What a brilliant portrayal of the horrible, monotonous work that went into getting our cars made. If you found that interesting, you should get yourself a copy of "The Assembly Line" - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Assembly-Line-R ... 087023322X

Humain, Trop Humain is an excellent film, and like the Production Line it does a very good job of putting forward a viewpoint that was very popular back in the 60s and 70s - namely that repetitive, mechanical work was at odds with a fulfilling life. This itself was not a new idea: the great philosophers of the 19th century (including Nietsche and Marx, arguably the two whose thoughts had the most influence on the 20th century) wrote about it at length. The movie's title, Humain, Trop Humain is taken from Nietsche.

Critiques of boring work were rife in the countercultures of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In fact, the film reminded me of an old punk song that I hadn't thought of for ages: Charles by the Skids.

It seems ironic that the countercultural movements and much of the mainstream (particularly union-members) spent a lot of time lobbying for better types of work - yet the response was for capitalists to accelerate the use of technology, and to seek to exploit cheaper, less educated labour pools around the world... leaving vast areas of our parts of the world completely under-employed and at the mercy of much more de-skilled alternatives. A walk around much of post-industrial England shows areas that are no less bleak, and certainly less cohesive and purposeful, than they were before 1979.

My big memory of the Production Line was how ironic it was that a car that was produced under such exploitative conditions became one of the symbols of the counterculture. Ah, the contradictions of capitalism!

For an interesting commentary and review of Humain, Trop Humain click here

Mangualde

Levallois

That sort of hurts...

It would be nice to think it was all still there, ready to start making them again...

Can't remember seeing this here, so I'm posting a link.

Jiane 1974: