Norma Rae
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Movie Reviews of Norma Rae
Movie Review: Sally Field Sheds Her Habit ..Delivers Superb Performance!
Summary: 5 Stars
Sally Field gives the performance of a lifetime in this fact-based story of a factory worker who puts her life on hold to make life better for those around her. "Norma Rae"(1979) was a powerful eye-opener to the life led by ordinary people working under extremely poor working conditions.
Best known at the time for her light roles as "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun", and although she did capture an emmy for her outstanding performance as "Sybil", she was not thought of as a serious dramatic actress.Director Martin Ritt knew a good thing when he saw it though, insisted on casting her and his instincts were right. Sally went home from the Oscars that year with a well deserved Best Actress Award!
Norma Rae doesn't have much going for her in her life. She has two children that she's raising on her own,has lots of problems with men, and works in a textile mill in the south. The conditions of the mill are deplorable.The wages are pitiful, people on their feet all day, with barely a break, most going deaf from the noise of the machines, some even getting cancer. But it is the only job in town for most of the locals. A New York Union Organizer comes to town(Ron Leibman) and tries to convince the workers they should go Union and fight for their rights. Most are leary and afraid of loosing their jobs, but one decides it's the right thing to do.
Norma Rae goes against the grain to try and convince the 800 workers that this is the best thing for them and their children(Who will also probably work there some day). She becomes somewhat of an outcast but doesn't give up. She becomes more determined and defiant as ever as the film progresses. Eventually she realizes the power she holds.There's the wonderful famous scene where she stands on the table with the UNION sign, but the most telling scene of her determination is when it takes four very large men to remove this 90lb. woman from the premisis.It is a film that will stay with you and still holds value socially and politically today.
Martin Ritt is always excellent at bringing these social issues to the viewing audiences in an entertaining way. Director of Photography John Alonzo also adds greatly to the film with his great camera angles. Ron Leibman is wonderful as the "fish out of water" organizer who becomes mentor to Norma. Rounding out the cast and all excellent in their roles is Pat Hingle as Norma's father and Beau Bridges as her new husband.
The DVD is beautiful. The film is over 20 years old but you won't notice that. It's in Anamorphic Widescreen(2.35:1) and presents a great picture. Nice color and sharp images. The sound is Stero Surround, and is very pleasing. There is a "Back Story" featurette on the making and casting of the film, which is very informative. It may be viewed in French and there are subtitiles in English and Spanish.This is an important film and 20th Century Fox has given it some nice attention.
A great addition to any DVD collection...enjoy...Laurie
also from martin ritt and now on DVD:The Outrage
Movie Review: Sally Proves Her Acting Abilities
Summary: 5 Stars
Norma Rae put Sally Field on the map. Although she stunned television audiences a few years earlier with the Emmy winning performance in Sybil, most still thought of her as either Sister Bertrille from The Flying Nun or TV's Gidget.
Based on a true story, Norma Rae is a single mother of two, not all in wedlock. She lives at home with mother (Barbara Baxley) and father (Pat Hingle). She works at the OP Henley textile mill. She is having an affair with a married man.
Into her life comes two very different men. First is Ruben Kincaid (Ron Leibman), a Jewish union organizer from New York. Ruben wants to organize the textile mill but needs to get an in at the factory. The second is Sonny Webster (Beau Bridges), another mill worker. Sonny takes a shining to Norma and starts to date her. After a while, they get married and they combine their three kids together.
Ruben is looking for that one person to get him in with the workers. He sees that Norma is a bit of rebel and also cares for her coworkers. This is the woman he needs. After a few meetings and seeing Ruben take on the bosses, she signs on. She works tirelessly for the union. It starts to become her entire life and almost ends her marriage.
The mill turns up the heat with threats of shift cuts and scares off the workers from the union meetings. That is until Norma Rae's father dies after a supervisor refuses to let him off when he was feeling bad. But the mill puts up a racist notice which prompts the film's famous scene. Norma Rae writes down what is on the notice and management tries to stop her. She gets up on a table and writes UNION of a piece of cardboard. She holds it up and one by one the workers shut off their machines. Then she is dragged of by the police. This leads to what a friend called Sally's Oscar scene where she sits down with her kids and explains their parentage. (No dry eyes here).
The factory holds the union vote and the union is approved.
Sally Field deservedly won the Oscar and set her career on fire. But you also have to give a big round to the supporting cast. Pat Hingle as her father gives a the performance of his career. Barbara Baxley showed her versatility in this role. In Nashville she played a flamboyant diva. In Norma Rae, she plays a woman beaten down by her life and just wants a life where she is not noticed. Gail Strickland plays Norma's best friend. This is a role that she will perfect over the next few years. And finally, Beau Bridges once again shows that he is a great actor.
Director Martin Ritt will team up with Sally two more times. The next year in Back Roads which was a mild miss and then ten years later with Murphy's Romance which was another home run.
DVD EXTRA: Backstory: Norma Rae - When AMC decided to launch an informational series about making of films that made a difference, their first episode was on Norma Rae. This is the 24 minute show featuring interviews with Ron Leibman, producer Tamara Asseyev, agent Michael Ovitz, Sally Field and cinematographer John Alonzo.
Movie Review: Labor's Told Story-Partially
Summary: 5 Stars
On the face of it today a story about an impoverished, hard-nosed widowed woman trying to support several children working in a southern textile mill and who seeks to unionize the plant against one of the major textile companies might rate a documentary or docu-drama treatment but, perhaps not much else. The demographics and the audience would probably not be there for such a commercial endeavor, Sally Field or no Sally Field. That says more about the state of the organized labor movement in this country, the dramatic decline in union membership, the lack of recent successful major union organizing drives, the "globalization" of industry that has de-industrialized America and the attenuation of links between the old trade union movement forged in the class battles of the 1930s and 1940s and their grandchildren, today's youth.
Back in 1973, however, this film was a hit not only because of the well-done performances by Sally Fields, as that down-troddened but spirited woman turned effective union organizer and Ron Liebman, as the northern union organizer called in to advice (?) Norma Rae. 1950s "red scare" black-listed writer Martin Ritt, who directed this film, also deserves kudos for not overburdening the film with unnecessary sentimentality. The times then thus were not out of joint for such an effort. The residue of 1960s radicalism and pro-working class sentiments still hung in the air. Moreover, the times were just becoming ripe for serious films about the trials and tribulations of women, especially working women and their problems, under the sign of the burgeoning women's movement.
Of courser this particular review is posted here today because, unfortunately, the real-life model for the character of Norma Rae Crystal Lee Sutton has just passed away in North Carolina at the age of 68. I will finish up here by quoting a remark that I made in another space about her passing that also reflects on the highlight dramatically tense moment in the film:
"No labor militant, or even just a simple friend of the international labor movement could do anything but cheer at that moment in "Norma Rae", based on the actual experience of Crystal Lee Sutton, when Sally Field silently holds up a handmade sign that said "Union"- and everyone downs tools. Such events are the stuff not just of labor legend, but under the right circumstances revolution. Farewell, Sister." I need say no more.
Movie Review: Power to the People
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great movie. For several reasons. Let me tell you one of them. The undercurrent is not homeric or heroic, it's about leadership.
I teach a course in Leadership at a local college. One of the Chapters is about Women as Leaders. Well, we're kind of off in a fantasy world here if we try to use props. And the chasm beteen what we see on the screen and the real world, fantasy and application, is wide, enormous and scary.
So this is not about Vin Diesel saving the world with his enormous biceps, nor Arnold with giant pecs protecting women and children. Nor is it a braless Signourney Weaver in a tee shirt and two machine guns on her hips blowing up aliens.
This is about one of us in the body of a short, cute, 90 pound woman, uneducated, riddled with human flaw, inspired by her antithesis, a highly educated jewish labor organizer, to stand up and like Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics, raise her fist in defiance of the machine.
And, Sally Field does give the performanvce of a lifetime with all the nuances of an uneducated person sensing the right thing but lacking the tools with which to do it.
There's a scene where she has to sign her name and she stares at the paper and purses her tongue and bites her lip in concentration. Small affectation. Brilliant. She got the Oscar and I think we laughed at her. She's Gidget for God's sake. The Flying Nun. It's even funnier than if Goldie Hawn won it. But here's the final answer: She deserved it.
You know what the plot's about. This Alabama about 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education, 10 years after The Heart of Atlanta decison, and 6 or 7 years after the Civil Rights killings. So it's not a safe venue for change. And Ron Liebman as the organizer Reuben has one thing going for him, he's not black. But everything else about him is what many southerners at that time hated. He's jewish, he's "a left-o," he's educated, he's from New Yawk. And somehow, the factory worker Norma Rae is drawn to him. I think she loves him and he her, but not that way. He changes her life, and she can never return. She has become a leader, with vision, communication, and patience. Hell. At the end she's reading Dylan Thomas. See the movie. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Movie Review: Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Norma Rae
Summary: 5 Stars
While watching Reuben interact with the factory workers, I am reminded of a resounding theme backed by a specific paragraph from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. On page 65 Freire states that "attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building." This thought is also reinforced on page 94 with the excerpt from the Selected Works of Mao-Tse-Tung, Vol. III. It states that "All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned.... There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own minds instead of our making their minds for them."
It was very clear that the factory workers (masses) needed a change. The working environment was hazardous to their daily health, the pay was horrendous and the treatment was detrimental to people's spirits. However, this is the view of the "liberator" and not of the oppressed. A significant portion of the factory workers (as demonstrated by the vote) were not yet conscious of their needs and not yet willing to make the change. This was true for the majority of the workers at the beginning of the movie. While Reuben managed to change some of their minds, it was not done through dialogue. I never once felt that Reuben trusted in the factory worker's ability to reason and to come to this decision (the need for a union) on their own. To me, Reuben always prescribed to the banking concept of education. He deposited information (in the forms of speeches and leaflets) and expected the factory workers to accept it as truth and to follow along.
The funny thing is, this is not done out of malice. I do believe that his intentions were sincere but like many individuals who feel the need to "liberate" the oppressed, they subconsciously see a cause and not actual people.