Weekend Cinema - Master Hands p3 - 1936
By: Extract from the Classic 'Master Hands' p3
This is high drama, pretentious filmmaking and one of the most impressive records of mass production ever made.
It's 1936, the year that Chaplin's Modern Times and Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will were produced, was also the year of Master Hands. Produced ostensibly as a tribute to the "master hands" of the Chevrolet craftsmen, Master Hands looks much more like management's own tribute to itself -- the designers of the system of mass production.
There was no words spoken during the whole film except for the one verse at the beginning:
"From the master hands of the toolmakers --
to the hands that master the great machines --
come the tools and patterns and dies...
and then the great factories start."