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Showing posts from December, 2010

Made in Dagenham

Sally Hawkins and her plucky overbite will not be denied.   This much, at least, we should know by now. Ms. Hawkins plays Rita O'Grady, one of  a very small minority (just 157 of 55,000)  of women working in the Ford Plant in Dagenham England.   The year is 1968, a fact partially announced by Desmond Dekker's "The Israelites," which we hear early on (the song went to #1 on the English charts that year), as male and female employees are seen riding their bikes to the plant, in something of a jolly, English, working class idyll.  Rita and her coworkers are sequestered in a sweaty workroom, where they are responsbible for sewing upholstery for Ford vehicles.   The warmth of the close workspace is attested to, as the first order of business for many of the women is to strip off overclothes down to slips, bras and articles of feminie dress that are a running source of embarassment for their kindly union rep., Albert, whenever he shows up to brief the women on negotiati