“Fuck Uncle Sam, man.”
At
a pivotal juncture in Schrader’s tightly plotted crime drama, the IRS has
rumbled that Zeke has been claiming for six kids rather than the three he has.
Even commandeering his neighbour’s children doesn’t work, leaving him with the
possibility of a staggering tax bill and certain poverty. Zeke responds to his
situation with a chaotic combination of black humour and fury. Like Jerry and
Smokey, his colleagues on a car factory assembly line, Zeke pins his hopes for
better working conditions on the union. But through chance they learn that their
representatives are complicit in maintaining their position on Detroit’s breadline;
this discovery, ironically, offers a chance to get rich. Fear, greed and the
machinations of greater powers conspire to tear the friends apart.
Schrader
is fastidious in establishing motivation as the men are driven to rob the union
safe. The working day is underpinned by the repetition of a booming Mannish Boy riff; it’s rough, sweaty work,
punctuated only by a lunchtime of beer and profanities. In the bar Jerry puts Burrows,
a snooping FBI man, in his place: “I got my fucking raise. I’m proud of my union.”
Later, however, we see that Jerry’s teenage daughter has bloodied her mouth
after fashioning a crude wire brace to fix her teeth, because Jerry can’t
afford to pay for dental care.
Blue Collar thrusts cinematic discourse about shady labour
organisations into the spotlight of the cynical seventies. Although the work
doesn’t have the sourness of McCarthyism as in On the Waterfront, union bosses are still depicted as little more
than mobsters; the safe contains a ledger listing illegal, high-interest loans.
After determining that their subscriptions are being hoarded for nefarious
purposes, the three friends decide to blackmail.
Schrader
describes the conspirers as products of their brutalising environment; at the
same time, these are not sentimental portraits. While Zeke and Jerry espouse loyalty
to their families, they’re not averse to letting off steam at Smokey’s, where
drugs and exotic women are liberally available; a Dionysian scene in which they
take cocaine while cavorting with the beauties is as frank as anything Schrader
has authored. Plots, confrontations and betrayals are filmed against an uninspiring
factory skyline. It’s an environment that creates tensions between workers and
bosses, friends and races.
With
Pryor in the mix, comedic breathing space is allowed from time to time. The ice-cool
slickness of previous movie heists, as perfected by directors such as Dassin
and Melville, is inverted when Zeke sends a bin loudly clattering across the
floor. In the film’s drollest moment, the friends jump the security guard
wearing disguises bought from a joke shop.
The
ambience on the film set was abrasive. Schrader nearly had a nervous breakdown,
Pryor resumed coke use with gusto and the three leads squabbled.[i]
However, this competitiveness brought out the best in the actors. Keitel gives
an acutely focused performance while Pryor embodies Zeke’s unfocused anger.
Katto’s Smokey is the alpha of the group. Embellished with doting women, he’s
also the most perceptive and espouses a quasi-Marxist philosophy of how the
establishment pits them against each other to “stay on the line”.
The
decline of their ill-fated enterprise allows Schrader to complement the quality
of the politically complex script with bravura scenes that could have graced
any classic noir. In one sequence, one of the trio is trapped in a sealed plant
room as it fills with paint fumes. The scene cuts between him crying for help to
his co-workers operating noisy machinery while wearing ear guards; his voice, symbolising
those of his fellow oppressed workers, remains unheard as he dies.
Racial
tensions becloud the group’s disintegration. Zeke believes that he wouldn’t
have a chance of avoiding jail because of his colour and buckles under the
pressure, while Jerry finds himself increasingly isolated. The film ends with
two friends at each other’s throats, racial abuse dirtying the air; Smokey’s
philosophical observations repeated over a frozen image strengthen Schrader’s
forceful message. Clark Hodgkiss
[i] Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Bloomsbury, 1998
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