NPR: Scott’s Thoughts
Nextrecord Archives/Getty Images America observes Labor Day weekend with mattress sales, picnics and political speeches. In the movies, more tech-created superheroes show up than labor and working-class characters. Here are a few films you might want to watch this weekend that feature the hearts and minds of working men and women:
🍇 The Grapes of Wrath (1940): John Ford masterfully captures John Steinbeck’s novel about the Dust Bowl trek of the Joad family. “I’ll be everywhere,” Henry Fonda as Tom Joad tells his mother. “I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry, and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build — I’ll be there, too.”
🌊 On the Waterfront (1954): Director Elia Kazan sparked controversy by naming names during the McCarthy period. But this film’s moving portrayal of dockworkers and corruption among those who claim to represent them is beyond dispute. Says young Marlon Brando, as Terry Malloy: “Conscience — that stuff can drive you nuts!”
🚗 Blue Collar (1978): Shot on location at a car factory in Detroit, Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto, and Harvey Keitel are auto workers on the line. “They pit the lifers against the new boys, the young against the old.”
🏭 Norma Rae (1979): Sally Field plays an Alabama textile worker based on the real Crystal Lee Sutton, who climbs atop her worktable and writes “UNION” for her co-workers to see. Their machines fall silent in solidarity.
Maybe the likes of Tom Joad, Terry Malloy, and Crystal Lee Sutton are the real superheroes.
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The Bag Lady 