"Norma Rae" (1979)

“Bless the child of the workin’ man

She knows too soon who she is…”

“It Goes Like it Goes”, David Shire and Norman Gimbel

In the summer of 1978, in a small Alabama town, a feisty young textile-mill worker stands up to her oppressive bosses and, with the aid of an intelligent and equally brash young activist from New York, helps unionize her fellow employees.  That young woman is Norma Rae Webster, and her story is based on Crystal Lee Miller, a textile worker who fought to unionize her mill in North Carolina.

 

Norma Rae is a single mother of two youngsters (of different fathers) who lives with her parents, and suffers abuse from (mostly) married men she has flings with at a local hotel.  She has the careworn air of a woman resigned to a life of drudgery at the mill, enduring unhealthy conditions, grueling hours of physical labor, and uncaring owners.  What saves her is a gutsy spirit, an earthy sense of humor, an openness, and a sense of justice boiling under the surface.  When Ruben Warchowski (a fine portrayal by the late Ron Liebman), a union organizer,  comes to town, she is fascinated by him, and she decides to help him.

Ruben sees something in Norma Rae that she doesn’t yet recognize.  He tells her that she is “too intelligent for what’s happening" to her.  

She is outspoken.  She is fiercely devoted to her cause.  At first, she suffers the ostracism of friends, and later, the humiliation of arrest.  She marries a gentle young man who truly loves her, but who doesn’t understand her commitment.  She blossoms, transforming into a leader trusted by her peers, male and female, black and white. With a commonsense attitude, and a marvelous inner strength, she becomes an inspiration to the mill, an advocate who understands and truly cares, and a leader, not because it will make her look good, but because it is right.

 

The film is powerful, rousing, funny, and allows time to revel in quiet, character-revealing moments.  “Norma Rae” is a great, rabble-rousing piece of work that has endured, and even more so now that we are faced with a leadership void, and a hunger for inspiration. 

Sally Field gives a remarkable, committed and beautifully nuanced portrayal of an American worker, one of millions of poor, nameless, faceless individuals who struggle to make the lives of other Americans more comfortable, while emerging to do her part to ensure fair treatment in her workplace.  Field originally was not considered for the role, but convinced director Martin Ritt she could learn the part after many A-list actresses turned it down (Jill Clayburgh, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton). 

I can’t imagine anyone else but Sally Field as Norma Rae.  It is her iconic role, proof that she was a serious performer, in a role for which she will be best remembered. Among dozens of accolades, it won her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Director Martin Ritt worked closely with Field as she became Norma Rae.  Ritt, a former victim of the Hollywood blacklist, is known for his stories of working class people, mostly from the south, and his films are a tribute to their tenacity and hard work, and their capacity for love amid hardship: “Hud”, “Sounder”, and “Cross Creek”, are among his best.

 Along with his cinematographer John Alonzo, Ritt found the right look for “Norma Rae” using a handheld camera.  This gives the viewer a feeling of immediacy, of being there, experiencing the story firsthand.  It was an effective use of handheld camera, imitating the way our eyes actually see things around us, and not the nausea-inducing shaky-cam that “cool indie” filmmakers lazily use to lend “realism” to a tired story.

The 1970s were a time of great liberal causes showcased in mainstream movies.  Some of the best films of the decade, in addition to “Norma Rae”. were about the working class and unions, stories about the heartland and especially the South, stories about factories and farmers, about human emotion and injustice, about hard work and community, films which were politically-minded but not polarizing: “Sounder”, “Bound for Glory”, “Breaking Away”,” “The Deer Hunter”,  “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, sections of “Nashville”, even “The Emigrants”. In these and other films from that remarkable era in cinema, working people were the focus.  I have missed stories about these Americans in cinema today.

These are the people hit hardest by the economic hardships of the coronavirus, of social distancing and stay-at-home orders.  “Norma Rae” is a subtle but potent reminder.  As she enlists door-to-door support for the union, she encounters a man angry about an increased workload with reduced pay. Holding a saucepan containing six turnips and two quarts of water, he tells Norma Rae that it is “dinner for seven people”. 

Loss of income, desperation, uncertainty of how to get basic needs like food, is real right now, in many parts of America; a movie like “Norma Rae” shows us this in a personal way.

Recently, as my mind raced to sort out my confusion of our current, and hopefully temporary, situation, a song came to mind, which stirred me with its simplicity, and provided a sense of calm, of life going on even as I couldn’t change anything.

 

That song, “It Goes Like It Goes”, is the original tune written for “Norma Rae”, and performed over the opening and closing credits. Its lyrics are simple and practical, just the way Norma Rae herself would see life and the world.  Hearing the song as I watched the film recently, and hearing it in terms of what’s good and bad during our current crisis, I was moved to tears. This gentle, poignant song of accepting what is and hoping for better, won “Norma Rae” its second Oscar.

So it goes like it goes and the river flows
And time it rolls right on
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better
And maybe what's bad gets gone…