AllMovie

For those who imaging that the French public unanimously supported their government's military activities in Indochina in the 1950s, this film should help them achieve a more balanced view. Based on an actual 1950 event, the story concerns the efforts of dockworkers in Marseilles to strike to protest the use of their port to ship war goods to French armies in Indochina. One younger worker, not yet married, has an older brother who is a union official. The government is attempting to put together a group of men who can work the docks and break the strike, and put pressure on the young man and others like him to do this. Despite the low-key performances and lack of fiery rhetoric in the film, it was kept from being shown for over 35 years by the French government, which claimed it could "endanger public order."