By FRANCISCO DE OLIVEIRA BARROS JUNIOR*

Commentary on the film directed by Leon Hirszman.

1.

They don't wear black tie is a film adapted from the play of the same name by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri. In 1963, in an “atmosphere of euphoria”, he is one of the “young theater directors and playwrights”, “to whom we owe the vitality and brilliance of São Paulo theater” and “actively preparing to extend their creative activities to cinema” (GOMES, 2016, p.268).

Directed by Leon Hirszman, They don't wear black tie portrays a Brazilian situation in which workers and their union movements, in historical effervescence, were repressed by the police force. Factory workers, facing wage squeezes, went on strike, seen as “the sacred right of workers”. In the strike demonstrations, a message of encouragement: “Workers united, will never be defeated”. Comrades fighting for better working conditions and fairer wages.

Cinematographic art, in its “social-democratic commitment”, pays attention to the “outbreak of workers’ revolts”, in artistic responses to the dimensions of the structural crises of capital (ANTUNES, 2009). In the artists’ demonstrations, “the living time of memory” records: on the night of April 30, 1981, at the “Primeiro de Maio” show, Beth Carvalho, Dona Ivone Lara, Gal Costa, Gonzaguinha, Moraes Moreira and Luiz Gonzaga sang. During the show, at Riocentro, two bombs exploded. During his presentation, Gonzaguinha made the “bomb announcement”. A historical phonographic recording, a sound discovery of the “attack show”.

To portray the precariousness experienced by the proletariat in that historical context, the film narrative focuses on the difficulties faced by a working-class family, composed of Romana and Otavio, the parents of Tião and Chiquinho. The circumstances change and, from then on, we are provoked to reflect on how the world of work, its precariousness and unionism are today under neoliberalism. In revealing images, the projection of the daily life of the “class-that-lives-from-work” (ANTUNES, 2009).

Film stimulation for the understanding of “an expanded notion of the working class”, in its “dimensions of diversity”, heterogeneous and complex. In the “transversalities between the dimensions of class and gender”, the Marias are workers, wage earners. How are “salaried workers in the service sector” living? And “the new forms of home work”? In the context of the “transnationalization of capital”, the cinematographic touches think about the “world of work” and lead to a reflection on “the way of being of the working class today” (ANTUNES, 2009).

2.

They don't wear black tie refers to the critical and engaged thinking of a great social scientist: Florestan Fernandes. In 1979, a branch of Brazilian sociology projected a “new society and new man”, taking as a historical example “the Cuban revolution” and its socialist project, led by the emergence of the “specifically revolutionary sociodynamic potentialities” of the “working classes”.

Aimed at the “disintegration of the old society”, “revolutionary consciousness” is a “constructive social force”, focused on the “reconstruction of reality” to flourish in socialism, the “new social order” to be led by the “common man”, “collectively”, the surviving proletariat and “its positive revolutionary functions” (FERNANDES, 1986, p.304).

Cinematic speech in memory of a sociologist present, a capital name of the sociological and university statement “in an era of social revolution”, of “social changes”. The “revolution” in the sociology of the oppressed. In the memorial of the Marxist intellectual and liberator, which reflects on “socialism in the 2007st century”, the quotes from Antonio Gramsci, Attila József and Che Guevara (MÉSZÁROS, 2012). I quote the poet Bertolt Brecht: “Caesar defeated the Gauls. Didn’t he even take a cook?”. It is one of the “questions of a worker who reads” (BRECHT, 166, p.XNUMX).

Cinematographic art provokes reflection on the burdens of historical times carried by those who live under the “tyranny of the imperative of the time of globalizing capital” and its “uncontrollability” and “destructiveness”. “Real savagery of the system”, with “inhumane destructive effects” and attacks on workers’ rights. “Precarious wage packages” and “unemployment” result from clashes between business interests and those of the working class and its workforce (MÉSZÁROS, 2007). Under threat of “barbarism”, historical challenges are posed to those who move forward with projects of “political and social revolution”.

They don't wear black tie It is political cinema that reveals the conflicts of a capitalist society, based on the relationship of exploitation between its fundamental social classes. These, and the struggles they wage among themselves, continue to make the history of all existing societies to this day. Distorting the choir of the happy, Leon Hirszman in dialogue with Karl Marx.

In the memoirs of Fernanda Montenegro, the interpreter of Romana in They don't wear black tie, the record of a “desperate” political moment. In the historical context of the recordings of the “last scene of the film”, in the “Brasilândia favela”, the incredulous shock of stepping onto the ground of “such a miserable place in Pauliceia”. Paulista misery faced in the various facets of the city of São Paulo, experienced in the scenes of class conflicts, filmed in a unique historical time in Brazilian politics.

In a “very poor kitchen”, picking beans with her husband Otavio, the couple’s hands separated “the good beans from the not rotten ones”. A routine activity in the lives of poor cooks, on the occasions when the “mulatinhos” or “string” beans fall into their pots.

In this precarious scenario, the actress gives a political meaning, full of symbolism, to the daily act of separating edible grain from rotten grain. In the projection of a fair table, the “bean scene” focuses on “the grains that will one day free us from the country’s social injustice”. While justice and peace were far away from that conflicting situation, the workers fought for them and the artists recorded in the last days of filming, carried out “during the clash between the Army and the ABC unions, with Lula leading the demands, already on the way to founding the Workers’ Party” (MONTENEGRO, 2019, p.226).

3.

From the “republic of São Bernardo”, a history of the PT is “understood as part of the global movement of formation of workers’ parties” (BARROS, 2022, p.53). In 1979, “the metalworkers and their gang”, workers of the democratic writing born in the streets, “tried to rebuild Brazilian democracy”, but the violent police repression was photographed in the protests and strike days in the ABC region.

The social substance of memories of politics and work, seen through images manufactured by intellectual filmmakers, organically “witnesses to the culture of the poor classes”. Artists “whose function has been a constant service to the exploited”. Augusto Boal and Bertolt Brecht staged the “so many stories” narrated and the “so many questions” asked by the oppressed workers. In the staging of the “misery of the masses”, “the theatrical communist”, “tired of work”, “shows the injustice of the world” (BRECHT, 2012, p.33).

They don't wear black tie projects the vision of some characters, exemplary sources “of workers who achieved, through an intense life of the conditions of their class, a militant consciousness”. Braulio, played by Milton Gonçalves, is a model character of “a person who perceives, fights, whose hands weave the living fabric of history” (BOSI, 2003, p.155).

In the militancy plot, he was assassinated, and the fact that he was black was a factor in the criteria for choosing him as the target of the shots. “Shoot the black man,” the order went out. Heroicized, Braulio had a wake attended by a significant number of people. His body, wrapped in a box, went out in a procession through the streets, accompanied by the banners of the mourning workers, in defense of union freedom and with the chorus of voices affirming that “the strike continues”. Moved by the loss of his friend from the militancy, Otavio says to Chiquinho, his youngest son: “Your son will study Braulio in the history of Brazil”. “So the fight was in vain?” The poet responds: “When the one who did not fight alone is killed, the enemy has not yet won” (BRECHT, 2012, p.187).

Authors of the “global screen” and the “political potential of cinema” in images resulting from “articulated challenges to capitalism and the functioning of the political field”. Glauber Rocha and Jean-Luc Godard are exemplary. With They don't wear black tie, Leon Hirszman's cinematic art highlights the permanent and continuous artistic movement, guardian of the “memory of the past”.

Following Shakespearean updates, the filmmaker “retains universal ideas” in the filmic artifices he conceives and continues to express “foundations of humanity, society, life and, in this specific case, also politics”. The concept of power is staged on stage and screen and aims to “recall in contemporary times the actions of political parties, ideologies or political projects that attract and encourage men to political actions” (CHAIA, 2015, p.37).

Focused on the “political potential of cinema” in the classroom, the professor uses a film reference from the perspective of the “power of knowledge” and analysis of the cinematographic text. The powerful art in the formation of a critical consciousness about the general conditions in which workers live. “Political themes” and “forms of power” from the thoughtful perspectives of filmmakers.

 “Marginal texts,” including writings by Karl Marx, in past contexts, connected “workers’ inquiry and political struggle.” A questionnaire, a workers’ survey to be revisited with questions from 2025 about who Brazilian workers are and how they live. Their social dramas, stigmatizations suffered, “institutional and societal bad faith,” (in)dignifying work, destitutions, multidimensional racisms (class and race amalgamated), and the moral pains experienced by the “Brazilian rabble,” naturalized and composed of women and men humiliated in their subcitizenships (SOUZA, 2022).

They don’t wear black tie, but they would like to go to the movies. Workers, in their multidimensionality, don’t just want food. Can a worker who earns the minimum monthly wage afford to pay for a movie ticket? Bored by the vampirization of everyday terrors, on his day off, will he have the energy to go out? And what about the popcorn, with Coca-Cola, sold in Marvel combos? In the box-office society in which we live, with its scenes of social separation, they created the exclusive “VIP” rooms and other IMAX spaces, characterized by “large screens, high-resolution technology and immersive sound”, with promises of lots of emotion and intense sensations of film enjoyment. Which privileged people can enjoy them?

May 1st, national holiday of “Labor and Workers’ Day”. In Teresina, capital of Piauí, in my sociological curiosity, I click on “Ingresso.com” to find out the price of the movie ticket Thunderbolts. In the 3D VIP room, at the 18:00 pm dubbed session, those who have money will have to pay the sum of 74,09 reais (full price). Does anyone want to get me a “courtesy”? Asks an education worker. One detail: the days of the ticket seller profession are numbered.

*Francisco de Oliveira Barros Junior is a retired professor from the Department of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI).

Reference

They don't wear black tie.

Brazil, 1981, 134 minutes.

Directed by: Leon Hirszman,

Screenplay: Leon Hirszman & Gianfrancesco Guarnieri

Photography: Lauro Escorel Filho.

Cast: Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, Fernanda Montenegro, Lélia Abramo, Bete Mendes, Carlos Alberto Ricelli, Milton Gonçalves

REFERENCES

ANTUNES, Ricardo. The senses of work: essay on the affirmation and denial of work. São Paulo, SP: Boitempo, 2009.

BARROS, Celso Rocha. EN, a story🇧🇷 São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2022.

BOSI, Eclea. The living time of memory: essays on social psychology. New York: Routledge, 2003.

BRECHT, Bertolt. Poems 1913-1956. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2012.

CHAIA, Miguel (Org.). Cinema and politics. Rio de Janeiro: Azougue Editorial, 2015.

FERNANDES, Florestan. New society and new man. In: Ianni, Octavio (org.). Florestan Fernandes. São Paulo: Editora Ática, 1986.

GOMES, Paulo Emilio Sales. A colonial situation? São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2016.

MESZÁROS, István. The challenge and burden of historical time: socialism in the 2007st century. São Paulo: Boitempo, XNUMX.

MONTENEGRO, Fernanda. Prologue, act, epilogue: memories. New York: Routledge, 2019.

SOUZA, Jesse. The Brazilian rabble: who he is and how he lives. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2022.

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE