Radium Girls
Oct. 15th, 2018 07:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe Heartland Film Festival has begun, and it’s already brought me one splendid film. Radium Girls, which tells the true story of the girls who worked at American Radium, licking their brushes to give them a fine point as they paint watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. It’s a good job - high-paying for a girl at the time.
Seventeen-year-old Bessie Cavallo is no born crusader. She’s delighted when a photographer asks her to attend a Communist party meeting with him, but mostly because she loves parties. “I’d live in a Valentino movie if I could,” she fervently tells one of his comrades, a black woman documentary filmmakers who isn’t having any of it: “Hollywood is just propaganda,” Etta insists. Bessie and her older sister Jo love to escape their humdrum life by learning about ancient Egypt. In a charming early scene, the girls sneak into the radium factory after hours and throw themselves a little party, where they paint their faces with glowing radium dots.
But then Jo gets sick. The company doctor insists there’s nothing wrong with her, but Bessie, unconvinced, goes looking for answers. Her Communist friend leads her to the office of a woman in the forefront of the fight against workplace toxins, who has just been waiting for a chance to nail American Radium: American Radium commissioned a study a few years ago, she explained, which showed that Radium was toxic, but rather than put into place the recommended safety precautions, they buried the research. But if Bessie and Jo will join the court case…
I loved this movie. The main story is dark. Not only are our girls are underdogs battling odds that truly seem insurmountable, but it quickly becomes apparent that Jo’s illness will be fatal - maybe not just yet, but within a year or two.
But there are moments of light and grace, like stars in the darkness, which means that the movie never descends into misery porn. There’s the aforementioned party at the radium factory; there are flashbacks to Bessie and Jo enjoying an outing by the lake in happier times. Even the brief moment when Bessie and Etta hug after they’re let out of jail show that from after unpromising beginning they've found real connection and hope. If good-time Bessie can become a crusader, who can’t?
(I feel sure that Etta is based on a real person and I’ve been cudgeling my brain as to who, but I can’t remember.)
The narrative portions of the film are interspersed with brief montages of Etta’s documentary footage (or “documentary footage”; I don’t know how much if any of it actually comes from the 20s), which situates the story in a wider context of labor unrest. One of the great strengths of the film is the really layered, textured vision of the 1920s that it creates. The sets feel lived in: Bessie has decorated her room with radium paint stars and pictures cut out of Hollywood magazines. She’s trying to have her taste of Flaming Youth on a budget. She’s delighted when their grandfather buys a radio set, but Jo worries about the expense. Both girls obsess over ancient Egypt - a fashionable twenties touch.
And underlying it this other dark world that is covered up, papered over, that Bessie only discovers when she begins to dig. Or maybe it’s not covered up at all: it’s right there on the surface, glowing in the dark, so obvious that your eyes skate right past it until you’re taught how to look.
Seventeen-year-old Bessie Cavallo is no born crusader. She’s delighted when a photographer asks her to attend a Communist party meeting with him, but mostly because she loves parties. “I’d live in a Valentino movie if I could,” she fervently tells one of his comrades, a black woman documentary filmmakers who isn’t having any of it: “Hollywood is just propaganda,” Etta insists. Bessie and her older sister Jo love to escape their humdrum life by learning about ancient Egypt. In a charming early scene, the girls sneak into the radium factory after hours and throw themselves a little party, where they paint their faces with glowing radium dots.
But then Jo gets sick. The company doctor insists there’s nothing wrong with her, but Bessie, unconvinced, goes looking for answers. Her Communist friend leads her to the office of a woman in the forefront of the fight against workplace toxins, who has just been waiting for a chance to nail American Radium: American Radium commissioned a study a few years ago, she explained, which showed that Radium was toxic, but rather than put into place the recommended safety precautions, they buried the research. But if Bessie and Jo will join the court case…
I loved this movie. The main story is dark. Not only are our girls are underdogs battling odds that truly seem insurmountable, but it quickly becomes apparent that Jo’s illness will be fatal - maybe not just yet, but within a year or two.
But there are moments of light and grace, like stars in the darkness, which means that the movie never descends into misery porn. There’s the aforementioned party at the radium factory; there are flashbacks to Bessie and Jo enjoying an outing by the lake in happier times. Even the brief moment when Bessie and Etta hug after they’re let out of jail show that from after unpromising beginning they've found real connection and hope. If good-time Bessie can become a crusader, who can’t?
(I feel sure that Etta is based on a real person and I’ve been cudgeling my brain as to who, but I can’t remember.)
The narrative portions of the film are interspersed with brief montages of Etta’s documentary footage (or “documentary footage”; I don’t know how much if any of it actually comes from the 20s), which situates the story in a wider context of labor unrest. One of the great strengths of the film is the really layered, textured vision of the 1920s that it creates. The sets feel lived in: Bessie has decorated her room with radium paint stars and pictures cut out of Hollywood magazines. She’s trying to have her taste of Flaming Youth on a budget. She’s delighted when their grandfather buys a radio set, but Jo worries about the expense. Both girls obsess over ancient Egypt - a fashionable twenties touch.
And underlying it this other dark world that is covered up, papered over, that Bessie only discovers when she begins to dig. Or maybe it’s not covered up at all: it’s right there on the surface, glowing in the dark, so obvious that your eyes skate right past it until you’re taught how to look.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-16 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-16 12:19 pm (UTC)This may be a flaw in my film-festival attending plan. Hmm.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-16 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-17 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-17 03:48 am (UTC)