Tout Va Bien — or is It?

by David Tripe

About a fortnight ago, a particularly interesting film was shown at the university — Jean Luc Godard's 'Tout Va Bien'. I found it particularly interesting because of the political discussion contained therein of the stance of the French Communist party, and of the way in which one can attempt to understand the problems faced by other people in an industrial society.

If you have ever read the book, 'Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative', by Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, you will recall their summary of the role of the French Communist Party in the disturbances of May 1968. The role of the French Communist Party was shown as being so reactionary that Danny Cohn-Bendit had turned to an anarchist position, The French Communist Party was shown as having its prime objective as the attainment of electoral majorities, and as a result it was firmly opposed to the strikes mounted by workers in May 1968, because it was afraid that they would damage its electoral position. And when the Party was finally forced to join in with the strikers for fear of being left behind by the workers it was supposed to be supporting, its role was then to try and sell them out as soon as possible.

This film showed a rather similar view of the French Communist Party, but it was much more thorough and more sophisticated. We were shown an official of the CGT (Confederation Generale de Travailleurs), the Trade Union organisation which forms the power-base for the French Communist Party, trying to address workers in a sausage factory at a time when they had finally resorted to a strike. The official was mostly concerned to stop the workers from imprisoning the firm's Managing Director, and to make the strike a peaceful one, since he was forced to the conclusion that he could not get the workers to go back to work. He was also insistent in trying to persuade the workers to believe him that the only way in which they might attain socialism was under the leadership of the French Communist Party in the national 'united front' (with the even more right-wing French Socialist Party.) The workers, noticeably refused to listen to him. They ignored his accusations that they were Maoists and therefore undesirable — if being a Maoist meant taking industrial action when something was wrong, they could see nothing wrong with being labelled Maoists.

The other argument of the film was much more ideologically sophisticated — it raised very much more complicated problems. The workers were attempting to explain to the manager exactly what it was that they were objecting to. They tried giving him the same three minutes to go to the toilet in as they were allowed, and under the same conditions — if they took any longer, their pay was docked, and he was forced to go about a quarter of a mile to get to a toilet. He ended up by relieving himself through a window of his office (in which he was imprisoned), after he had broken a window for the purpose. This was a part of the attempt by the film to show that it was not really possible to convey the meaning of what the workers were objecting to with mere words.

The idea was also approached when we saw the workers trying to explain to two reporters what it was that they were striking about. The inadequacy of mere words was shown to the extent that the workers just about gave up trying to explain it to the reporters, even though these reporters were in ideological sympathy (as far as possible) with the workers, and thus were very willing to understand them. But then, as soon as the reporter filed the report with her news editor, it was rejected by him as being nonsense. After seeing this, it is much easier to understand why it is that the workers' position is generally misrepresented in reports of industrial action. It is because the reporters themselves do not understand what is going on, and the reports that do come from the workers are often from the type of people such as the parroting CGT official described.

If you have a mind that is open to the consideration of political issues, you would find it interesting to go to the film, 'Tout Va Bien', should you get another opportunity to do so. It is not a film for everyone — there were many people walking out of the film complaining that it did not seem to be about anything very much. But for people interested in such issues, there is a lot to set one thinking in the film. I have not covered all the issues raised by the film — there were too many, but among the others discussed is the nature and existence of much of the unconscious prejudice that exists against women. But I would recommend politically and socially concerned people to go and see the film.