Richard Attenborough had been a memorably noxious capitalist in I'm All
Right, Jack (1959), the Boulting Brothers' plague-on-both-your-houses satire of
labour relations; a year later, he found himself on the other side of the
management/worker divide in this engrossing, if somewhat hysterical, account of
workplace conflict.
Written and co-produced (with Attenborough) by Bryan Forbes as the first
release of his production venture, Beaver Films, the film has more than a
touch of On the Waterfront (US, 1954) about it, notably in the factory gates
denouement. But the milieu is distinctly British, with the flavour of the
emerging British New Wave, sharing its Northern industrial landscape with the
likes of Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, released later the same
year.
The film's evocation of turn-of-the-1960s working-class life remains its
strongest suit, particularly in the scenes on the factory floor (which, as Sight
and Sound's Penelope Houston commented, "looks like a place where something
might really get made") and in the claustrophobic top-floor flat shared by Tom
(Attenborough), his Italian wife Anna (Pier Angeli), their two kids and the
lodger, the perpetually fence-sitting Joe (Michael Craig - also co-credited for
the original story). Both Attenborough and Angeli bring real dignity to their
roles, and their bewilderment in the face of Tom's unfair treatment at the hands
of his colleagues is affecting.
The film's politics, however, are less convincing. The script tries hard to inject
some balance, making clear that the industrial action lacks official union
support, and demonstrating that the attitude of the factory manager Martindale
(Laurence Naismith) is every bit as callous and unprincipled as that of shop
steward Connolly (Bernard Lee). But Forbes chooses not to make the workers'
concerns clear - the only demand we hear is for more toilet roll - with the
effect that we are unable to determine the justice of their grievances.
Similarly, we are left entirely in the dark about the deeper motivations of
either Alfred Burke's shady agent provocateur, Travers, or his unseen London
cohorts. Most troubling is the film's representation of Curtis's fellow workers,
who appear as little more than sheep, readily manipulated by the none-too-bright Connolly, who is in turn the puppet of the altogether shrewder Travers. The result is an unbalanced and ultimately unsatisfying film, though one which remains fascinating for the way it signals the growing anti-union paranoia of the
following two decades.
Mark Duguid
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