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By Helen Martin
Illusions: NZ moving image and performing
arts criticism, Issue 23, Winter 1994, Editor Lawrence
McDonald (Bread and Roses pp14-17, July 1994, The Imaginary
Partnership, Wellington).
“As we go marching, marching
in the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts
gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun
discloses
For the people hear us singing: Bread and roses! Bread
and roses!”
So goes the first verse of the poem
written by James Oppenheim, then set to music by Caroline
Kohlsaat, from
which Sonja Davies borrowed the title of her autobiography.
The poem was written in celebration of a spontaneous
walkout stage in Massachusetts in 1912 by some 20,000
mill workers. Protesting at pay cuts to be brought
about by a reduction in maximum working hours for women
and
minors employed at the mills, many of the young women
carried banners declaring “We want bread and
roses too”.
Of course the idea that having a
full stomach is only half the equation vis a vis the
quality of life is
also biblical (“And when the tempter came to
him, he said: If thou be the Son of God, command that
these stones
be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’ “ ).
So there’s irony in the way the original intentions
of the metaphor are scrambled in the NZ on Air Bread
and Roses advertisement that appeared in The NZ Listener
(October 18, Page 68) headed with the caption “One
cannot live by bread alone”, illustrated by a
photograph of a bunch of red roses stuck in a bowl
containing a
goldfish (the NZ on Air logo) and containing the praise
of “a critically acclaimed series to enhance
your staple TV diet”. But then, in a deregulated
economy and with market forces rampant anything goes
when there’s
a product to be shifted.
Still, you have to laugh, and
it is possible that Sonja Davies would find amusement
in the advertisement’s
appropriation and demeaning of the Bread and Roses
title. Active in national politics until her retirement
at the
1993 elections, she has seen a lot of changes in her
lifetime, but she might find it hard to deny that the
more things change the more they stay the same, market
forces mentality included. Having begun her career
as a nurse who wanted better working conditions for
her
profession, she now ends it with the nurses still on
strike. Having spent her life working to promote humanist
ideals’ her television advertisement in support
of the Labour Party in the leadup to the last election
reveals the shock she felt when, on a recent admission
to hospital, she found that, rather than being in a
ward she was in a “business management unit”.
As
Nelson secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
in the early 1960s’ Sonja
Davies helped organise a petition seeking government support for a ban on nuclear
weapons. In the self-effacing tone that typifies how she describes her life,
Davies writes in her autobiography:
“In those days I believed that
thousands of signatures on a petition to Parliament could
help change the hearts and minds of the politicians.
What a
naïve
creature I was…” .
In charting her growth from ingénue
to shrewd politician, Davies’ storytelling
style is plain, matter of fact and, most importantly, entirely without
self-promotion. Bread and Roses, the autobiography, is fascinating not
because of the style
in which it is written, but because the content is so compelling. In a
lifetime of commitment to improving living and working conditions for all
people,
with
special interests in bettering the lives of women and in peace issues,
just some of Davies’ numerous achievements include founding the New
Zealand Working Women’s Council, membership of the Equal Opportunities
Tribunal, having a Working Women’s Charter accepted by the New Zealand
Labour Party and by the Federation of Labour (of which she was the first
woman vice-president),
election to Parliament as the Labour member of Pencarrow and the role of
Pacific
representative on the World Peace Council. In 1987, Davies received the
Order of New Zealand (the country’s highest honour). Victoria University
has awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Law.
Made as a fourpart television
series and also screened theatrically, Preston/Laing Productions’ adaptation
covers Sonja Davies’ early years (she was
born in November 1923) up until the beginning of her political career
proper with her election on to the Nelson Hospital Board in 1956. The
series is
not the biography of the experienced politician at the peak of her powers.
It is,
rather, a distillation of the formative events – personal, local,
national and international – that shape the young woman’s
developing political consciousness.
Growing up in a classconscious, sexist
society, Sonja’s personal experiences
and her observations of the experiences of others lead her to develop
early a strong socialist and feminist sensibility as, with no role
models to guide her
and with no sense of belonging, she quickly learns to rely on her own
resources. Along with many joyful, life-enhancing experiences, Sonja
suffers much sorrow
and fear through separation, loneliness, loss, chronic illness and
more than one early brush with death. Her story, then, has many layers
and
it is thanks
to the imagination and intelligence of the Bread and Roses film makers
and actors that this complex story is realised so evocatively on the
screen.
Born illegitimate, Sonja spent her
first seven years living with her much-loved grandmother
before being taken to live with her
mother and
stepfather.
In Episode One, two events from her early childhood economically
sketch in two
of the
major themes in her life. The shot of Sonja’s great-grandmother
reading the small palm and predicting a lifetime of joy and sorrow
points to the sense of destiny
that runs through the narrative and that is reinforced throughout
by Sonja’s
words and by repeated hand imagery, (Sonja’s fists are clenched
as she announces her intention to leave home, for example). The other
is the young Sonja’s
reaction to her mother’s patronising attitude to the working
class woman to whom she dispenses charity. Sonja obviously identifies
with the woman’s
anger and seems unconvinced by her mother’s dictum that “the
unemployed are lazy and don’t want to work”.
Brought
up as a member of the middle-class, Sonja’s empathy
is always more with the working class. As a teenager, constant fights
with her parents – her
stepfather castigates Sonja and her “Red Fed” friends
for their pacifist views, her mother vets her 16th birthday party
guest list to keep out the working
class – drive her from the family home. Her growing interest
in left wing politics, combined with alienation from her family (at
whom she rages “for
the first time in my life I’ve found someone to belong to”),
propel Sonja into a hasty marriage to one of the British upper class.
Privileged as
he is, he agrees with her hotly argued assertion that “Capitalism
is an international conspiracy of the upper class”.
But Sonja’s ‘solution’ to
her loneliness is short-lived as, in a couple of economical scenes,
the marriage crumbles (husband Lindsay Nathan
extols the virtues of sexual adventure as opposed to the “tyranny” of
monogamy) and the couple are divorced. When Sonja goes nursing
she continues to develop her political ideas through association
with
her conscientious objector
friends and her convictions remain undented by the vilification
of those supporting the war.
Her personal life is enhanced by warm
friendships formed with other
nurses although her left-wing convictions are a constant source
of irritation
to her roommate
and best friend Con.
For Con, politics are “forbidden territory” while
to Sonja there is “nothing more important”. Class
differences are seen in Con’s hopes to find a boyfriend
who’s a
colonel, while Sonja wants someone “from the ranks”.
Although Sonja has an understanding of sorts with Charlie Davies,
a left-wing friend currently serving in the army
service corps as a non-combatant, all thoughts of him are swept
away when she becomes passionately involved with an American
soldier, Red Brinsen. As Episode
One ends, with Sonja still arguing with her stepfather over the
ethics of war and peace, she confides in Con that she is pregnant.
With
Sonja’s interest in global and national politics thus
established, her political consciousness is further raised
in Episode Two
where the focus shifts to her personal experiences of injustice.
Firstly, she is threatened with
expulsion from the nursing profession when poor working conditions
lead her to express interest in finding out from Trades Hall
how to establish a nurses’ union.
Told by Matron that “Nursing is a profession … not
a trade” and
that “Nurses are not factory girls”She is further
disillusioned to find that her fellow nurses are not prepared
to support her. When her mother,
terrified of displeasing her judgmental husband, refuses to
support her in pregnancy, Sonja goes to stay with pacifist
friends in
the country. There, miners on strike
to persuade their bosses to provide a concrete floor remind
Sonja that nurses are not the only workers in need of better
working
conditions. Forced to have
her baby alone in a bleak, impersonal hospital Sonja experiences
for the first time the grimness of the medical profession from
a patient’s point of view.
When Red’s money ceases coming she moves back home with
daughter Penny and plans to go back to nursing.
She celebrates
the end of the war with her old
nursing friends then learns she is unable to go back to work
because the tuberculosis she contracted while
nursing, due to the negligence of the hospital administrators,
has become serious. At the end of the episode, Sonja finds
a minder for Penny and goes to hospital.
For much of Episode
Three Sonja is critically ill in hospital.
Her will to live waivers when she learns of Red’s death
in the Pacific but she rallies and resolves to fight her
illness when she hears two nurses casually discussing her
poor prognosis as though she is a piece of meat. Back in
the
hospital where she trained, she finds support from the women
who nursed with her and from Charlie
Davies but the insensitivity of the doctors is a constant
source of anguish and the difficulty of finding childcare
continues.
Released from hospital she retrieves
Penny and marries Charlie and they go to live in the country
where they meet up with other like-minded people. With only
half a lung Sonja fights the government
to win the rehab loan to which Charlie is entitled but that
struggle, combined with the harsh, primitive conditions under
which they are living causes a relapse
and Sonja is forced to spend nine more months in hospital.
Thanks to a new drug she is finally cured and the Davies
decide to leave the farm.
Episode Four sees Sonja on her way
as an active participant
in the political life of the country. Her readiness to
put her illness
behind
her is signalled
by a brilliant opening sequence which begins with a closeup
of a dripping tap then pulls back for a shot of Sonja disconsolately
washing
dishes
at the kitchen
sink, while on the radio Aunt Daisy breathlessly informs
listeners that after she’s given out her beetroot
chutney recipe she’ll be playing the
scrapbook piece Married Life. A number of scenes depicting
Sonja’s efforts
to gain nomination for an office within the Nelson Labour
Party show that much of the opposition comes from men who
think she should be at home caring for her “other
responsibilities”. The chance for real political
action comes when Sonja joins a group of women who try
to prevent
the closure of the Nelson railway line
by a campaign of civil disobedience. This action, although
unsuccessful in its objective, results in Sonja’s
nomination as a member of the Nelson Hospital Board. Realising
she needs
to be independent Sonja begins learning to drive.
She tells Charlie she is pregnant. After she has given
her speech to the Hospital Board selection committee Sonja
walks
from the building past bushes of red roses.
She tells Charlie, who is waiting for her, that, due to
factional squabbles, she has been elected to the board
as the deputy
chairman, takes up her position
in the driver’s seat of the family car and, as she
drives away past more rose bushes, they laugh about the
capriciousness of politics.
As both evocation and documentation
of Sonja Davies’ formative years the
Bread and Roses script (co-written by Graeme Tetley and
series director Gaylene Preston) shapes its carefully
selected incidents and events to convey the character
and development of its protagonist with a sharp focus.
Full of sentiment without being sentimental, the series
stands as a tribute to a most remarkable woman
without presenting her as a saint.
Her bluntness often
looks like tactlessness, she is impatient
with opposing views and, as her political career starts
rolling, daughter
Penny often
seems to be
futilely waving for attention from the sideline. It
is to the credit of Australian actor Genevieve Picot,
with
her
excellent
timing
and with her
understanding
of the character conveyed in every glance, word, movement
and gesture, that the
character is portrayed so superbly. A very competent
(and at times inspired) supporting cast contributes
to the drama’s credibility.
Bread and Roses is equally
fascinating as a social history. Sexual politics, where
matters concerning
the role and
position of women
as workers, friends,
partners, child bearers and child minders are woven
seamlessly into the narrative, as are issues of class
and privilege,
politics and
power. But all this is
achieved with a lightness of touch that ensures the
drama never becomes didactic. In
the hospital scenes, for example, a wry kind of bed-pan
humour leavens the grimness
and the tragedies. Political points are made but
not laboured and skilful editing(by Paul Sutorius) contributes
to the
sense of balance
established
by Gaylene Preston’s
sensitive direction. Bread and Roses maintains an
understated, low key approach. The scene where Sonja
helps lay out
her first dead body, that of a young woman
for whom an abortion has turned septicaemic, exemplifies
this. From the perspective of a highangle camera,
the scene is shot so as to distance the viewer and
give
the appearance of detachment. But the soundtrack
and mise-en-scene are so “true” that
there is no need for viewer manipulation. You are
moved because the event is moving. You cry because
the woman’s
death, and Sonja’s horror at
seeing it, are genuinely affecting.
In its recollection
of the experiences of New Zealanders during and just
after the war years Bread and Roses
acts as teacher
(for those
who weren’t there)
and prompt (for those who were). Given that in the
current round of biopics entertainment value appears
to have the edge on accuracy (as in Malcolm X and
J.F.K., for example)
it is a relief to many that the Bread and Roses team
have opted for a concept that relies on finding a
kind of “truth” in their telling of the
Sonja Davies/New Zealand story. And while no doubt
there is room for the pedant to debate details of
authenticity – Sunday Star correspondent Warren
Drake, for example, complained (October 24) that “The
massive 135 tonne mainline Ka locomotive used in
the Nelson railway protest scene was as out of place
on
the Nelson-Glenhope line as a Kenilworth semitrailer
would have been on the backroads scenes of the series” – the
production design (Rick Kofoed), sound (Kit Rollings),
music (John Charles), photography (Allun Guilford,
with Alan
Bollinger and Leon Narbey as camera operators) and
costume design (Chris Elliot) work together to recreate
on screen, down to the finest visual and aural detail
(the sound of baby suckling, the nurse borrowing
the right gear for an appearance
before Matron, the period props and costumes) the
spirit of the story’s
times and places.
The Preston*Laing production team,
established in 1984 when Gaylene Preston and Robin
Laing combined
their
efforts to
develop and
produce Mr Wrong,
goes from
strength to strength. Their production of Bread and
Roses, in association with executive producer Dorothee
Pinfold,
took seven
years to develop
and finance.
Its first screenings were on theatrical release as
a feature film. Financed by the New Zealand Film
Commission, Beyond
Distribution, New Zealand
on Air, Television
New Zealand and the 1993 Suffrage Centennial Year
Trust, Bread and Roses is Preston/Laing’s
best work yet and, More Issues jibes notwithstanding,
a wonderful suffrage year tribute to women of New
Zealand.
NOTES
1) Bread and Roses press kit.
2) Holy Bible, St Matthew, Chapter 4, Verses 3 and 4.
3) Holy Bible, St Matthew, Chapter 4, Verses 3 and 4.
4) Sonja Davies, Bread and Roses, Wellington: Fraser Books, 1988.
5) Bread and Roses press kit.
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