Norma Rae
(1979)
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Set in the industrial South and based on a true story, Martin Ritt's NORMA RAE is a moving portrait of a woman's fight to improve both her own life and the deplorable conditions that exist in the mill where she works. Norma Rae (Sally Field) has worked at the textile mill for years, but when a union organiser from New York comes to town, Norma takes on the hostility of the mill's management and the apathy of her co-workers to try to unionise the mill. Field plays Norma Rae as a passionate woman who realises her own potential and her need to rebel against the status quo. She is also infuriated by the conditions at the mill. When Norma, uneducated and poor, finally expresses her disgust with life at the mill, it is an electrifying moment, and Field radiates this energy for the rest of the film, providing an emotional core and drive that gives the picture its power. |
Director Martin Ritt's last important film is typical of his best work. Based on the true story of a reluctant real-life heroine, this sincere drama with a social conscience makes its union cause authentic, heartfelt and grittily entertaining. Determinedly shedding her image as a perennially cute, bubbly comedian, Sally Field deservedly won her first Oscar for her committed performance as the widowed Southern textile worker who nervously allies herself with New York labour organiser Ron Leibman to fight appalling conditions and, with growing gumption, takes on the mill owners. There are fine performances all around, including Beau Bridges as her boorish man, but it's Field's triumph.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Well-intentioned and well-acted pamphlet of political enlightenment with an inevitably ambivalent attitude.