In 1979, film-maker Leon Hirszman (1937–1987) collaborated with playwright Gian francesco
Guarnieri on a film adaption of Guarnieri’s famous play about Brazilian working-class life,
They Don’t Wear Black-Tie.1 The resulting film, released in 1981, reconfigured the politics
and content of the 1958 play to fit the new era of the late 1970s when dramatic metalworkers’
strikes placed São Paulo on the front lines in the fight against the Brazilian military
dictatorship. Using biography and the dramatic and cinematic texts, this article traces
the political and aesthetic challenges facing these two important cultural figures and their
generation of radical intellectuals. In particular, the article will explain why an image of
“workers†proved so central in the making of modern Brazilian theater and film since the
late 1950s, while explor ing the changing configuration of intellectual and povo (common
people) between the late Populist Republic and the remaking of the Brazilian working class
during the late 1970s. Throughout, it will ask: What is the cultural, political, and historical
substance or significance of the presentation of workers in Black-Tie? Does it rep resent an
expression of social reality? And if so, what reality, and whose vision?
