1978 Directed by Paul Schrader
Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, three auto assembly line workers hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters.
Richard Pryor Harvey Keitel Yaphet Kotto Ed Begley Jr. Harry Bellaver George Memmoli Lucy Saroyan Lane Smith Cliff DeYoung Borah Silver Chip Fields Harry Northup Milton Selzer Sammy Warren Leonard Gaines Denny Arnold Rock Riddle Tracey Walter Gloria Delaney Crystal McCarey Vincent Di Paolo Jeannine Oppewall
Akkord am Fließband
“I didn’t set out to make a left-wing film,” Paul Schrader told Cinéaste in 1978. “I had no visions of making this into a concrete political thing; it had to operate in the area of entertainment. I wanted to write a movie about some guys who rip off their union because it seemed to me such a wonderfully self-hating kind of act, that they would attack the organization that’s supposed to help them.”
That’s a bit cynical but, then, this is Paul Schrader we’re talking about. Blue Collar was written by Schrader in collaboration with his brother Leonard. It was Schrader’s directorial debut, coming on the heels of a well-established, even storied, career as a screenwriter. By 1978, the year…
"they pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. the black against the white. everything they do is to keep us in our place."
a pretty fun movie about some working-class buds getting fed up with their wages and working conditions and attempting to get one over on the man so that they can afford their mortgages and basic dental care until suddenly the class/racial tensions and power contradictions that money exacerbates become too much to bear. the whole thing is a bit grim and cynical about organized labor but the characters are richly performed and schrader has the style to back it up when this gets dark, and it does. honestly has one of the scariest death scenes i think i've seen in any movie, one that is all the more effective because of how charismatic pryor and kotto are in the first half.
Before I start this review let me preface it by saying that this film has the worst movie poster I have ever seen. It’s dull and misleading, I went into the film half expecting a slapstick comedy. The poster does a massive disservice to the film because this is one of the best American films from the 1970’s.
Blue Collar is a film that follows three average workers Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel) and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto), as they spend their days slaving away at a car manufacturing plant. Undervalued and underappreciated they start to become disillusioned with their lives as they're constantly being screwed over by “the man”, that is until one night Zeke proposes they turn over…
Neck and neck with HALLOWEEN for best American film of 1978. Notable for being the knife handle to Carpenter’s blade. Fascinating in the way Schrader unreservedly sprays his venom at every institution and abstract concept he can think of: capitalism, management, unions, the justice system, technology. I wish the 70s were longer in part so we could have seen more films like this and fewer consumed by the gauzy, gauche excess of the decade that followed. With Schrader, the dingier (LIGHT SLEEPER; AUTOFOCUS; FIRST REFORMED), usually the better.
Grim irony casts a pall over this movie in the juxtaposition of workers' fierce defense of and pride in their union membership and increasing rage and hopelessness that comes with that same union's failure to keep pace with needs. As Pryor's Zeke says, higher wages are just a small part of overall labor necessities. Three of these workers decide to take what's theirs by robbing not their boss, but their union office, and soon find themselves embroiled in a nightmare scenario in which they are trapped by various systems and hunted most viciously of all by those meant to protect them.
Schrader mercilessly triangulates the characters' precarious situation by the forces that stymie them: the government looming around every corner…
If there is a better American film from the 1970s than Blue Collar, then I haven't seen it. It is as political as All the President's Men. It is as funny as The Last Detail. It is as indignant as Network. It is as harsh as Taxi Driver. It is as energetic as Mean Streets . It is as nihilistic as Five Easy Pieces. It is as clear-eyed about industry as Chinatown. It is about the union and the bosses; it is Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. It is furious and working class. It is as good as cinema gets. It is another Paul Schrader masterpiece, but his most vital film. Hilarious, incandescent, mournful.
They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.
Not only Schrader's best film but has the honor of being the only film to feature a dildo fight between Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor.
"Fuck Uncle Sam"
There aren't many political films from America. They make liberal movies absolutely; those which allude to corruption at high levels that are infused with a message that such a cancer - which is more often than not dragged kicking and screaming into the light by a whiter than white crusader - goes against the very principles of the land of the free. But genuine state of the nation social realist pieces about the working class being fucked over are very rare. Blue Collar is one of them, and its unashamed, honest Marxist stance probably explains why it is so little known.
In a previous review I compared Blue Collar to Boys From the Blackstuff, which arguably highlights…
A great movie about the working man and what people will do for money .The dialogue is pinpoint ,what a masterful script from Schrader and phenomenal performances from Pryor and Kietel .A must see for Film Fans
Summer of Scam: The June / July Crime Season 2
Disillusionment In Sun-Drenched 1970s American New Wave Cinema: A Watching Brief
I'm probably not going to get anywhere near the amount of titles watched for this crime project as I expected (maybe I should have budgeted for the World Cup), so I'm prioritising the ones I've been meaning to see for ages, and Blue Collar was right at the top of that list.
It starts with about the most fitting and rousing opening titles track you could ever wish to be party to - Hard Workin Man by Captain Beefheart. A crunching refrain that sets up a hard workin film as well, with Paul Schrader slowly eroding friendships under the…
Great performances for the first half but the movie loses momentum when one of the main characters dies.
Overall, I enjoy the whole movie, but the end is a little preachy. The tone goes from poignant comedy to something aiming toward a message.
Really liked the onscreen chemistry of Pryor, Keitel, and especially Yaphet Kotto.
A last note: one of my favorite movies is Joe vs the Volcano and Blue Collar seems to have influenced its opening shots and music.
The greatest gift Paul Schrader will leave this earth is his collection of male anti-heroes. Whether it’s the lonely dying priest, the psychotic taxi driver, or the paramedic with insomnia, in his writing and directing, Schrader paints vivid and chilling portraits of these dark souls. He makes those repulsive in real life, irresistible in fiction.
“Blue Collar” was his first directorial debut and has little in common with more famous films. It’s an unstylish approach to depicting the working class, it feels more like an American version of a Ken Loach movie. Instead of one violent anti-hero, we have three underprivileged men who are neither good nor evil. They commit Robin Hood crimes to rebel against their corporate oppressors. They’re…
A great movie about the working man and what people will do for money .The dialogue is pinpoint ,what a masterful script from Schrader and phenomenal performances from Pryor and Kietel .A must see for Film Fans
While pretty slow at times, this is a radical film, even by today's standards. Getting such top-shelf actors to work on a project like this is a testament to Schrader's writing. Keitel shines in his role and Richard Pryor is surprisingly not goofy or histrionic.
The power of the film lies within its final 40 minutes, which I thought would devolve into typical Hollywood bullshit but instead is chaotic, shocking, and shrouded in paranoia.
"They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white - everybody- to keep us in our place."
Why do we keep putting quarters in a machine that we know will steal it? Why do we keep putting faith in politicians, business people, police, unions taken over by corporate suits that we know are lining their pockets through our labor? Why do we let them pit us against each other so we ignore them? Why don't we just smash the whole thing?
"Everything they do is to keep us on our place"
Tensões sindicais e a destruição de relações pelo trabalho e pela fome.
Um filme de roubo que trabalha super bem as relações sindicais modernas nos Estados Unidos, bem cínico, mantém esperança na possibilidade da unidade da classe trabalhadora, mas não por meio de sindicatos de conciliação.
Cant believe ive never seen this. Huge blind spot. Pryor is amazing in this
Indicator blue ray! Great special features
An extremely effective movie, I'm so incredibly impressed with the cast and story. A great hidden gem.
Man, American Unions in the 70s was clearly a very weird time, that I imagine won't be repeated. But I have to imagine the overall vibes of company bosses > union leaders > actual workers is a dynamic that'll stay for a while, and this film has some fun to say about that.
Frankly I was more struck by the amazing amount of swearing, which felt super contemporary but must have been radical at the time. And, more than this, the race politics of the thing. The ending is where that comes out in the script, and it felt super forced, like the two leads couldn't make the dialogue work for their characters, but the final message is valid?
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