[In Blue Collar Schrader] seems to have been influenced by both Godard and Antonioni—the former in the deadening ritual of the assembly line itself, and the latter in the chromatic utilization of industrial artifacts as art objects in their own right. The movie has an interesting look to it as Schrader tries to make a painterly comment on the pathetic bleakness of low-level industrial landscapes.
But the pacing is something else again, as much of Blue Collar turns out to be stylistically and thematically indecisive, inarticulate, and incoherent. At first the movie seems to be striving for a comically absurdist tone on the order of Rene Clair's A Nous la Liberte and Charles Chaplin's Modern Times…. [We] are slowly made to understand that something more serious is afoot. Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey are propelled with minimal preparation into a robbery of the union treasury. But the model for this caper is less [John Huston's] The Asphalt Jungle than Big Deal on Madonna Street. Unfortunately, Schrader seems very wary of any possibility of laughter in the audience, and he throws away some very promising gags arising from the cliches of synchronizing watches and wearing masks (with dangling eyeballs yet!).
Somehow the bunglers succeed in spiriting away the union safe, only to discover that they have made off with a few hundred bucks in petty cash. But the safe also yields up an accounting ledger with records of incriminating payoffs to racketeers. The burglars are thus transformed into blackmailers, with very mixed results for the three: One receives a major promotion; one dies in a car-painting room from a choking blizzard of blue paint, as if to express in Antoniesque terms the blue collar blues; and one turns informer for the FBI in the manner of Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in [Elia Kazan's] On the Waterfront.
This is a free excerpt of 302 words. There are 754 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Schrader, Paul (Joseph) 1946–: Critical Essay by Andrew Sarris Access Pass.
