WGA -- 97.85% YES -- May 1, 2023

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Today is International Workers' Day. It seems appropriate that on this day The Writers' Guild of America is negotiating with producers to get a fair share of revenues for content creators. The rank and file overwhelmingly voted to strike. 

Strike -- May 1, 2022

A poster for Sergei Eisenstein's first movie, Strike, seemed like a good subject for International Labor Day.  The film is set before the revolution, in 1903.  After the revolution, strikes were not allowed. 

Our Daily Bread -- May 1, 2021

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Today is International Workers' Day. God bless the grocery workers, the transit operators, the medical workers, the janitors, the farm workers who kept working through the pandemic. We owe them a great debt. 

Way back when I grew up in San Francisco, our PBS station, KQED-Channel 9 played King Vidor's Our Daily Bread. I had not yet seen The Crowd, so I did not know that the leads were supposed to be the same characters. John and Mary move from the city to a farm, hoping to provide for themselves, but they know nothing about farming. Various downtrodden people come down the road. Some know about farming. Some know about baking. The farm becomes a co-op or collective. Everyone works. A drought threatens their crop, but in a great montage, we see everyone pitch in to build a ditch to carry water to the fields. Strange movie.

Union Members Are The Heroes on the Frontlines of the Crises -- May 1, 2020

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Today is International Workers' Day. God bless the grocery workers, the transit operators, the medical workers, the janitors, the farm workers.  We owe them a great debt.

Man of Bronze -- May 1, 2019

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Happy International Labor Day, everyone.

Probably the first Polish movie that I ever saw was Director Andrzej Wajda's Man of Bronze at the Royal on Polk Street. I was shocked that Wajda was allowed to shoot the film, release it, and send it to the west. It was a strong criticism of Stalinist methods of encouraging productivity.

Kameradschaft -- May 1, 2018

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Happy International Workers' Day to all.

In 1931, Austrian director GW Pabst directed Kameradschaft, a German-French co-production about workers in a coal mine who were separated by a gate when the mine was split between Germany and France after World War One.  A fire breaks out on the French side and management tries to contain it rather than put it out.  French miners become trapped and German miners break through the gate and rescue their comrades.  Sadly, the gate is put back at the end.

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1900 - May 1, 2017

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Happy International Workers' Day to all. 

I remember going to see Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 in the theater.  It seemed strange to see Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu and Donald Sutherland in an Italian movie.  The story told of two boys born in 1901,  on the day that Verdi died.  One was the son of the landowner and the other was the son of a peasant.  They grew up friends, but after World War One, the new overseer was a Fascist, who made life terrible for the workers.  He got his after World War Two.  I would like to see it again. 

Citizen Kane 75 Years -- May 1, 2016

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Happy International Labor Day to all.

75 years ago, on 01-May-1941, Citizen Kane premiered at the RKO Palace theater on Broadway.  Orson Welles hit a grand slam on his first effort as a director, Citizen Kane.   It used to be at the top of lists of the Greatest Film Ever.  It doesn't appear to get there much anymore, but it is still a wonderful movie.  The movie had a mixed reception.  The Hearst papers hated it because everyone thought that Kane was William Randolph Hearst.  It hurt the reputation of Marion Davies, who was a lot more talented than Kane's second wife.  Writer Herman J Mankiewicz spent many years trying to get people to acknowledge that he played a large part in the creation of the movie.

Today is also the 100th birthday of actor Glenn Ford.  The Big Heat is one of my favorite movies.

Strike -- May 1, 2014

A poster for Sergei Eisenstein's first movie, Strike, seemed like a good subject for International Labor Day.  The film is set before the revolution, in 1903.  After the revolution, strikes were not allowed.