Norma Rae

Sally Field's first Oscar came way via "Norma Rae."

The factory where she and her dad work does not know or want to know about unions. Workers are routinely abused and there is no way out for these hard-working laborers.

Along comes Jewish Ron Leibman, from the north, with the idea of forming a union. He meets up with much hostility. We see the southern hatred of unions in general and there is an underlining feeling of anti-Jewishness here as Jews have always been in the forefront of labor issues in America.

Pat Hingle's fatal coronary spurs daughter Norma to action. Her stopping work and turning around with the sign union is memorable.

This picture is timely due to the rash attacks on the labor movement from the federal government on down to management. Made at a time when President Reagan destroyed the Air Traffic Controller's Union, the film is most appropriate.

Great to watch a young and beautiful Sally Field. She carries this entire movie without really exerting herself. This demonstrates enormous talent and charisma. It is very engaging film with some really touching moments. Its subject matter sounds quite dry but it is not an overly wordy or heavy film, it strikes a nice tone. Nothing is overblown it is just a simply story about a brave lady and people who stood up for themselves and others against harsh working conditions and corporate greed. But without being political or finger-pointing, it is a positive and ultimately uplifting film.

It's the summer of 1978. Norma Rae (Sally Field) works in a textile mill with her whole family. Her mother is going deaf from the noisy factory. Her father Vernon (Pat Hingle) threatens union organizer Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman) who comes knocking on their door. She's a single mom and she ends her affair with a married man. She marries fellow worker Sonny (Beau Bridges). She starts helping Reuben causing tension in her relationships.

Sally Field is brilliant as an ordinary woman. She is eminently likable. The movie is a straight forward union story. It has a good sense of realism. It helps to have the noisy mill going. It's a great movie.

One of those rousing films in which a blue-collar normal Joe (or in this case perhaps we should say normal Joan) stands up against the big boys in the corporate office for what is right and just. Movies like "Erin Brockovich" wouldn't exist today if movies like "Norma Rae" hadn't existed first.

And "Norma Rae" is a lot easier to swallow, because it's done without all the Hollywood ritz and glamour. Director Martin Ritt specialized in making movies about blue-collar folks that looked like blue collar movies, and Sally Field, playing the factory worker who's sympathetic to an invading union organizer from the north and becomes his ace card in rallying the other workers, is a much better actress than Julia Roberts, and we're actually able to believe her in the role.

The image of Field standing up on a table silently holding up a placard that says "Union" has become indelible.

Grade: B+

In trying to get the textile mill she and her family work for unionized, Sally Field's Norma Rae Webster also tries to earn self-respect at any cost. She's been leading a dead-end existence: a single mother, still living with her family, sleeping with married men who abuse her. But after being inspired by a union-organizer (Ron Liebman, in an Oscar-worthy supporting performance), Norma Rae is awakened to the possibilities of life, and, what's more, everything that is wrong with the mill that seems to suck the energy and hope from those who stand there day after day trying to earn an honest dollar. There are problems with the picture: Beau Bridges' role as new husband Sonny is treated in a trivial manner (he's supposed to be a voice of reason, but he's too smooth, maybe condescending, and it's an unconvincing character); Oscar-winner Field's fiestiness occasionally feels overdrawn and/or one-note, but in many of the scenes outside the factory she does indeed excel, seeming vibrantly natural and exuberant. Martin Ritt's direction is focused and firmly rooted (he never sugarcoats Norma Rae's character, and sometimes she's not that likable) and the script manages to sidestep preachiness to get its points across entertainingly. The art direction is really the second star of the film: vivid, palpably hot and sweaty, with bits of cotton floating about in the air. The mill in question becomes very familiar to us, as do the people who work there. "Norma Rae" is involved and long, yet it is memorably bittersweet, and with a simple, haunting finish. *** from ****