Our double feature this week will explore the use of class warfare in film. Again, there is nothing new about this as a literary device. Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens were masters of this theme. So it goes, as film became it’s own art form, common literary devices and themes began to manifest themselves onto celluloid. This happened very early as a matter of fact. 1925’s “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein was a propaganda tool used to unite the proletariat. And of course there have been many film incarnations of “Robin Hood” and “Pride and Prejudice”….. probably a few too many.
Post-WWII ravaged Rome is the setting for our first film this week. Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves” (1948) tells the story of a young father who finally finds work pasting Rita Hayworth posters on buildings. This new employment represents the only glimmer of hope the family has seen in a very long time. The job requires a bicycle, which is promptly stolen on his first day. The rest of the film, we follow the man and his son in heart breaking desperation attempting to get the bicycle back. This film marked the beginning of the Italian Neo-realism movement. Everything is shot on location with a lot of untrained actors and extras. This gives the film a feeling of authenticity that had been completely unseen at the time, especially from Hollywood. The plot may sound familiar, but I guarantee you, “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” has nothing on this foreign classic.
Flash forward a little over fifty years and we find that the theme is still very much intact. My favorite of all of Robert Altman’s films is his period drama/comedy “Gosford Park” (2001). Several different story lines unfold from as many narrators in this English mansion on a weekend shooting party. The two classes, the servants and the served are separated physically by a staircase. The audience is a fly on the wall, both upstairs and downstairs as we uncover the mystery behind both scandal and murder. I love the way this film is made. Many times, we are simply listening in to several conversations at once, all of which hold pertinent information to the plot at hand.
Enjoy.
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