DVD: Salt of the Earth
$15.00
DVD-STE
"As effectively as any other film in my curriculum, Salt of the Earth celebrates the possibility of people being able to create a very different, very much better society through solidarity and collective action." - Bill Bigelow
One of the great union stories of all time, "Salt of the Earth" was nevertheless smothered by corrupt Hollywood unions, (at the insistence of movie industry mogul and zealous anti-communist Howard Hughes). Blacklisted Hollywood Director Herbert Biberman, and his partners Paul Jarrico and Academy-Award-winner Michael Wilson then struggled for more than 15 years to get their film seen. Years later, after two of the three partners had died, it would be one of the first films chosen to be listed in the National Film Registry -- one of a very select few films to be preserved for all time. Only now, after more than half a century, is it finally receiving the recognition it derserves. Such is the fate of suppressed, overlooked, and forgotten films.
It was really a monumental struggle to bring this story to life on film and get it shown. The filmmakers had to battle vigilante groups and government harassment during the shooting of the film. Post-production was equally difficult: at one point they found themselves editing in the bathroom of a decrepit local theatre in New Mexico. Against all odds, the film was finally completed, but no exhibitor would screen it. The fix was in with the projectionists union. Although the film won prizes and kudos in Europe, few Americans had a chance to see it.
Then began a 12 year struggle to show the film in the U.S. ending in a classic courtroom battle in the early 1960's - when the 1950's McCarthy and H.U.A.C.* witch hunt era blacklist was just ending.
By the 1970's, the film began to be re-discovered by a new generation. It was heralded as a feminist classic. Unions finally discovered its potent message. Film lovers now could see that it was a profoundly patriotic work -- and a unique example of American neorealism.
Judith Eisenscher, writing in Film Library Quarterly, said:
"Have no doubt, this is a political film. That is the beauty of it. This is not the story of one woman's individual psychological alienation, but the story of workers trying to better their lives and the internal and external struggle which that entails. The battle against male chauvinism is the major theme [in - and beyond - the context of a labor strike], but the film also deals with the whole question of racism - how it is used to divide the workers and how subtly it influences even sympathetic anglos. All of these themes come together in a well-blended story, not a dogmatic tract. It remains lively, at times humorous and it is deeply moving. The only drawback is the soundtrack, which was recorded under extremely difficult circumstances, and makes it difficult [at times] to hear some very beautiful dialogue."
When the film opened in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reviewed it: " 'Salt of the Earth' is an American movie about workers, which fact alone makes it unusual...The idea that workers are people, and have conflicts and problems worthy of attention, has never impressed the American film industry...not that workers are ignored altogether. Sometimes they are used for comic relief, or as background figures in an industrial epic, a pliable, anonymous mob streaming into plants early in the morning...Quite often, too, we run across workers in crime stories, as the victims or pawns of racketeers in control of their union. But the notion, so commonlace in European and English films, and in the entire world literature, that the lives and struggles of ordinary people are of dramatic interest seems too exotic for American consumption...Accordng to this philosophy, to be a worker carries with it a stigma of degradtion and inferiority...Cinematically, 'Salt of the Earth"'is an exciting experience, a deeply-human drama in the documentary manner perfected by the Italians in such masterpieces as 'Open City,' 'The Bicycle Thief,"' and 'Shoe Shine'. "
* H.U.A.C. - The Congressional Committee in the House of Representatives that was the grandaddy of all arbiters of "political correctness" – the House Un-Amercan Activities Committee, whose mandate it was for over a decade, to ferret out any and all subversives in the U.S.A.