Films of Solidarity

I have a new article in The Nation, with discussions of my 20 favorite leftist films for May Day! Watch em! Here’s a chunk of them!

Salt of the Earth (1954). In 1950, Mexican mine workers organized with the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers went on strike in New Mexico. They worked and lived in horrible conditions. They won that strike when women took over on the picket lines after a court banned the union members from striking. At the same time, Mine Mill leadership was under attack for their communist leadership. A group of blacklisted filmmakers came to New Mexico and used the workers and the organizers themselves to dramatize the strike. The filmmakers underwent police harassment and the female star was deported to Mexico during the shooting. It disappeared for decades before a rediscovery. When I show it to my students, I ask them how this film is communist, the justification for its blacklisting. They don’t get it—the film is about decent living conditions, indoor plumbing, and basic respect on the job. If that’s communism, sign me up.

A Generation (1955). Andrzej Wajda was the great filmmaker of Polish freedom. Later in his career, he got in trouble with the authorities for making films critical of the communist government, such as Man of Marble, which uses the story of an exceptional worker in the 1950s to discuss the corruption of the communist ideal. But in 1955, Wajda’s film about the role of socialism in the Polish resistance to the Nazis still makes me want to take up arms against the fascists today. A powerful, brilliant film.

The Organizer (1963). Mario Monicelli’s film is probably the best film ever made about a labor strike. Starring Marcello Mastroianni as an anarchist organizer fleeing the police who leads Italian textile workers in a strike, The Organizer does a wonderful job of showing the ups and downs of an early 20th-century strike that is doomed to fail but that builds the class struggle that viewers believe will eventually lead to victory.

I Am Cuba (1964). The Cuban Revolution of 1959 soon had the support of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Kalatozov, the greatest Soviet director of the era, worked with Cubans to create a film dramatizing four stages before the revolution—the sex work Cuban women do to survive, the exploitation by United Fruit, the failed student movements, and the successful peasant revolution that will propel Castro to power. It’s technically brilliant, simply a beautiful film to watch. It also teaches ideology while being super entertaining.

The Battle of Algiers (1966). In my opinion, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film about the Algerian Revolution against the French is the best film ever made. Period. Working with Algerians who had just won their independence, it tells the story of the revolution that lays out both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ideology with tremendous sophistication. Most powerfully, it centers the real power and costs of violence, which can bring independence, but at the price of dead babies. Pontecorvo lets no one romanticize that violence, but he forces us all to understand how it leads to the historical inevitability of freedom.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970). Just how much can a leading fascist get away with? That’s the subject of Elio Petri’s film. It follows a top police inspector who kills his mistress and leaves clues everywhere, just to see if he gets caught. Of course, all the powerful people know he did it. They don’t care. They intervene just before he destroys himself and make sure he stays in his position. You think this has any relevance for today?