Workerist film about the mass workers in Italy in the 1970s. The films shows the alienated labour, the machines, the rhythm of the assembly line and the factory that makes the workers ill and eventually kills them. The workers take the alienation and physical exhaustion back home where both contaminate their private relationships. The film criticises the contemporary student activism at the 'factory gates' as well as the unions.

After the film's first screening at the Mostra del Cinema Libero the director Jean-Marie Straub demanded that all film copies must be burned.

We show a part of the film.