After We Peasants (5.5 million viewers in November 2022), director Fabien Béziat sets out, this time with Hugues Nancy, to retrace a century and a half of working class history. On the same principle: sequences of archive images commented in voice-over, according to a chronological progression, alternate with interviews carried out with around thirty workers, apprentices, active or retired – in their workplace, at them or in disused warehouses.
Interesting, the historical part however reveals itself as unsurprising, especially for those who remember The Workers’ Time (series by Stan Neumann, 2020). Like the use of an extract from La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (1895), by the Lumière brothers, in the introduction and conclusion. In the narration, the actor Anthony Bajon (La Prière, by Cédric Kahn, 2018) takes intonations of class struggle and speaks in the first person plural. “It’s us who… make, make, demonstrate, fight… for rights that benefit all,” he says. The lack of recognition is present throughout the film.
Child labor is denounced, like unsustainable rates, but pride, solidarity and social achievements are underlined, over the course of two world conflicts (with consequences of the employment of women and immigrants), strikes of 1936 then the insurrectional strikes of 1947-1948 – which the commentary declares “forgotten” – and May 68. If the 1970s marked the apogee of the working class, the end of the “thirty glorious years” heralded massive closures. “I cried so much to go. Afterwards I cried so much because we weren’t going there anymore”, summarizes Martine Geselle, from the Leurent spinning mill, in Tourcoing (North).
Working conditions
Moving and sincere, the testimonies give all the interest to the film. Jean-Pol Massina recounts his fear upon arriving in the mine at age 14; Christian Corouge “embodies” the Peugeot factory in Sochaux; Aimable Patin, the Charbonnages de France; Pascale Gloaguen and Nicole Lesage, the sardine factory of Douarnenez. Denise Bailly-Michels shows a photo of her father, Charles Michels, trade unionist and communist activist. She reads the letter sent before he was shot by the Nazis on October 22, 1941: “We fought for workers to have a better life. It will come. »
Safety and working conditions have actually improved for today’s 5 million workers. Their number should increase, boosted by relocations – such as that of the Emanuel Lang spinning mill in Hirsingue (Haut-Rhin) – and the ecological transition. Indispensable workers: for the first time in American history, a president, Joe Biden, supported the strikers at the General Motors plant in Michigan on September 26.
