When we think of 60s revolutionaries, the women of Dagenham don‘t fit the clichés – but these feisty, funny factory girls shook their world with spirit and courage, and achieved lasting social change.
Based on a true story, Made in Dagenham portrays a decisive moment in that decade of upheaval, when the fight for equal rights and pay was led – unexpectedly – by ordinary working-class women with one foot in the kitchen, one foot on the factory floor, and ears glued to the pop coming over the radio and telly from far-off London (19 kilometers and a world away). It‘s a vintage ―girl power tale.
Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) is a young married mother, one of 187 women who work for the Ford Motor Company, the region‘s principal employer. Unlike their male counterparts in the automaker‘s gleaming new main facility, the women toil in a decrepit old 1920s plant with a leaky roof, pigeons flying overhead, and stifling sweatshop conditions in summer. Despite their highly specialized work sewing car seat upholstery, the women are classified as ―unskilled labor and paid a fraction of the men‘s pay. After all, it‘s still a world where husbands – like Rita‘s man Eddie (Danny Mays) – are the principal breadwinners, and women are the backbone of the home and family. Their work and wages are secondary.
production details
UK | 113 minutes | 2010
Director: Nigel Cole
Writer: William Ivory
Producers: Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley
cast
Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady
Bob Hoskins as Albert Passingham
Miranda Richardson as Barbara Castle
Geraldine James as Connie
Simon Nehan as Welsh Union man
Andrea Riseborough as Brenda
Jaime Winstone as Sandra
Lorraine Stanley as Monica
Nicola Duffett as Eileen
Matthew Aubrey as Brian
Daniel Mays as Eddie O’Grady
Roger Lloyd Pack as George
Phil Cornwell as Dave
Karen Seacombe as Marge
Thomas Arnold as Martin
Sian Scott as Sharon O’Grady
Robbie Kay as Graham O’Grady
Rosamund Pike as Lisa Hopkins
Matt King as Trevor Innes
Joseph Mawle as Gordon
Kenneth Cranham as Monty Taylor
Rupert Graves as Peter Hopkins
Joseph Kloska as Undersecretary 1
Miles Jupp as Undersecretary 2
Richard Schiff as Robert Tooley
Simon Armstrong as Rogers
John Sessions as Harold Wilson
Andrew Lincoln as Mr. Clarke
Gina Bramhill as Hopkins’ Secretary
Marcus Hutton as Grant
Philip Perry as Arthur Horovitz
Peter-Hugo Daly as Bartholomew
Angus Barnett as Passing Van Driver
Birgitta Bernhard as Choir Mistress
Mitchell Mullen as Kronnfeld
Nico Tatarowicz as Reporter
Marysia Kay as Dagenham Striker
Donna Griffiths as Dagenham Striker
Jacquee Storozynski-Toll as Dagenham Striker
William Ivory as Reporter 2
You may also be interested in...