Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1960

The Contenders:

The Angry Silence
The Apartment (winner)
The Facts of Life
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Never on Sunday

Strike Two Count

Film: The Angry Silence
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I’m not shy about my politics in general, but I tend to keep them off this blog as not being really a part of what I write about. But movies, like a great deal of art, are often political. It’s impossible to write about some of them without dipping into the political spectrum. The Angry Silence is such a film. There are plenty of films that deal with issues of labor unions and working people in conflict with their bosses. Most, like Norma Rae, North Country, or even Silkwood and Erin Brockovich are clear in siding with the people over the business. The Angry Silence is not nearly this clear, which makes it both frustrating and interesting, and for the same reason.

This is the story of a particular factory and a particular strike that doesn’t go the way that everyone wants. Tom Curtis (Richard Attenborough) works in a factory and has two children with his wife Anna (Pier Angeli) and as the film starts, we learn that they have a third one on the way. Because of this, when an unofficial strike is called at the factory, Tom decides not to participate, which is his right. The goal of the strike, which has been arranged by an outside agitator named Travers (Alfred Burke) and more or less enforced by the shop steward, Bert Connolly (Bernard Lee). The goal of the strike is to demand that the factory become a closed shop, which would give the union more power.