Film Review: Miss Marx (2024)

Film Review from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Miss Marx. Director: Susanna Nicchiarelli.

Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen had 3 children who survived into adulthood: young Jenny, Laura and Eleanor. This film is about the latter. The film starts in March 1883 with Karl’s funeral, and ends in March 1898 with Eleanor’s suicide. The film shows Eleanor (nicknamed ‘Tussy’) meeting the socialist playwright Edward Aveling at her father’s funeral, and charts how he neglected her, over the next 15 years.

Miss Marx was written and directed by the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli and is an Italian-Belgian co-production. The biggest problem with the film is you have to do your homework before watching it. The first time I saw it, I was constantly asking: ‘who is that?’ and ‘how do these characters know each other?’ Once I did some research, the film was much more enjoyable on second viewing. The final half-hour of it is too slowly paced, and also features a bizarre scene in which Eleanor smokes opium and dances around her house to punk-rock music (really). The most glaring omission from Miss Marx is that there’s no William Morris and no mention of the Socialist League (the party they helped to found as a breakaway from the increasingly reformist Social Democratic Federation).

Nicchiarelli crosses the creative-licence-line when it comes to (Karl Marx’s housekeeper) Helene’s son, Freddy. In the film, Engels is depicted as being Freddy’s father, however, the former confesses (on his deathbed) that Karl is the latter’s real father. While it’s up for debate whether or not Freddy was Karl’s son, Engels did not adopt him.

Moving on to the positives: the film has an amazing punk-rock soundtrack (provided by the band the Downtown Boys); the acting is excellent; it’s a wonderfully made motion picture; and it includes some great moments of the titular character delivering some of Eleanor Marx’s real speeches/writings (either directly to the camera, or to an audience within the film).

The best moment in the film was when young Jenny’s son, Johnny, is upset about his grandpa (Karl Marx) dying, so he asks Eleanor if she’s sure there isn’t an afterlife. Eleanor tells him that there isn’t, and, to comfort him, she says: ‘Think of it this way, if we’re wrong and there really is a life after this one, then Grandpa is surely burning in hell.’

Matthew Shearn

Mixed Media: ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kill Your Darlings by Austin Bunn

Director John Krokidas and writer Austin Bunn’s 2013 film Kill Your Darlings draws on Jack Kerouac’s novel Vanity of Duluoz, portraying the early years (1943-44) of the ‘Beat Generation’ in New York City of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), William Burroughs (Ben Foster), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan).

We meet Allen Ginsberg at home in New Jersey with his poet father Louis and his mother Naomi. Louis was a socialist, his parents had been active in the Yiddish Arbeiter Circle, and he went with his father to lectures by Eugene Debs, IWW founder and Socialist Party of America Presidential candidate. Louis named his first son after Debs: ‘He was magnificent. All the ironies of the capitalist system came blazing forth. He was a brilliant man.’ Allen’s mother was a member of the Communist Party.

Allen goes to Columbia University studying to be a Labor Lawyer, meets Lucien Carr (‘blond, eighteen, of fantastic male beauty’ (Vanity of Duluoz), William Burroughs (Harvard educated St Louis patrician), and Jack Kerouac, ‘the stocky Breton with blue eyes and coal black hair’ (Gerald Nicosia, 1983), football player, poet, Merchant Marine, and originator of ‘First Thought Best Thought.’ Jack and Lucien liked to sing together folk songs, Leadbelly’s country blues, communist work songs, and with Ginsberg and Burroughs ‘they would have Dostoyevskian confrontations, endure horrors out of Kafka’ (Nicosia). Their artistic endeavours are inspired by Yeats, Whitman, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the pleasures and wild sensations of marijuana, alcohol, Benzedrine and the Bebop Jazz music revolution of Charlie Parker (Bird).

Kerouac was a ‘Canuck’, a French-Canadian from the textile manufacturing mill-town of Lowell in Massachusetts, 13 miles north of Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Ann Charters described Lowell as ‘poor, dirty and rundown, both working-class and obstinately bourgeois, belligerently provincial.’ In the 1920s and 1930s Lowell entered economic decline when companies relocated to the South where labour was cheaper, and in 1931 Harpers Magazine called it a ‘depressed industrial desert.’

Kerouac’s first language was ‘joual’ the French of the ‘Canucks’, a dialect of working-class Quebec French, and he would overcome the handicaps of his working-class ‘Canuck’ origins to become the greatest writer since James Joyce, ‘not even 72 hours a week of underpaid mill work could keep these people in their place’ wrote Nicosia. Ginsberg overcame being a ‘spindly Jewish kid with horn-rimmed glasses’ (Vanity of Duluoz) to become the poetical heir to William Blake, a 1960s Counter-Cultural guru and New Left icon. As Dave Kammerer says in the film ‘under the right circumstances he might change the world.’

Steve Clayton

Film Review: ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ (2014)

Film Review from the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology directed by Sophie Fiennes is written by and features Slavoj Žižek, the Hegelian and Marxist philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and leftwing political activist. For Žižek a fundamental area of social and political struggle is ‘culture’, and cinematic art ‘raises serious ideological and political issues.’ Žižek wrote ‘my principal task as a philosopher is to analyse ideology particularly as this is bound up with the formation of individual and social identity through language and discourse.’

The film opens with They Live by John Carpenter which Žižek describes as ‘a forgotten masterpiece of the Hollywood Left’ and he discusses Marx’s line ‘sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es’ (‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’) from Volume I of Capital. Ideology relies on a collective naiveté; that people accept a set of illusions that obscure how the system really works, capitalism persists because of this false consciousness. Marx wrote in The German Ideology that ‘the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.’ For Žižek, ideology is an unconscious fantasy that structures reality, even in dreams we are in ideology.

Žižek’s analysis of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song Climb Every Mountain in The Sound of Music is exquisite as he identifies ‘the affirmation of desire, the cynical power of the Roman Catholic religion resides in hidden, obscene permission to do whatever you want, enjoy it all as it is covered by God.’ Žižek says ‘underneath the message of self-denial there is the opposite message: pretend to abstain and you can have what you want.’

Žižek dissects James Cameron’s Titanic as ‘Hollywood Marxism, fake sympathy with the lower classes’ and sees ‘Winslet as an upper class woman in psychological distress, the function of DiCaprio is to help her to reconstitute her ego. A new version of the imperialist myth of when upper class people lose their vitality they need to ruthlessly exploit in a vampiric way, suck the life out of the working class. Rich people have the right to revitalise themselves by ruthlessly appropriating the vitality of the poor people.’

Žižek sees Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver as an ‘unacknowledged re-make of John Ford’s The Searchers and is linked to American liberal interventionism while Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is related to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq which saw ‘the staging of the obscene underside of American military culture.’

Depressingly he is correct when he says ‘it is easier to envisage the end of the world in such films as I am Legend than a modest change in our economic order.’ Žižek adds that ‘right dreams point towards a dimension beyond our existing society, wrong dreams idealise the consumerist reflection of our society, the aim is to change the way you dream which will change reality.’ He asks us to ‘set our possibilities straight and become realists and demand what appears as impossible in the economic domain.’

Žižek’s analysis is rich, detailed, complex but always interesting and thought-provoking. He quotes Walter Benjamin at the end: ‘the authentic revolution is not only directed towards the future but it redeems the past failed revolutions. All the ghosts as it were; the living dead of the past revolution, which are roaming around, unsatisfied will finally, find their home.’

Steve Clayton

Mixed Media: ‘In the Jungle of the Cities’ (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Jungle of the Cities by Bertolt Brecht

While Brecht’s Arturo Ui was in London’s West End, the Arcola Theatre in Dalston in East London produced Brecht’s early play Im Dickicht der Städte (In the Jungle of the Cities) directed by Peter Sturm. Im Dickicht is a bewildering and bizarre play. After its May 1923 première in Munich it became notorious for its impenetrability, was seen as incomprehensible so it was deemed to be Jewish or Bolshevik or ‘Modern’ or all three. In a Munich which was a hotbed of Nazism in the pre-Beer Hall putsch days, performances of the play were disrupted several times by the Nazis. Its first English language production would be in New York City in 1960 by Judith Malina and the Living Theatre.

Brecht’s play is set in a mythical Chicago in the years 1912-15, although the mythologised wilderness of the modern city he called Chicago could also be Berlin, what he called ‘some bleak anywhere’, a city which had ‘become wild, dark, mysterious.’ The play portrays the brutality of urban capitalism, the city in the grip of rampant capitalism and ‘the big city as a jungle… the enmity of the metropolis, its malignant stony consistency, its Babylonian confusion of languages.’ Brecht was inspired by the popular Danish gangster novel Hjulet (The Wheel) by JV Jensen, Rimbaud’s poem cycle A Season in Hell, Schiller’s play The Robbers, and the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle which ‘set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit.’

Im Dickicht is the story of a savage battle between two men; Schlink, a Malay lumber dealer played by Jeffrey Kissoon, and George Garga, a book clerk in a lending library played by Joseph Arkley. Brecht wrote that poet Rimbaud was a model for the character of George Garga ‘a German translation from the French into the American.’ This struggle is at times an abstract wrestling match which can be seen as the class struggle in metaphorical terms. The relationship between Schlink and Garga is sado-masochistic at times, has elements of homosexuality which evokes the power struggle and relationship between the poets Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Im Dickicht could be the struggle against the pressing reality of the modern city, the human isolation and atomisation of individuals in capitalism where in crowded cities people are essentially alone. Schlink says ‘If you cram a ship full to bursting with human bodies, they’ll all freeze with loneliness.’ In this early play Brecht does not demonstrate his mature Marxist aesthetic with its clear political messages. 

                                                                                                                                  Steve Clayton

MRA's Absolutes (1961)

Film Review from the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Film: The Crowning Experience.

Verdict: A "must” for all those wishing to know just how not to solve the problems of society.

Very good colour and camera work. Music and lyrics fair to middling. Acting and presentation good in some parts, but in others, oh so awkward and stultified as to draw embarrassed titters even from a sympathetic audience.

And the plot? Well, when we tell you that The Crowning Experience is a Moral Re-Armament Production, maybe you can guess the rest. A lavishly produced book of the film assures us that it was inspired by the real life story of Mary McLeod Bethune, a Southern Negress of very humble beginnings who, it is said, founded a University in Mayesville, South Carolina, and became a special adviser to Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt.

Broadway singer Muriel Smith portrays the leading part of the good lady, here called Emma Tremaine. After starting the "Tremaine College," she has trouble with a young graduate, Charlie, who becomes a "Professional Revolutionary" in the pay of the Communist Party, trying to work an outsized chip off his shoulder, acquired during childhood when his mother died of starvation. This leads to a first class row with Emma when he tries to form a "Cell" in Emma's own college, and gets thrown off the campus for his trouble.

But everything comes right in the end. of course, because they all somehow find their way to an MRA conference on Mackinac Island and become “changed.” Even the stubborn Charlie (who has really gone along there to get his wife back) melts before the powerful appeal of the four absolute standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. In a matter of minutes he has switched his worship from the God in the Kremlin to the one at Mackinac. Finally, there is a truly tear-jerking session with politicians and leading figures from various parts of the world confessing their past dishonesties and swearing to uphold and apply the principles of MRA in the future.

The political simpleton will find much in this film to encourage him in his ignorance, Apart from the scientifically quite untenable “God” idea there is the fatuous and futile notion that the MRA “Absolutes" will give us the peaceful and happy world which we all so desperately want.

Of course, it is desirable to be honest, to harbour no hatred or ill-feeling, and to be free from fear. No doubt we have all felt the strain imposed by having to cheat and lie at some time or other, and no one but a madman really approves of it. Again, how nice it would be if the statesmen were to be absolutely honest with each other—a sort of “cards on the table" policy. Then why aren’t they? What is it that makes them hold secrets, even from those whom they proclaim as allies? In fact, why do statesmen exist at all? Just whose interests do they represent?

It is only in posing and answering such questions as these that we can hope to achieve a satisfactory explanation of the bloodshed, suspicion and misery in which modern society abounds.

The Crowning Experience tells us merely that such problems exist. For the most part, it is a study in religious emotionalism, and relies on tautology and the usual sweeping claims in support of its "case.”

Eddie Critchfield

Young Karl Marx (2018)

Film Review from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Young Karl Marx. Director: Raoul Peck.

This is a German film by a Haitian director. The timing of the film – 200 years after the birth of Marx – will be intended to piggyback the publicity around this anniversary. It will also benefit from the recent general upsurge in interest in Marx and socialism after almost 30 years in the wilderness following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The film, mainly spoken in German with English sub-titles, focuses upon Marx (August Diehl) and Engels (Stefan Konarske) during the years of the formation of their friendship from 1843 through to their collaboration in the drafting of the Communist Manifesto in 1847; thus dealing with a short but vital period in their lives and stopping short of depicting the revolutions in Europe in 1848. Marx’s wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps) and Engels’ wife Mary Burns (Hannah Steele) have significant supplementary roles, predominantly supporting their men.

The film opens in Germany when Marx is arrested for his criticism of new laws which take away the traditional right of peasants to gather firewood on a landowner’s property. He is exiled to Paris where he meets Engels and then to Brussels and finally London. The film captures their personal and political development as they wrestle to articulate their ideology.

Whilst Marx battles with the authorities and contends with poverty Engels clashes over his father’s treatment of the workers at his mill; the conditions of which are vividly captured in the cinematography. The film illustrates how the two young men develop their economic theory of the social relations of production through personal contemplation and in debates with such figures as Proudhon, Bakunin, and the Young Hegelians. In the process Marx moves away from philosophy - which he increasingly regards as a sterile discipline pre-occupied with interpreting the world – towards his theory of political economy, in order to act upon the world to change it.

The film has the feel of a biopic period piece which would be more at home as a BBC drama than an epic of the big screen. The volume of historical events seems to be turned down, effectively muffling these momentous times. Raoul Peck said that he made the film for young people. Perhaps this is why it has the feel of a soap opera. It was interesting to see these historical figures brought to life on the big screen and humanised through a window onto their private lives, rather than either lionised or demonised for their political beliefs; but overall the film was enjoyable, rather than spectacularly informative or stimulating.

It ends with a montage of video clips from the twentieth century depicting momentous events of social upheaval, to the musical accompaniment of Bob Dylan’s: ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’ Perhaps this is a further nod to the Millennials, although a more twenty-first century resonance for this audience might have been provided by Marx’s quote from the nineteenth century: ‘There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.’

Given that it is a rare event for the film industry to grasp such a difficult and controversial topic it feels like a missed opportunity. Perhaps there will be a sequel; in celluloid and in real life.

Tim Hart

Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker pt.2 (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the second part of our study of the work of Peter Watkins, we look at how his career as an independent film-maker challenged conventional trends. (Part 1 of the article is here.)

Frustrated by the poor reception to Privilege, Watkins left Britain for Sweden to make his next film. The Gladiators (1969) continued the theme of the elite using the media to divert aggression, but instead of music, as in Privilege, here violence is the catalyst. Soldiers representing different states are sent to arenas to fight and compete against each other in missions. These ‘Peace Games’ are televised to massive international audiences. From the comfort of a country mansion, the generals of each side sit together watching the battles and amiably take turns to influence what their soldiers do. One of the strongest messages in The Gladiators is that soldiers of any side have more in common with each other than they do with their leaders.

By the start of the 1970s, Watkins had relocated to America, where tensions between the state and the radical political scene were focused on the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, and threats to ‘civil rights’. Watkins’ response was to adapt the setting of The Gladiators – a remote arena run by the military – to create a scenario where the views of those disaffected and at risk from the state could be expressed.

Punishment Park (1971) followed two groups of militants – civil rights activists, poets, protest singers and draft-dodgers – held by the American police under the 1950 McCarran Act. This piece of real-life legislation allowed the government to detain people expected to cause subversion. Some of the characters were loosely based on those involved in the ‘Chicago Trials’ which followed countercultural protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the sets of militants is on trial from a nationalist tribunal already sure of their guilt. The other prisoners have been sentenced, and have chosen to spend three days in ‘punishment park’ instead of lengthy prison stays. This is a torturous trek through 53 miles of desert, to reach an American flag within three days while being hunted by trigger-happy cops.

The drama was improvised by non-professional actors, mostly giving their own views in character, whether playing activists, police or draft-board judges. This approach gives the film a raw authenticity which led some viewers to assume that it depicts real events. From this point in his career, Watkins’s films would feature only non-professional actors, often improvising their dialogue.

Punishment Park received mixed reviews, variously describing it as a ‘chilling prognosis’, ‘hypnotically gripping, and ‘the pornography of hate’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm). Most film distributors decided that it would be too volatile to screen, and consequently it was denied the impact it deserved.

Watkins’ next film, released in 1974, was a biopic of Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch. He first discovered Munch’s work only a few years before, and felt that the marginalisation of his own work echoed Munch’s experiences. The anger of his earlier films is more measured, targeted against repression rather than oppression. Munch’s life and work was shaped by the strict social norms of the late 19^th Century, as well as a constant threat of illness. The pace is more sedate than in Watkins’ previous films, gradually building up a layered picture of what influenced Munch.

Watkins’ films acknowledge the presence of the camera crew, especially in Punishment Park where they influence events, and even when this would be impossible within the drama, as in Edvard Munch and Culloden. His intention here was to remind the viewer that film-makers don’t objectively and passively record events, but interpret them according to their own agendas. Watkins himself ‘appears’ in his films as a narrator.

Through the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, Watkins remained in Scandinavia, where he developed his theory of the ‘Monoform’ and produced films to counter its approach. The Monoform is the standard style of editing and directing films and television programmes, which only presents the film-maker’s capitalist ideology, and stifles alternative interpretations. His films in this period studied ‘modern stress’ among Danish families (The Seventies People, 1974), radioactive waste produced by consumerism (The Trap, 1975), protests against nuclear submarines (Evening Land, 1976), and public awareness of the threat of nuclear war (The Journey, 1987). As always, reviews and reactions were largely hostile, coming from those who supported the oppressive society which Watkins was attacking.

In the early 1990s, Watkins worked with students at the Nordens Folk High School in Sweden on a biopic of radical writer August Strindberg. The Freethinker ‘has a complex internal structure, and moves in an unpredictable and seemingly random way between’ different points in Strindberg’s life, offering ‘the audience an open-ended process allowing for individual and varied reaction’ (LINK).

His 1999 film La Commune (de Paris, 1871) is political cinema at its best, and here Watkins attempts to counter the Monoform. Watkins identified that ‘the Paris Commune has always been severely marginalised by the French education system, perhaps because it is a key event in the history of the European working class.’

Watkins shot the film in black and white using digital video cameras in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the eastern edge of Paris in July 1999. There were over 220 people in the cast with approximately 60 percent of them having no prior acting experience.

In an effort to counter the Monoform, Watkins engaged in a democratic / collective experience during the filming; his overall objective was to present a collective voice, while the cast was involved in the film’s preparation, and during the filming itself. Watkins rarely has the cast framed in close-up as individuals, usually there are at least two or three people in the frame at the same time thus allowing a group dynamic to develop. The cast step out of their roles from time to time to discuss the situation in 1999, and its links to the events of the Paris Commune, contributing to the telling of their own history, and bringing out the modernity of the Commune. They would also discuss what they would say, how they might feel, and how they would react to the events of the Commune which were about to be filmed, externalising their true personalities and becoming the men and women of 1871.

Watkins brings the class struggle to the screen in his film of an attempt to create a better world. The Commune is not seen as a failure but the beginning of an idea of solidarity amongst people; he celebrates the Commune but its errors and its weaknesses are not hidden. The 375 minutes length of La Commune which runs counter to the Monoform ensured its complete marginalisation.

After La Commune, Watkins concluded ‘We are now moving through a very bleak period in human history... , sheer greed engendered by the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human, economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalisation ... have synergistically created a world where ethics, morality, human collectivity, and commitment ... are considered “old fashioned”... In such a world as this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia.’ He felt that La Commune should be seen as a tool for others to use in challenging the dominance of the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry.

Watkins sees direct links between the hierarchy and centralisation of the contemporary manipulative role of the MAVM and the globalisation of capitalism.  He sees the rationale for the internal lengths and structures of the ‘Universal Clock’ (timing TV programmes according to adverts) as entirely commercial; they contribute to a loss of history, the increase of hierarchical forces, and the passive acceptance of global capitalism. Watkins speaks of ‘exploitative, morally corrupt free-market ideology sweeping aside everything before it.’ In his view, the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ won’t reach its full potential unless it challenges the MAVM.

Watkins published his theories as The Media Crisis (2004), a passionate critique of the Monoform and the lack of debate around the production of new audio visual media forms. His rejection of the dominant Monoform style, and his objections to the oppressive media industry which pushes it, has led to most of his films being marginalised and neglected. Consequently, his work hasn’t had the exposure or influence it deserves. Despite this, his approach is echoed in films such as the critically acclaimed holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann, which may be seen as counter to the Monoform. Shoah was 11 years in production and editing and released at a length of 613 minutes! Lanzmann used no historical footage, arranged many of the scenes, but not the testimony; the film was made without subtitles, voiceovers, questions and answers were kept on the soundtrack, along with the interpreters. Lanzmann matches the testimony to places, and the audience is encouraged to think about the historical actions of these men, but also the ethics of reflection.

With filming and editing technology now affordable to more people, and the internet as a means to distribute films without going through corporations with their own agendas, there is now more potential for people to produce films which express their own experiences and views.

Watkins should be recognised more among socialists not only for his critique of the power of the media, but also in suggesting a positive alternative style of film-making: docudramas largely improvised by non-professional actors, and a new way of organising society in opposition to global capitalism. His films concerning history, war, pop culture, the oppressive role of the state in capitalism, late 1960s radicalism, the Paris Commune, and the role of artists, are always relevant to socialists.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

'Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro' (2012)

Film Review from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

London Labour Film Festival Gala - 'Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro' September 2012

The TUC-sponsored London Labour Film Festival gala-film was the French film Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (2011). The film is directed by Robert Guediguian, and stars Jean-Pierre Darroussin as Michel, a CGT trade union official in the Marseilles shipyard.

The film opens in the shipyard, and the struggle between capital and labour sees the union 'choosing' by lot those who will be made redundant. Later Christophe, one of those made redundant, insinuates to Michel there have been many union compromises with management and ‘back handers’. For decades the CGT was allied with the Communist Party, and the ossified 'Stalinist' reformism of both undermined the events of 1968. The CGT was more recently involved in strike action in 2005 over the privatisation of the Marseilles maritime ferry service.

Michel mentions the 1972 “Common Programme” which was optimistically seen as the 'union of the left', forming the basis for the Mitterrand Presidential victory in 1981, and reforms to capitalism such as Keynesian economic measures. Michel has achieved a 'good' standard of living due to the benefits of 'reformism'. He speaks highly to Christophe of the fruits of 'reformism', and in one scene Michel and his wife discuss that they are now “petty bourgeois”. During capitalism's periodic crises, the workers’ wages decrease so that Christophe, the young worker who is made redundant with no severance payments, commits a robbery for purely economic need; the proceeds are used to buy food, pay the rent, and look after his younger brothers.

Michel's hero is the pre-WWI reformist social democrat politician Jean Jaurès whose picture is on his work locker and he refers to him several times in the film. Jaurès advocated 'popular front' alliances with the progressive middle class. When WWI threatened in 1914 he tried to implement the Second International anti-war policy but was assassinated. Mitterrand placed a red rose on Jaurès' tomb in 1981.

Jaurès's reformism was opposed by Jules Guesde's 'Marxist' party whose manifesto had been drawn up by Marx and Engels. In 1905 Guesde's party and Jaurès’s party united under pressure from the Second International and Guesde soon got bogged down in reformism. In 1914 he joined the French government of “National Unity” although in 1907 he had declared war was the “result of the capitalist regime”. Had he not been assassinated no doubt Jaurès would have too.

Michel is imbued with an 'Idealist, reformist, social democratic' philosophy and the sense of 'justice' shared by Jaurès. Marxists see 'justice' as a concept originating in class society but Jaurès believed that the Idea of 'justice' causes the movement of history. Paul Lafargue critiqued Jaurès and 'justice' in his 1895 lecture Idealism and Materialism in the Conception of History: “Man never would have emerged from the primitive communist environment in which the idea of Justice does not exist”. Michel believes his conduct is guided by 'justice' but Lafargue sees that “the idea of Justice will vanish like a bad dream when common property shall have taken the place of private property”.

Steve Clayton

Recent Times (2015)

Book Review from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Charlie Chaplin', by Peter Ackroyd. Vintage £7.99.

Charlie Chaplin was born in a South London slum in 1889. His childhood was extremely impoverished, including spells in a workhouse, and his first show-business job was as a clog dancer at the age of nine. He became an actor and stage performer, joined Fred Karno’s company and travelled to the US, where he made his first film in 1914. He survived the birth of talkies and became a director and independent film-maker. Already by 1915, according to Ackroyd, he was the most famous man in the world.

Chaplin was best known for his screen persona as the Tramp, the ‘little fellow’ who became a kind of universal symbol of failure and hopelessness. Some of his films were overtly political, such as The Great Dictator (1940), where he played Adenoid Hynkel. This applied in particular to Modern Times (1936), about factory life and the repetitive and dehumanising nature of the production line.

In the First World War, he decided to stay in the US rather than return to the UK and risk being conscripted; people sent him envelopes with white feathers in, and some British cinemas stopped showing his films. During the Second World War, he made remarks supporting the ‘Soviet Union’ as a wartime ally, and also expressed some admiration for Stalin. Together with the implied message of Modern Times, this led in the late 1940s to trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some thought it suspicious that he had lived in the US for thirty years without becoming a US citizen, and in 1952, as he and his family sailed to Britain, his permit to re-enter the US was withdrawn (though he was later allowed to visit). For some discussion of his political views, see www.cartoonresearch.com/gerstein/chaplin/commie.html.

Ackroyd describes Chaplin as ‘a libertarian with tendencies towards anarchism’. But this is hardly compatible with his authoritarian approach to directing, his support for President Roosevelt, and his chauvinistic attitude to women. He also accepted a knighthood and was very concerned to protect his US-based property and investments. Though he was hardly consistent, he is perhaps best seen as someone who, looking back at his impoverished childhood, identified with the poor and downtrodden, but had no ideas about restructuring or even reforming society. Claims about him being a ‘Communist’ say more about the hysteria prevalent in some circles in the US than about Chaplin himself.  

Paul Bennett

After eight (1978)

Film Review from the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alain Tanner's Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000 centres around eight people, all of whose names begin with the letters "Ma"—presumably a reference to May 1968, which in another sense is that the film is really about.

Max is a Trotskyist, and for him everything since 1968 has been an anti-climax. He is brought back into political activity when he finds out about a scheme by some bankers to force some farmers off their land and later sell it at a huge profit. Max persuades the farmers not to sell, and thereby becomes friends with two of them, Marguerite and Marcel.

Although the film is not clear about this, it seems that this act of resistance to the profiteering businessmen is successful. But attempts by the other characters to behave differently—however slightly—from the way that society expects them to all come to nothing. Marie works at a check-out in a supermarket: she undercharges customers who can't afford to pay for all their purchases, but gets sent to prison. Marco is a history teacher and tries, with the help of some of the other characters, to teach his students about crises and inflation — and is sacked for his pains. Mathieu organizes his own school for the farmers' children, until he is eventually stopped by Marguerite, who tells him that she employs him to shift manure not to teach her children (she already pays taxes for that purpose, she says). The only character who achieves some kind of contentment is Madeleine who deceives herself in religious mysticism.

So at one level the film shows the pointlessness of individual tinkerings with the social set-up. But what it doesn't do, at least not directly, is to indicate any positive solution. True, there are a few references to class struggle (but also quotes from Rousseau about man being "everywhere in chains"). The background of inflation is emphasized at the beginning and the end of the film, while Marcel is concerned with ecology, especially the preservation of rare species of animals. But the pervading influence of 1968 suggests that this is what is held up as a model to follow. In fact, the events of May of that year were in sense revolutionary, just an instance of popular working-class action on the industrial front, aimed at wage increases.

Mathilde is pregnant with the Jonah of the film's title. The film contains some well observed scenes and in places is very funny but a major weakness is that nothing is said to point the way towards marking the year 2000 (or—let's be optimistic—well before then) one in which the frustrated dreams of its characters are no longer necessary.

Paul Bennett

"Trial" and "Desperate Hours" (1956)

Film Reviews from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

These two films are both thrillers, both are technically excellent, and in both the acting is first-class. They part company, however, in that Desperate Hours sets out merely to entertain, whereas Trial moralises about American law and justice, and about the corruptness of the Communist party. The moralising is rather tortuous, for apparently the film-makers have tried to demonstrate that although the American legal system is harmful and corrupt, the corruptness and ruthlessness of the Communist party is even worse, and that American democracy and freedom always triumph on the end, anyway.

The story is set in a small township in Idaho, where there is a Mexican minority. A young white girl dies of heart-failure while with a Mexican boy on a beach, and the boy is charged with murder on the legal principle that if someone causes a death while committing a felony, then he or she is guilty of murder (the alleged felony in this case being indecent assault).

The hero of the story is an idealistic law lecturer (Glenn Ford) who, threatened with expulsion from the University unless he obtains some first-hand legal experience, is taken under the wing of an unscrupulous Communist lawyer (Arthur Kennedy). The boy's trial becomes a matter of political capital for both the prosecutors and the Communist party, both of whom decide that the boy must die, the first because public opinion demands it, and the other because they need a martyr for their political ends. The tension of the film is admirably built up and the trial scenes are extremely effective, but unfortunately, the ideological inconsistencies of the film make it almost implausible. The film tries to lead one to the conclusion that there is always someone to protect American justice and democracy (although why it should be necessary to protect it is not made clear) and in this case it is left entirely to the young idealist to find a legal loophole after the boy has been found guilty. Apparently this vindicates the crooked politicians and lawyers and American justice generally and, to point the moral of the story, the Communist lawyer gets 30 days in jail for contempt. However, this isn't really good enough for it requires only a moment's thought to appreciate that this situation can rarely arise, of at all, so far as the Communist party is concerned, whereas the occasions when politicians and policemen need a conviction to safeguard their office, must be very common.

The picture that is given of American legal methods is both convincing and disturbing, and the account of how money is raised for "fighting funds" and the like is almost horrifying. In this kind of detail the film is extremely good, but when it ventures out into the realms of politics and morals, it becomes bogged down. The Communist party, of course, gets scathing treatment, and to a certain extent this is justified by their "tactics" but I do not think that this film does give an accurate picture of the way in which the American Communists behave. In particular, the speech of the girl (Dorothy McGuire) in which she recounts how she became caught up in the Communist party, and her subsequent disillusionment, is quite unconvincing and almost laughable.

It may well be that the makers of this film considered that their implied criticisms of American law and justice would be made more acceptable to the film-going public by the addition of the anti-Communist propaganda and the melodramatic ending, but if so, they have defeated their object, because the film gives the satisfying impression that justice has been done, and all is well with America, after all. What the film does not do, of course, is to show the cause of the corruption and the basis of the laws that are enforced, i.e. the protection of private property. But that is rather too much to expect from Hollywood.

Desperate Hours is also a thriller, but this time in the more conventional sense. It has no political axe to grind or moral in the way that Trial has, although it also gives a disturbing insight into American police methods. It is a straightforward story of three escaped convicts who find an ideal hideout by terrorising a household and holding the wife and young son hostage while the other members of the family are forced to carry on their normal lives. Here again the tension is well built up, and the principals (Humphrey Bogart as the leader of the three convicts and Fredric March as the father of the family) give splendid performances.

Surprisingly enough, it is the very fact that there is no social moral to the story that gives this film its biggest advantage over Trial. There is no sermonising and the film sets out merely to entertain, and it certainly fulfils this object as well as any thriller can. The finale of the story is both inevitable and expected, but nevertheless one's interest is held until the end. This film is an adequate demonstration of the way in which thrillers can be made without either the story being trite or the characters unconvincing, and is certainly well worth your shilling or two.

Albert Ivimey 

The Little World of Don Camillo (1953)

Film Review from the May 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who enjoy a good story with plenty of action and first class acting should be sure to see this film which has now been generally released.

The film is made in Italy where Don Camillo (played by Fernandel) is a parish priest in a village with a Communist Party dominated local council. He is not averse from fisticuffs on occasions, in fact sometimes he is simply itching for a scrap when the communists become particularly trying to him. This character is loved by the local catholics and commands the respect of the communists. Although as a priest he is officially out of politics he really makes no secret of his antagonism to the local Communist politicians, even though both groups co-operated in the underground movement directed against the German occupation of Italy in the last war.

The Communist mayor (portrayed by Gino Cervi) controls his supporters with paternal despotism.

The really outstanding feature of the film apart from the first class acting, lies in its thread of humour arising from the underlying background of religious belief of many of the communists which sometimes comes to light at times embarrassing for the Mayor. These communists apparently want the best of both worlds—sometimes they are shown as enjoying material advantages gained as a result of their support of the Communist Party and in taking part in a communist organised strike for higher pay. Sometimes they are glad of the comforts of the Catholic Church—at times that they considered important, such as baptisms, marriage and death; as for instance when the Mayor insisted on the baptism of his son by Don Camillo and also when the communist agricultural strikers as surreptitiously as possible, followed the bidding of the priest and went back to work.

The popularity of the film in Italy and France indicates that the idea of Catholics and Communists having a similar mentality and a similar basically religious attitude towards life does not strike a jarring note in the minds of the viewers in those countries.

This is particularly interesting because Italy is the fountainhead of the world Catholic Church and at the same time the greatest stronghold of the Communist Party this side of the iron curtain.

Catholic Action, the lay body reorganised in its modern form by Pious XI in 1922 is forbidden by its statute to be constituted as a political party but its political influence is none the less exceedingly powerful and widespread. By means of clubs, associations, camps, youth movements, newspapers, general propaganda and broadcasting, Catholic Action comes nearest to being the counterpart and challenge to the Communist organisations. This is even more true of the Commtati Civici, an offshoot of Catholic Action, which provides the real shock troops of the campaign. Run on a system not unlike that of the Communist cells, this "committee of action" come into their own above all at election times when their propaganda and their house to house methods are extraordinarily thorough and well-conceived. The influence of some of the Catholic activities in villages was demonstrated in the film.

It is understandable that Catholics and Communists should be rivals because their ideologies are very similar and they both depend on the same type of uninformed and prejudiced electorate for support. Both are autocratic with a hierarchy of officials who interpret for the layman the policy ladled out by a ruler at the apex of the pyramid. The Catholic creed is based on belief in the Holy Trinity, whilst the Communist creed is based in what is called Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism. One relies on belief in God, obedience to the Church and hopes of Heaven; the other kow-tows to a dictator, obeys the Party and is spurred on by believing that the U.S.S.R. is a socialist heaven. The Catholic devil is found in a variety of unexpected places and disguises, in fact this is his outstanding characteristic, and he must be continually sought out, recognised and castigated. For the Communist, it is the "Social Fascist," which term is used to cover most enemies and even critics of Communists, who is the arch fiend and tempter of the comrades to stray from the straight and narrow path of orthodoxy.

It is no wonder then that the Communist Party have been able to recruit 2 million members from a population so steeped in catholicism as the Italians. Their members want what they consider the best of both worlds—the social reforms of the Communist Party and the comforts of the Church.

Frank Offord 

Rosa Luxemburg (1987)

Film Review from the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

For someone like myself who rates Rosa Luxemburg among the great socialist theorists, to go and see a film about her life was to take a risk. The risk was that the director would attempt to present a glossy, Hollywood version of the "life of a great woman", devoid of political content - the fate of Reds, the film version of the book, Ten Days That Shook The World, about an American's experiences during the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

But Margarethe von Trotta's film, Rosa Luxemburg, is a sensitive portrayal that succeeds in bringing together the personal and the political, giving some insight into Luxemburg's politics as well as the woman herself. Most importantly the film doesn't trivialise her politics; they are at all times centre-stage even when we witness the Social Democratic Party's (SPD) New Year celebrations at the turn of the century and are presented with Karl Kautsky wearing a false nose. The optimism of the socialists at that party, that the 20th century would see the dawning of a new socialist era, was short-lived. It was crushed by the insanity of the first world war and the defeat within the international socialist movement of the ideas of democratic socialism by reformists on the one hand and vanguardists on the other. In many ways we are, today, still trying to overcome the legacy of that defeat.

Those unfamiliar with the debate that took place within the SPD, between revolutionary socialists like Luxemburg and the revisionists, led by Bernstein, who were willing to compromise socialism for short-term political power achieved on the basis of a reformist programme, are unlikely to have learnt very much from the film. The theoretical issues are sketched in with broad brush-strokes and very little detail. Instead it focuses on the effects of the first world war which led to those who called themselves socialists urging (in Luxemburg's words) "workers of the world to unite in peace and slit each other's throats in war". While many SPD members supported Germany's war effort, Luxemburg continued to speak out against nationalism and a war fought to protect the interests of the capitalist class which entailed the futile massacre of workers by workers. She endured one of nine terms as a political prisoner for her pains.

After the war Luxemburg continued to speak out against senseless violence when she opposed attempts to get socialism through insurrection. She recognised that just as it is impossible to have socialism in one city, in this case Berlin, it is also impossible for there to be socialism without there being a majority of socialists to make it work. So for sincere and committed socialists to engage in bloody street-fighting in the name of socialist revolution was not only futile but likely to produce a reaction. In Rosa Luxemburg's case the reaction came in the form of a knock on the head by a soldier's butt, a bullet at close range and the unceremonious dumping of her body off a bridge into a river.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this is the fact that it portrays Luxemburg not as a superwoman or heroine but as a woman who, despite her sharp intellect and skills as a political writer and speaker, is also only too human. Often beset with doubts and fears, she had also to come to terms with the contradictions and sacrifices that her political commitment entailed for her personal and emotional life. She was a woman who was devoted to the cause of socialism and yet could still be loving and jealous by turns; a loyal friend to other women in the socialist movement like Clara Zetkin and Luise Kautsky; a woman who, despite her ability to hold the attention of the crowds who attended the meetings she addressed, confessed to feeling happier communing with nature than making political speeches; a woman, who despite everything chose politics when her lover. Leo Jogiches, told her that she had to choose between being a mother and a revolutionary.

Although this film doesn't try to make Rosa Luxemburg into a heroine, it nevertheless shows her to have been an extraordinary woman. My fears about going to see it were totally ill-founded. It is a film both moving and inspiring.

Janie Percy-Smith

Between the Lines: Bore-o-vision (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bore-o-vision

I am only just recovering from the non-excitement of Norway winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Watching the show is like taking an overdose of valium - and then there was the frustration of going to the toilet and missing "our" song. All over Europe (and Israel - TV bosses aren't too hot on geography) workers were sitting in front of their tellys and waiting for "our" song. What seems like bland light entertainment is doing its bit to encourage the sick sense of nationalism which the masters require of the wage slaves. It's like watching international soccer - millions of workers are urged to think of "us" taking a penalty and "our" goal difference. All ideological preparation for "us" nuking Leningrad and "our" gains in central Russia. If you want to show us a football match or a boring song contest, let them tell us in advance that we're in for a nationalist political broadcast. As for "our" song in the contest - fourth to Norway. Palmerston would never have stood for it. If I were Maggie I'd send a Task Force to Scandinavia.

Hapless Hobsbawm

The Communist Party is beating itself up and, with every justification, the political pundits are having a good laugh. So, Channel Four's A Week in Politics did a special report on the split. Following the informative film report, Peter Jay (married to Jim Callaghan's daughter and suitably boring) interviewed Eurocommunist "intellectual" (historian by trade) Eric Hobsbawm. Our Eric is of the view that "Thatcherism" is a totally new phase of capitalism and that all anti-Thatcherites, from the CP majority to the SDP, should form an anti-Thatcher electoral pact. Jay asked Hobsbawm a number of very pertinent questions (more by luck than judgement, no doubt) which left the Professor stammering in confusion. For example, Jay asked why a "communist" should advocate the election of a labour government when the last seven have brought us no nearer to socialism. He also made the quite valid political point that if CPers wanted to do the Labour Party any favours they would go away and leave them alone, as CP support for Kinnock undermines Labour's credibility with voters. Hobsbawm admitted that Jay had a good point. Which says a lot about CPer Hobsbawm - and about the kind of votes Kinnock is after.

Selling

The series put out by ITV entitled Television was not half as bad as some critics suggested. The penultimate programme was about how TV is used to "sell" politicians, in the same way as it has sold soap powder. It showed how Nixon used a telly broadcast to save his career when some cad accused him of taking bribes - he had the viewers weeping into their hankies with a sub-Crossroads monologue about how he loved his puppy. Then, some years later, when JFK was opposing Nixon for the Presidency, the former's advisors manipulated the set so that Nixon would come off worst; they told him to wear a light blue suit which wouldn't show up against the white background and insisted that the candidates stood up to speak, so exposing Nixon to pain from his recently injured leg. Oh, the seriousness of capitalist politics. What was that about excluding frivolous candidates from elections?

Praise Marx

When you get as little TV exposure as the Socialist Party, any little bit is worth reporting. A few weeks ago C4 showed a late-night film called Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition. It was quite a good send-up of trendy Leftists who think that their role is to lead the workers to the barricades, and included some pretty good information about British capitalism in the 1960s. But that is not why the film entered socialist history. In one scene the lefty protagonist enters a radical bookshop to deliver some pamphlets. And on what is there a close-up? The Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist. And it was a lengthy shot too. Proof, once again, that the capitalists are only too willing to give TV time to the Socialist Party.

Steve Coleman

The Edukators (2005)

Film Review from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Edukators. The Warwick Cinema, Carlisle

Co-written and directed by Hans Weingarten, the eponymous heroes of this film are two young men - radicals, we might perhaps call them - who seem to have fused feng shui with Situationism to create a stylish and esoteric new form of political protest. Their method is to break into the homes of the rich but, rather than steal, they move the furniture into new spaces, or rearrange it into newforms, to create a visual spectacle designed to shock the occupants out of their cash-encrusted apathy. Like high-class catburglars, they leave prominent calling cards stating 'the days of plenty are numbered' or 'you have too much money,' and later read of their exploits in the newspapers.

Played by Daniel Brühl (Jan) and Stipe Erceg (Peter), it starts to go wrong for the Edukators when, unknown to Peter, his girlfriend, Jule, and Jan become an item (never let a woman spoil a good relationship, the film seems to imply). Witness to police brutality, bullied by her manager, bullied by her landlord, and crippled by debt, Jule has been sufficiently radicalised by these experiences to align herself with Peter and Jan and become the unofficial third Edukator.

The kind of Spectaclesque rich bashing they engage in may leave some of their older victims remembering that there's a beach beneath their gravel driveway. Indeed, after the Edukators have been forced to abduct one of their victims they learn that he was once a radical who rubbed shoulders with the prominent Lefties in the glory days of '68. Now a rich entrepreneur, the Edukators - and the audience - are moved to wonder if his revolutionary ideals are now dead, or just dormant. During his captivity he befriends Jan, Jule and Peter; cooking for them, washing their clothes, sharing their drugs, and it seems that the accumulated detritus of thirty years in the business world begins to fall away to reveal, to some extent, the idealist heonce was, or at least a more benign capitalist, a Scrooge on Christmas morning. The Edukators suspect his motives and are alarmed by their developing friendship with their class enemy and 'hostage'. His abduction by the Edukators becomes his education, and he parts company with his captors on friendly terms, letting bygones bebygones and, more importantly, promising not to contact the authorities. But some leopards never change their spots . . .

To some extent the film is reminding us of the generally perceived view that youthfulness and radicalism seem to go hand in hand,whilst 'ageing' and 'conservative' are words which frequently keep each other company. There are many people who claim to have been socialists back in the sixties, yet after a few pints confess that Enoch was right. And some know, and some even perhaps are, former radicals who now vote New Labour and watch the world go by from behind the Financial Times.

As The Edukators should have tried to explore more often, there are probably many reasons why youthful would-be smashers of the state mature into upholders of the status quo. It is often the case that self-styled radicals were never radical in the first place, and a promising career is a great incentive for abandoning one's revolutionary ideals. But as Socialist Party members will evince, radicalism never dies: it simply loses its dress sense.

Neil Windle

On The Revolutionary Road (2005)

Film Review from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Motorcycle Diaries

It's become a common practice to give directors grammatical ownership of a film regardless of how much input they have. So we have Hitchcock's The Birds, Anderson's If, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, as well as Polanski's Macbeth and Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. Directors, like managers, are important to some extent, but most people know that when the boss is off the firm runs just as well, if not better. The practice of elevating the director to a position of supreme importance relegates to inconsequential roles the hundreds of other workers involved in a production. To make a film without a director would be difficult; to make one without engineers, musicians, caterers and cleaners would be impossible.

Such hierarchical structures have dominated society for so long that they appear natural and permanent, and revolutionary action has succeeded only to replace one hierarchy with another. Struggles for communism become struggles for fairer capitalism, as the experience of Latin America shows. Its turbulent recent history has produced a gallery of memorable radicals, but in terms of cult status there are few to compare with Ernesto Che Guevara. The Motorcycle Diaries, of which the director Walter Salles was one of the many workers involved in its making, concerns the early life of one of the 20th century's most charismatic rebels and whose image has become one of its most enduring icons.

Set in 1952, Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado take off on a 1939 Norton for a tour of South America intending to bring medical relief (they are both doctors) to the needy, and sexual relief to their own needy libidos. But the exuberance and exhilaration of single young men high-tailing it around foreign countries is balanced by the need to do good beyond the remit of the Hippocratic oath which we see developing in the 23-year-old Guevara as the journey progresses. As the real Che explained in On Revolutionary Medicine: 'I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease I began to realise that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous I wanted to help those people.'

Where medicine cannot help, Guevara offers money, moral support and brutal honesty. On behalf of dispossessed peasants he throws stones and hurls abuse. For the sick of the leper colony where he briefly works, he swims the river that separates them from the healthy whilst battling against currents and his own asthma. This is Che the champion of the downtrodden, the challenger of injustice, the idol in the making. Consequently, the film itself is fertilised with the concerns of its hero and a message begins to form. This becomes clear at the end when a montage of South Americas working and peasant class is displayed in a vividness only monochrome can achieve. These people are still with us, the film seems to say. There is still work to be done.

Fortunately the film has no anachronisms which refer to Guevara's later status or appearance; no scenes with him in a department store plumping for the beret or trying on a pair of Cuban heels. Joy and misery are lucidly brought to life in a film that can be enjoyed even if you are one of the few people who has never heard of Che Guevara.

There are as few things to say about the cult of Guevara as there are about the cult of the director. Both reinforce the notion that socio-cultural events are made only by powerful individuals rather than by the thousands of workers who truly make history. Perhaps it is time we donned our berets, put on our army boots and proclaimed in sonorous tones: Workers of the film industry unite!

Neil Windle