Original subtitles

EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY

- Hey! - Pardon me?

I said. "Hey!" You're bashing that thing all up.

No, I'm not bashing it all up. I just want what I paid two marks for, pickles.

They promised you a specific bonus fo do a specific job by a specific time.

You managed the job by that time and they just scrapped the bonus.

That's just...

You know what that is? it's simply immoral!

Go there and say that it's immoral.

Immoral is a pretty severe word, don't you think?

But the right one.

I was a very introverted person back then.

In my roles, that showed through in my quiet and reserved manner.

But her first appearance on the show

involves her bashing extremely hard on a vending machine,

because she had stuck money in it and nothing was coming out.

So she felt like she should bang on it.

You just have to be a man, sensible and with a clear head.

I think Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

is the first legitimate attempt by a German TV broadcaster

to take socially critical subject matter

and present it in a popular form of entertainment.

The workers' conflicts aren't portrayed as personal conflicts,

but as work-related social conflicts.

You claim that, but I beg to differ.

Calling this series left-wing is an insult to those who are truly left-wing.

I said it was political, not left-wing.

It shows the ties between work and leisure time for workers.

Of course it's political, but that alone means nothing.

How is it political? What does it advocate or want to accomplish?

I really thought that. That it would change something.

I really thought it would effect change.

That it would change the times, the people, the workforce a little.

I thought it could set something in motion.

- Then take the law into your own hands. - What?

Never heard of taking the law into your own hands?

Yes, but...

You'll have to go on strike.

- If that doesn't work... - I won't make anyone strike for us.

That's out of the question.

Why don't you stick together?

Unity is strength. I believe that was a central theme of his.

The idea that if workers stuck together

they could influence employers, because employers need workers

but workers don't necessarily need an employer.

We do stick together when it really matters.

To everyone, and not just a few little men.

Uh-uh, nothing doing.

Then those few little men will have to come up with something.

Just giving up...

{ think just giving up is the worst thing you can do.

We have fo stick together.

Stick together. Boy, you guys have bright ideas.

- Be quiet and listen. - Alf right then.

What do we want from management? That they pay our bonus.

Do you want us all to try praying?

I'l continue. We want something from them, but they want something from us too.

Urgently. at that. The devices.

You mean...?

I mean...

We have the leverage when it comes fo that.

I think that Jochen,

the character played by Gottfried John, touched me

because it was due to a woman,

his girlfriend, whom he'd gotten to know,

that he was led to embrace a new kind of consciousness.

And Hanna's charm is simply...

You don't really even start to mull it over.

You notice much later that she says very clever things.

And she does it in such a laidback way.

Somehow or other she's the one who guides him,

who leads him to that point.

She leads him to a place of expanded consciousness,

with the point of view that one must gain personal self-awareness

and recognise one's own interests.

That was what I ultimately found so fascinating, that turnaround.

Oh man.

think I get it.

Are you in?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, there are a few things we can try.

If you're all for it, then I'm in too.

I do everything. With the majority.

- And you? - Me?

Since you're asking. I'm fine with it.

The majority is for it. and I'm going to start.

It all started on a stroll.

Peter Marthesheimer, Gunter Witte and I.

We were the ones who oversaw WDR TV drama programming.

We decided we would have a private meeting

in order to discuss what we would do in the coming period of time.

And we didn't have that meeting in a secluded hotel somewhere,

instead we all took a stroll together

through the greenbelt in Cologne.

Right, and on that stroll

we then decided we would make two series.

One a crime series

and one a family series.

That's my mother.

Mein Vater.

Aunt Klara.

And Grandma. You already know her.

And my sister Monika.

And her daughter Silvia.

And that's my brother-in-law, Harald.

And that's Manfred.

My best friend.

Hello.

Marthesheimer's crazy idea

was to do a series about workers as family entertainment.

All the series around at that time

were set in family environments that were bourgeois and middle-class.

The family series we're making now

is about workers, and the family in it is a working-class family.

And that itself is a major difference,

when a family series deals with the problems

of a working-class family.

I mean, strictly speaking he's just a worker. Right?

So?

Are you better than him? If you're better, say so.

Better than him? At least I don't get my hands dirty at work.

Are the millions who do get their hands dirty subhuman?

{didn't say a single disparaging word, Marion.

Of course they aren't subhuman, of course not.

But they are a different kind of people. They live differently.

They get their hands dirty. right?

A few days later Peter Marthesheimer came to me

and said, "lI know who we could make the series about workers with.

"We could do it with Fassbinder."

I have to say that confused me at first.

He was ambitious enough

and he was fast.

With the ideas that he had developed along with Marthesheimer,

it was clear that he would manage it.

We were working in Bremen at the time.

Yes, and while there he wrote

for the Eight Hours series.

And that wasn't easy. He was totally stressed out.

He really was so very...

I have seldom seen him so exhausted.

Because there was time pressure, he had a deadline to meet.

And there were guidelines and frequent meetings with Marthesheimer.

In any case, it was a difficult endeavour,

because what he had to deliver was commissioned work.

It wasn't his own film consisting of his own ideas,

it was a commissioned job.

And that was really very demanding for him.

We arrived at Fassbinder after talking to various other people

and after Fassbinder himself had already told us, at a very early stage,

when we described the project to him, that he was very interested.

We must have spent half a year dodging it

before taking concrete action on it.

Even in his early years he was a director who made stylised films

and not so much a director who made films that were all about dull realism.

- Oh, that'll be Grandma. - Grandma?

Is everyone here?

Ah, you're all already gathered together.

- And some new faces. - Good evening.

Good evening.

This is Gregor.

- Good evening. - Gregor is my lover.

And I actually originally imagined

that we'd do a more realistic series.

Not necessarily a series

that resembled a news programme,

but, nonetheless, a series that was very close

in its imagery to documentary-style cinematography.

What I liked was having someone there so spontaneously

who I knew had a store of energy that was substantial enough

to pull something like that off.

And then I finally brought myself to say, "Okay, we'll do it with Fassbinder.”

Your daughter isn't eating.

If she does something wrong, she's my daughter.

Say what you want. she's not eating!

Eat, Sylvia. Please.

I don't like spinach.

- You eat what's on your plate! - Kiss my arse!

Lots of things weren't normal back then,

because we had the Second World War behind us

and the social revolution that took place in 1968

led people to liberate themselves

from those conventional ideas and from those shackles.

And Eight Hours Don't Make a Day made a contribution to that.

People talked about love through the lack of love.

Or about...

Or about broad-mindedness through closed-mindedness.

That was simply the way things were at that time

because we had a burden to bear and we weren't religious.

Instead we were the first generation

to really second-guess all the values that we had been taught,

because we wondered how it was possible that all that hadn't stopped anything.

We all belong to the generation

that the broadcasting corporations were bringing in at around that time.

They were looking for young people, looking for topics relevant to them.

And they weren't against what was happening.

That was at least the case at liberal-minded Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

At the same time films were being made

that all had the same political theme.

The emancipation of post-war society.

Daring to demand more democracy.

Establishing a more just system.

Really testing the actual worth of the "social partnership”.

It's no coincidence at all that Fassbinder was the first

to ever do a television series that dealt with people who were workers.

What are we to do? Slave away till we spit up a lung?

What do I care about their targets?!

If we can't get four tools done, then they should try and make do with two!

Forme, what's totally normal is always criminal.

I'm not going to kill myself so a foreman can meet his target.

Is that clear?

That was, so to speak. the slogan that was so provocative.

And you can apply that here as well,

because the working mechanisms were portrayed just as they were.

And it was the revolt against that.

Not a revolt that involved smashing things to pieces,

although there was a willingness to "destroy what's destroying us”.

You're all crazy!

Boss!

I scrapped it.

The power structures that exist...

The power structures in factories, if you like,

that is another topic of our show.

We didn't want to portray them yet again as something unchangeable,

like 10,000 other television programmes have already done.

What we instead set out to do was to show. to search out. or to find a way

of fighting against those structures.

- Are you a worker too? - Got a problem with that?

No. But you don't look like one at all.

- But lam one. - Oh well.

None of that matters nowadays anyway.

My mother said, "You can always get a worker."

Because I had fallen in love with one who resembled Elvis Presley a little.

I thought he was so great, and then I took him home.

And my mother said, "You can always get a worker. Take your time."

- Because I think you're nice, despite... - Despite what?

- Despite the fact that you talk lots of poo. - Poo? Oh you mean shit.

No, no. I'm absolutely serious. { really think you're very nice.

- How about we go someplace else? - I'm the maid of honour.

A maid of honour can't just...

- Where to then? - Someplace where...

Well, someplace different to here.

Alf right.

I don't think that she would have been that revolutionary,

Miss Erlkonig.

I don't think she would have broken loose.

Not with Rudolf Waldemar Brem, with Rolf.

Because he was a worker in the factory as well,

so what chance did he have?

But the workforce greatly desires Mr. Miltenberger to be the foreman.

Mr. Miltenberger isn't even qualified to be a foreman.

- He's about to take his foreman's exam. - Then let's assume he passes the exam.

- It's just a question. - We can still ask questions.

That was the great thing, that the dialogues that Fassbinder wrote

weren't written in the language of the workers.

It had a different register, it was done in a somewhat higher register.

So viewers weren't getting their everyday lives presented to them

but something that piqued their curiosity.

Workers who think for themselves.

What more could one hope for?

One gets the feeling you do hope for something more.

Now then, how would things be if Mr. Miltenberger got his certificate?

Then the situation would be different.

We very much desire Mr. Miltenberger to be the foreman.

If you get what I mean.

They weren't like the guys in the film were.

Then they realised that the original topic was their working world after all.

And I found the language that Rainer chose incredibly fascinating,

the fact that it wasn't everyday language.

Some people can always take a taxi and some never can.

That's just how it is.

Really! No matter what happens you always say, "That's just how itis.”

Well, things are how they are.

No, they're not. They're not that way at all.

What do you plan on doing about it?

One needs to be able to think better.

I saw Luise Ullrich in Liebelei.

She was terrific in that, absolutely terrific.

But Werner Finck was at home in the absurdist tradition.

He was such an oddball.

But they were good. He did well in choosing the two of them.

No, it's good. it's a really good idea.

It was a bit like Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt,

just that Karl Valentin was notorious for always saying no

and Werner Finck was notorious for always saying yes.

He agreed to everything, but he still did his thing anyway.

Come on, I'll see you out.

Gregor!

Bring me a shot too!

Honey, how do you know I'm drinking a shot?

Cheers!

And she saw through everything.

Their relationship had a thrilling aspect to it as well.

Well now, I have a 365 mark pension.

And yours is 720 marks, right?

Together that makes a total of 1,085 marks.

So that means that I have 542.50 marks and so do you.

Sorry. but I don't think that's right.

have 720 marks and you just have 365.

- You're being petly. - No, I think that's true.

So, how much do we want to pay for rent?

You act like you're asking me, but you've long decided what we want to pay.

Absolutely. You're always right.

Marvellous.

Right at the start they had a spat,

because Werner Finck had brought his own chair,

one like directors have, with "Werner Finck" on it.

Because he had done lots of cabaret theatre.

- And she didn't have one. - Jochen!

- Grandma! - What is it?

Maybe you're embarrassing him.

He's not embarrassed. Be honest. you're embarrassed!

- Jochen, here! - What's she want?

- There's always something. - I'l mean work.

- Could do. - Hey. little one.

- I found a space for a nursery. - That's wonderf... What did you do?

Yes, there was a library in it. It's gone now.

{ can open my nursery there.

The word that came to me was "touching™.

Because it had something naive about it,

but it was how you really wish things were.

How she set out from the premise that life can be so beautiful

if you don't just accept everything as it is,

if you understand how to defend yourself

and if you have some imagination.

One of the slogans of that period was, "Let imagination lead!"

The most exciting thing for me

will be when this series is viewed by a new generation.

That part, the part that deals with their personal life,

that deals with that exemplary love between two older people,

that will be rediscovered.

Because people now will say, "Yeah, that's what happens in the end.

"My grandma lived that way and had three men later in life."

I believe that part will be very exciting.

It'll hardly be possible to draw parallels between today's industrial workers

and that era's somewhat "antediluvian" industrial workers.

- And? - The chances are looking preity good.

He'll put in a word for you and see if you pass the exam.

And do you think he means what he says?

I believe he's shaking in his shoes, if I'm not entirely mistaken.

We can pressure him into meaning what he says.

Right?

I hope you're right.

Workers in particular criticise

that you trivialise the true power structures in a factory.

Was that your intention?

That's a silly question.

Let's put it another way, when you make a film about I don't know what,

about ants, for all I care.

You can write a commentary to go with it and say, "Okay, it's like this:

"this ant has that function, that ant has this function, etc."

The commentary explains it all.

If you make a fictional movie about the ants, things get tougher.

You can't explain it with a commentary, you have to try to portray it in images.

So what you do is either you stay focused on the worker ants... Right?

I would rather stay focused on workers and not on ants.

Can you be more precise?

What you'd like isn't how I can explain it.

If you allow me the freedom to explain it, then I can explain it.

If you want to hear ready-made answers from me. then fine, I can do that too.

- What do you prefer? - I'd like you to respond to the criticism.

Worker criticism of the portrayal...

I'only tried to explain to you how a film is made because you might not know.

I was really surprised,

because of the extensive apparatus there, the likes of which I had never seen.

It was a huge broadcaster with massive expenditures.

Roman one, 297. First take!

Right.

Here we go.

And back then I marvelled at the composure with which Rainer

managed to operate and steer that apparatus.

I think it was a Mannesmann factory, quite a large factory with lots of lathes.

And in the rooms, or halls, next to us

people were working as usual while we were filming.

So it was just one section of a hall

where we could perform.

During the breaks we sat with the workers and talked to them and all that.

And we got questions like, "What are you doing here?

"Don't you want to come work with us? We need people.” efc.

He was calmness incarnate. That was very striking to me.

And I was full of admiration for that. I thought, "How do you do that?"

He was very young back then.

Yes, it was a challenge for him. but I think he thoroughly enjoyed it.

That was at the time when he always wanted to have me around.

If wasn't acting

then I worked as his assistant or, as in this case, script supervisor.

Due to the fact that I stood behind the camera with Fassbinder

and because we had experienced dozens of actors in front of the camera,

actors of all different types,

that made it a very special kind of acting school for me.

Fassbinder and I, we kept...

We looked at each other after a while and we knew who was good and who wasn't.

He looked.

He paid attention.

Then he maybe took someone aside and said, "Look, that doesn't come across well."

He said things like that, but it was all done with complete and utter calm.

During shooting with Rainer it was always the same.

We shot a lot of material very quickly.

What was just marvellous and very useful to me

were those long takes that he shot.

{ should've known long ago. I'll never manage it.

My head just doesn't work like it should.

it... It can't retain everything.

Sometimes there's just a real wall in there.

It just conks out.

Oh, yes. that was...

That scene there was one that I wasn't at all in favour of.

Aren't you drinking?

No.

I think what you're saying is stupid.

Thanks. That'll be because I am stupid.

- Not at all. - Of course I'm stupid.

And I want to stay stupid. Another round.

And anyway, what's stupid about what I'm saying?

It's not stupid at all.

There's nothing stupid about it!

I'm stupid, but what I'm saying isn't stupid.

Right. Then you're not stupid.

True.

I'm not...

Yes, well, theatrical performance, big theatre. third tier.

So the people up there pick up on it. But not for a shot that close.

I really wish that Rainer had said,

"Listen, you're nice and big in the shot. You're laying it on a bit too thick."

And then came the next scene where he's sitting with Peter Gauhe

and he crams for the exam with him.

The line between their centres must be parallel...

- To the bar's edge. - Exactly.

And the distance between the centre points has to be known.

Right! And you calculate which gauge blocks to use with the sine rule.

The distance between the rollers' centres...

- My head's spinning. - ...is the hypotenuse.

The vertical distance between the rollers

is the opposite leg needed to determine the angle.

The opposite leg? What an exam this'll be!

One of my favourite scenes. I think it worked out very well.

But Peter also searched for motifs and he was a set photographer as well.

Perhaps that was just it. An actor may have tried to play around with it.

But... No, that's exactly what it was.

...plus 20.

61.47.

- Yes, you got it. And the decimal point? - It goes here.

-61.47mm. - Correct.

By the way. we've now made a list of nine demands.

- We'll try to push them through. - What are they?

Well,

little things like toilets and stuff, but that's just one part of it.

And we want a say in how the machines are arranged in relation to each other.

Then...

And this is the decisive point.

- We want to organise our work ourselves. - What's that?

To start, I'll criticise the solutions he offers.

The solutions he offers aren't feasible. He offers no remedies.

Instead he piles up illusions. pipe dreams.

It's not realistic, as you noted.

Even if it is meant to be utopian, as itis at times.

But a utopia represents

something that can be realised in the present or could be in the future.

But, apart from a few moments, what Fassbinder presents

is not at all practicable in the real world.

That is indeed surprising.

The fact that it expresses ideas

that people originally construed as being utopian

that are now self-evident.

That is, today everybody knows

that it is much easier to motivate people

if employees identify with their work,

if they see it as their own and have the opportunity

to regard it as something they themselves are creating.

Didn't you recently say these were good men?

Yes, I said that.

But this here, this is a joke.

Really.

A joke?

Do you think so?

I see it completely differently.

it's certainly true that self-organisation of the work process

can lead to better results than a purely top-down model.

And that's what they're banking on. On savings, on surplus profit.

They want 50% of thal.

That means they're banking on a surplus profit.

As it was, Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

was the most exciting, unusual and controversial programme

that was being broadcast on ARD TV at that time.

The fact that it was so controversial

was also the reason it got so much recognition and was so important.

And so we dedicated a whole Glashaus show to it,

with a title we didn't think up ourselves, "The Prettied Up Proletarians."

I wouldn't say upset.

If that hadn't existed it would've meant that we'd done something wrong.

I mean,

back then we were very much geared toward confrontation.

But that doesn't change the fact that the idea itself is a good one.

Who knows? Maybe things are better the way they were.

Now they have to work more. They have to think on top of everything else.

But that's just it, silly. Boy, you sure are slow on the uptake.

They want to think.

Listen, knowing what you're doing

is better than not knowing and just doing something.

You think?

Well.

Perhaps.

I can't draw upon my own life,

although I did work in an office

and I did dream of being able to leave that office.

But I didn't have any notion of how that would happen.

I simply had this thought in my mind

and I had this clear desire not to have to stay there.

I just had the good fortune of Rainer meeting me,

or of me meeting him.

And through that I was basically

catapulted out of that existence, out of office life.

Whether that would've happened to Irmgard Erlkonig,

whether she'd have ended up in film, is something no one can say.

Tell me,

do you want to move in with us?

- What was that? - We'll probably get Jochen's parents' place.

And since it's too big for the two of us we thought we could give it a lry.

And if you're into it, then...

Pardon me, but I've been waiting for half an hour now.

For 27 minutes, to be exact.

Your discussion was very interesting indeed, but I really have fo go.

The show itself caused quite a stir,

because there was an outcome

that all of us young television editors at that time believed

we had accomplished with the show.

That we had caused WDR TV to decide

"We're not going to produce the last three episodes as planned.”

I just wanted to report.

The order has been completed.

In 187 hours and 38 minutes less than the time allotted.

Thank you, foreman.

Thanks.

Now listen to me, please.

Everyone involved gets the same cut.

There's a lot there...

There's a lot there that makes you realise the extent of people's egoism.

Oh! So migrant worker Giuseppe Macaroni gets the same as Foreman Franz Miltenberger?

- Yes, that's just what it means. - That's nonsense!

He worked, didn't he?

- Sure, but he gets paid for that. - And you do too.

But I get paid more. It's complete idiocy.

- My work is obviously worth more than... - No! lt isn't.

Who's for everyone getting an equal share?

Okay. that's the majority.

- You were against it just now. Are you nuts? - Uh-huh.

- understood. - You're so intelligent.

I would almost go so far as to call what Rainer put down on paper visionary.

And I can very much imagine that episodes six, seven and eight

were no longer made because then things would heat up.

Then you'd get into the nitty-gritty

of unions, supervisory boards and all of those things.

I don't think they would broadcast such a show today.

Yes, get Dr. Bertram, please.

Hello? Yes.

They're finished.

In 187 hours less time.

187 hours and 38 minutes, to be exact.

You see how mistaken one can be.

I'm happy for the boys.

And for the company.

Goodbye.

It was clear to us then that we had done something

that had made television history and that would remain a part of it.

To this day I still believe that it was right

to end it.

Because I believe that the fact that it is still

such a highly regarded series today

is linked to that.

Because we would have...

We would have provided those people

who were critical of what we were doing back then with extra fodder.

They may even have ended up winning that whole battle.

And I think that by taking the route of not doing that

we won.

After the last broadcast the WDR announcer said,

"We will continue this series. Three new episodes will air in November."

With Hanna Schygulla as Marion?

And what was my reply to that?

You said, "I don't really want to continue.”