shocked. They are eventually won over by the girls’ tenacity and the beauty of their performances.
- Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza) (1981, Andrzej Wajda)
An intricate mix of historical footage and dramatic narrative, Man of Iron tells the stories of workers and labor spies during the Polish Solidarity movement’s fight for recognition. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and won the 1981 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’or. Lech Walesa actually appears in the film as an extra in a wedding scene.
- Man Push Cart (2005, Ramin Bahrani)A Pakistani immigrant – a former pop singer at home -- struggles to make a living in New York with a breakfast pushcart. Up in the middle of the night to prepare his cart, he pushes it down busy Manhattan streets to serve office workers coffee and bagels. In the process, he meets a young Spanish woman who is working in her family’s pushcart business and some high flying customers who may be able to offer opportunities for a better life.
- Matewan (1987, John Sayles)
Sayles’ film is based on the Battle of Matewan, a bloody 1920 confrontation between striking miners, who had been evicted from their company homes, and Baldwin-Felts detectives, hired by the Stone Mountain Coal Company to break the strike. It was filmed on location in West Virginia. Hazel Dickens appears in the film and sings the title song, ‘Fire in the Hole.’
- Modern Times (1936, Charlie Chaplin)
Modern Times is Charlie Chapin’s slapstick study of the alienating effects of the assembly line, time studies and automation. This was his final silent film.
- Mondays in the Sun (2002, Fernando León de Aranoa)
Workers left idle by the closure of shipyards in a small Spanish port city cope with the debilitating effects of unemployment and dim prospects for new work.
- The Navigators (2001, Ken Loach)
Rail workers are baffled and frustrated as various parts of the British Railway System are sold off and bargaining unit jobs are out-sourced, often to incompetent and unscrupulous private employers. Degenerating safety conditions ultimately precipitate tragedy.
- Norma Rae (1979, Martin Ritt)
Sallie Field’s portrayal of textile worker Norma Rae won her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Driven by despair over the dreadful working conditions at a cotton mill, Norma Rae teams up with a union organizer to lead a strike. The film was also nominated for Best Picture.
- North Country (2005, Niki Caro)
Charlize Theron leaves her abusive husband and gets a job with her friend (played by Frances McDormand) working in an iron mine. She endures salacious remarks and ugly pranks from male workers and is sexually assaulted at work. When she files a class action lawsuit, some of her women co-workers resist fearing loss of their jobs. The film is a fictionalized account of a landmark sexual harassment case. Theron and McDormand were nominated for Academy Awards.
- Office Space (1999, Mike Judge)
In this slapstick comedy, hypnosis makes an office worker oblivious to the downsizing and workplace turmoil going on around him. His cluelessness makes him more valuable to his employers. Meanwhile, his laid-off friends scheme against the company.
- On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)
Marlon Brando plays an ex-prize fighter who works on the docks. He witnesses a murder ordered by criminals who have taken over the dockworker’s union. Initially pledged to silence by his boss (Lee J. Cobb) and his brother (Rod Steiger), his conscience gets a work over by the victim’s beautiful sister (Eva Marie Saint) and a priest (Karl Malden). The film swept the 1955 Oscars with 8 wins (including Best Actor for Brando and Best Director for Kazan) and 4 more nominations. In the context of Kazan’s cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film’s theme of conscience and betrayal has controversial overtones.
- The Organizer (1963, Mario Monicelli)
A professor (Marcello Mastroianni) helps Turin textile workers organize to fight for better wages and conditions.
- The Pajama Game (1957, George Abbott)
Babe Williams (Doris Day) is determined to win a seven-and-a-half cents per hour raise for the workers at Sleeptite Pajama Factory. Based on the hit Broadway musical, the film features Bob Fosse’s choreography.
- Salt of the Earth (1954, Herbert J. Biberman)
Filmed against the backdrop of the 1950’s Red Scare by blacklisted filmmaker Herbert Biberman, the film tells the story of a strike by Mexican American zinc miners in New Mexico. When the picket line is shut down by a Taft-Hartley injunction, the miner’s wives take over. Only a few professional actors were employed – most roles are played by miners, family members and union representatives.
- Silkwood (1983, Mike Nichols)
Karen Silkwood works at Kerr-McGee’s plutonium processing plant. After she alleges a cover up of deadly conditions, she is harassed and contaminated with radioactivity. On her way to deliver documentation of her claims to a New York Times reporter , she dies in a still controversial automobile crash: The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actress (Cher) and Best Director (Mike Nichols).
- Tout va bien (1972, Jean-Luc Godard)
Four years the 1968 Paris demonstrations, a farcical workers’ take over of a meatpacking plant provokes thoughtful (and sometimes absurd) ruminations on labor politics by employees, local union officials and management. Stuck in the middle are journalist (Jane Fonda) and her lover, a filmmaker, who wrestle with the roles of intellectuals and artists in the struggle for worker’s rights.
- Working for Peanuts (1953, Jack Hannah)
An elephant and his keeper have a huge stash of peanuts. Chipmunks Chip and Dale plan to get their share.
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