With this history of the European working world spread over three centuries, Stan Neumann, a famous documentary filmmaker of Czech origin, author of films noted both for their rigor and for their careful aesthetics (the architecture of great monuments, a study of La langue does not lie, the diary of the German philologist Victor Klemperer under the Third Reich), has achieved a real tour de force.
His Workers’ Time is destined to become a classic. Between the historical interest, the strength of the filmed archives, the wealth of testimonies, the integration of animation sequences as instructive as they are amusing, it is a fascinating lesson in political, social and economic history in which the facts ( from working conditions to major struggles between bosses and employees) also leave room for emotion.
The most surprising thing about this long journey, which starts with the first British factories of the 1730s, is to see how the issues remain the same through the centuries.
sell your time
With, as first evidence, the dispossession of time. Because being a worker, today as yesterday, is first and foremost about selling your time. “The obviousness with which past and present echo each other surprised me during the editing,” says Stan Neumann.
Thanks to a remarkable editing, the director did not remain a prisoner of the chronological framework. He constantly confronts historical narration with today’s words. From the worker in the Krupp factories in the middle of the 19th century, who had to adapt to the increasingly infernal rhythm of machines and had his time controlled even when he went to the toilet, to that of Peugeot, there was almost half a century, who says in voice-over: “The line work, it damages your body, your brain. It’s not rewarding. Apart from the pains, you transmit nothing! »
Employees of today tell, in front of the camera, their experience. “We are conditioned by the ringtones, the noise,” said a worker in a car factory. “People no longer define themselves as workers. They define themselves as the position to which they are assigned. There is not even, within the same factory, this idea that we are all in the same boat! “, laments a worker in the agri-food industry.
The animation sequences offer a breath of fresh air while dissecting various concepts (from capitalism to Taylorism) in a fun way. Add a soundtrack punctuated by songs that have remained in the collective memory of the proletariat and the warm voice of Bernard Lavilliers to the commentary. From Glasgow (Scotland) to Terni (Italy), from Sochaux (Doubs) to Berlin, from the mines of Silesia, in Poland, to the Italian steelworks, this fresco in “research of lost time” mode is worth the detour.
