131 - Human, Too Human (Humain, Trop Humain), 1973, France. Dir. Louis Malle.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

131 - Human, Too Human (Humain, Trop Humain), 1973, France. Dir. Louis Malle.

I'm not smearing Peugeot, but this is the hottest car now.

That is what an attendee says at an auto show.

About a 1973 Citroen.

A what?

A Citroen.  It is a French car.

Have you never heard of it?

You have now.

French carmakers include Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, Venturi, Bugatti, and Alpine.

Louis Malle has taken his camera to the Citroen auto plant.

He opens on a farm with cows.

Then he pans across the road and looks at the outside of the auto plant.  With its uniquely shaped zigzag roofline.

As choral voices sing, a woman pushes a joystick to move a hanging, sliding crane across a vast warehouse of coiled sheet steel to move one coil into position.

She lowers it onto a platform.

The platform rises.

The coil is engaged.  It spins through a press which cuts it into sheets.  And slides them into a stack.  With a whip-smash sound.

For the next seventy-seven minutes we watch, without commentary, the inner workings of the auto plant.  We abandon it for just a bit to visit the auto show.

Where the comments of the unsuspecting attendees are juxtaposed with the processes of the plant workers.

This film is a little boy's dream.

If you grew up watching children's shows such as Captain Kangaroo, then you were treated to 30-, 60-, and 90-second snippets of factory life.

Remember the one that took you inside the Wrigley's chewing gum plant?

You could not get enough of it.

Louis Malle has done his viewers a favor by providing this inner look without commentary of any kind. 

We see welders, riveters, hammerers, screwers, flippers, seamstresses, sanders, grinders, buffers, polishers, painters, wirecutters, people who place nuts on bolts, and all kinds of jobs the names of which we do not know.

The workplace has a rhythm.  A sound.  A look.  A feel.

The people work with competence and confidence.

Mostly quietly.

Without hovering supervision.

Each is in charge of his own section.

Each is an integral part of the steady process.

It is the opposite of Charlie Chaplain's Modern Times.  His film showed the assembly line as dehumanizing.  This film shows it as human.  And skillfully so.

You observe the faces of the people.

And their clothing.

The occasional uniform.  Coveralls.  Aprons.  Lab coats.

But mostly people wearing their own clothes.  Pants and dresses.  Skirts and nylons.  A woman standing on wedges.  Most people standing.

Dangling hair and dangling jewelry.  No hair nets.  No lab caps.

Dangling cigarettes with long ashes.  You never once see someone stopping to ash his cigarette.  His hands are too busy working.  The cigarette just dangles.  The ash just hangs.

Men welding without safety glasses.

Times have changed.

Perhaps Malle's only commentary comes in his odd choice to title his film after Friedrich Nietzsche's aphoristic book.

The connection is not immediately obvious from the footage.

Perhaps it is to a Marxist.  Or someone who can find something to complain about in everything.

But this is not The Jungle.  The workers are not portrayed as victims.  Malle is not complaining.  The workers are shown to be capable, healthy, and strong.

And one can glean from the film the concept of the work ethic.

The belief in work as a moral good.


Now, who would like to buy one of these ugly little cars?