Clockwork: A Film on Frederick Taylor and the Making of the Modern American Workplace (review)

Film Reviews Clockwork: A Film on Frederick Taylor and the Making of the Modern American Workplace, produced by Eric Breitbart, 1982, with support of the New York State Council on the Humanities; 16mm color film or 3/4" videocassette, 25 minutes; Rental: $50; Sale: $450. Most of the labor history documentaries made in the past dozen years have celebrated militant strikes, unions, and working-class movements. Indeed, a student whose only exposure to labor history consisted of viewing Union Maids, With Babies and Banners, and The Wobblies might justifiably wonder why capitalism still reigns unchallenged in modern America. With so many heroic workers and heroic songs, why did the bosses win? Eric Breitbart 's important color film, Clockwork, is one of the first labor history documentaries to provide part of the answer, to emphasize the other side of the equation—management strategies to quell workingclass struggles and resistance. Inspired, presumably, by Harry Braverman's seminal study of Labor and Monopoly Capital, Breitbart set out to examine the development and impact of "Taylorism"--the movement founded by Frederick Winslow Taylor and aimed at standardizing and rationalizing work by turning the worker into another piece of machinery. The film begins with a look--perhaps a bit romanticized--at the nineteenth-century workshop in which machinists and other skilled craft workers reigned supreme. It then chronicles the efforts by Taylor and his followers (including today's numerical control experts) to gain control over work pace and process through scientific management. Although the film notes that some workers resisted the Taylorization of work, it strongly emphasizes the failure of resistance and the acceptance of new modes of work, suggesting that workers accepted a bargain of higher wages in return for diminished control. Breitbart draws particularly interesting parallels between the emergence of Taylorism and the emergence of the moving picture camera as a means of recording human motion. The c'amerà , as the film shows dramatically, became a sophisticated weapon in the arsenal of the time and motion experts. Yet the reliance on this visually appealing footage tends to underplay resistance to Taylorization. Time and motion studies provide effective, dramatic, or 69 amusing film clips, but resistance to workplace rationalization is much more difficult to capture on film. Also missing from the Clockwork is a clear explanation of whether reorganizing work (e g. through informal work groups) would solve the problem of the degradation of labor that Breitbart has illuminated or whether fundamental change would only come with an alteration in the ownership of the means of production. The film uses conventional ingredients of the historical documentary genre— stills, old film footage, contemporary interviews —but uses them effectively. An excellent sound track enlivens the film. The narration, however, is spoken rather woodenly and makes the film seem longer than its twenty-five minute running time. Films that focus on working-class struggles may be more exciting to watch than Clockwork, but teachers of labor history and labor studies will want to supplement them with the more depressing but equally important tale told in this film. Roy Rosenzweig George Mason University The Homefront, a film/video produced and directed by Steven Schecter . Black and White in three parts (89 1/2 miutes total). Distributed by Churchill films. The Homefront is a neatly packaged three part history of the impact of World War II on American society. Produced and directed by Steven Schecter, it provides large doses of extremely interesting footage that can be a useful addition to American history courses. The film is a welcome relief from the deluge of contemporary films intent on revitalizing heroic warriors who are placed in contexts devoid of social or political realism. As an attempt to explain how World War II "changed Americans forever", however, the film is neither particularly profound nor comprehensive; neither does it ever attempt to compare the domestic impact of World War II to earlier or later conflicts . The film does provide the viewer with a number of themes: the war was a "time of opportunity for the underclass" and for women seeking employment; the quick 70 ...