From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present, by Ewa Mazierska

In From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present Ewa Mazierska aims to “gauge how much life is left in the distinguished ghost” of communism in Europe (3). Mazierska makes clear that her book is intended as a contribution to the recent attempts to revive Marxist thought in film and cultural studies—and, indeed, the monograph is one of several publications by the author through which she thoughtfully deploys Marxist thought in her analysis of European cinema. A theoretically sophisticated and highly readable study, at once a history of work on screen and a critique of capitalism (and latterly its neoliberal variant), the book is also intended to address the paucity of scholarly interest in the topic—a paucity that is surprising given that, as she argues, work is nearly always present on screen, whether actually represented or as a context for on-screen behaviour, character types, and relationships.