Norma Rae (1979)

Sometimes, the reputation of a film is based upon the strength of a single powerful performance. A great actor or actress can lift a seemingly ordinary film to a realm where it is considered strong enough to vie for the Oscar for Best Picture. Such is the case with 1979's Norma Rae, which features an iconic performance in the title role by Sally Field. So good is Field as a single mother who gets involved in attempts to unionize the workers at the textile factory where she works that what might be considered a merely good film is now considered a classic of the late 1970s, one of the greatest decades for American movie-making.

I hope that first paragraph doesn't sound like too much of a criticism because I admire the work that director Martin Ritt has done here. Norma Rae has its heart in the right place, certainly, and I agree with its politics. I just think that much of the film's reputation falls squarely on the small shoulders of Field, who was making quite a leap by taking on this part. It's a gutsy performance, anchored by the scene with which everyone is familiar. Oh, you know the one I mean. Norma Rae walks through the factory, having been fired by the factory bosses, and holds up a sign with the word "Union" scribbled on it. Even if you haven't watched the entire movie, you've seen that scene.

Yet focusing on that scene alone undermines the powerful acting job Field pulls off here. At the film's beginning, there's only a hint of the union activist she will become later. Norma Rae lives in the same small town in which she grew up. She works beside her mother at the textile factory, and her father is in another part of the building doing his job. It's her mother's temporary loss of hearing (from the noise of the machines running all day) that prompts the first outburst in the movie about the need to do better by the workers. Contrast that moment, though, with what follows. Norma Rae goes to a local motel to meet a married man who comes to town regularly. She's bored with him--she's bored with her life, really--and she wants to break it off. After he hits her so hard that her nose starts to bleed, Norma Rae meets Ron Liebman's Reuben at the same motel. He's in town to organize the workers at the plant, and he's everything a Southerner would be suspicious of: Jewish, New Yorker, union sympathizer, abrasive, you name it. It takes a good actress to allow us to see how complex a woman like Norma Rae is, someone who could look past her mundane life to be intrigued by what Reuben plans to achieve in her hometown.

The factory bosses, in an attempt to silence Norma Rae, give her a supervisory job with additional pay. She doesn't like having to "spy" on her co-workers, but the money could help with her family's expenses. However, Norma Rae is never one to give in too easily, and after several clashes with the bosses over what she considers horrible working conditions and too much resentment on the part of her colleagues, she goes back to her old job. Her activism on behalf of the workers isn't over, though, and she begins attending and organizing meetings of the workers outside of the factory to discuss the possibility of forming a union. She also begins helping Reuben by passing out fliers as the workers enter the factory each day. There is, of course, resistance from many people in town, but Norma Rae and Reuben, as unlikely a team as you could expect, slowly gain support and earn the right for the workers to take a vote on unionization.

There's a lovely romantic subplot involving Beau Bridges (who remembers him being this cute?), a fellow factory worker with a daughter of his own. Norma Rae has two children, each by a different father, so she doesn't think of herself as marriage material. Yet Bridges' Sonny Webster is remarkably persistent, and the film shows us the happiness the newlyweds experience as well as the difficulties they face in the depressed economy of their town. Even when the inevitable rumors begin that Norma Rae has been having an affair with Reuben--and, to be fair, she is certainly intrigued by him, perhaps sexually excited by him--she remains loyal to Sonny.

As a study of small town labor organizing, Norma Rae pays careful attention to details. Although not as graphic as later films would be, this movie does show the beatings that union sympathizers had to endure. And there are even attempts by the factory bosses to incite racism among the white workers by claiming that the black workers plan to take over if a union is organized at the factory. Even the police seem to be on the side of the factory bosses. When Norma is arrested, they carry her to jail and charge her with disorderly conduct. Field certainly ought to earn your respect for her acting in that scene. Four men have an awfully difficult time getting her inside a police car.

The supporting cast, including Liebman and Bridges, is also uniformly good. The great character actor Pat Hingle plays Norma's father, and all of the performers who play factory workers let their faces show the way that such work slowly causes one's self-esteem, one's sense of self-worth, to disintegrate. All of them look "real," as if they truly worked in a factory. No Hollywood beauties or leading men among the supporting cast, thankfully.

If I have any problem with this film, it has to be the theme song. The title is "It Goes Like It Goes," and it won the Oscar for Best Song that year. I still can't quite believe it. It's not as if it faced stiff competition or anything (although I do like "Through the Eyes of Love" from Ice Castles and "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie well enough that I wouldn't have been offended by a win for either of them). The best and most popular song from the movies that year, the title song to The Main Event, wasn't even nominated, so the voters went with this Norma Rae ditty. I know it's sung well by Jennifer Warnes, whose music I tend to like. It's just an inconsequential song that tends to repeat a cliche too many times. A movie as good as Norma Rae deserves better than that, and the Academy voters should have known better too.