Martin Ritt
Norma Rae

We are in the deep South of the USA in the 1970s, Alabama to be precise, but it feels like being immersed in early 20th-century Europe. The residents of a small town struggle to get by working in the local textile industry that exploits them, ignoring even the most basic union rights. A young factory worker (Sally Field) and a union organizer from New York (Rob Leibman) come together to try to bring some rights to the factory; the path towards a better quality of life for the community will be very tough.

"Norma Rae" places a concrete observant eye on a small social reality on the margins of the American giant; the USA is seen from a completely different perspective, far from their more or less abused stereotypes. This film tells the story of a heroine in everyday life, a strong and determined female figure who tries with all her being to change a social order that has been immobile for too long. "Norma Rae" is not a leftist revolutionary; she is a real woman facing life every day, enduring its injustices, tasting only the bitter flavor of defeats, but never giving up and, with tenacity, manages to achieve small but fundamental results. We are in 1978, but in Alabama, the social changes won through a century of civil rights battles have never arrived; everything is stagnant, black people are discriminated against, and female emancipation is light-years away from happening. The film touches on these themes and many others with surprising concreteness without getting lost in heavy and misleading descriptions of the environment. 'Alabama is like this, and to make it speak and present itself, just capture it in its moments of life, the bar frequented by workers, the idleness of the elderly broken only by despicable comments towards outsiders, the church on Sunday morning. This is a very simple but also very direct film; at many points, it feels like watching a documentary. The director manages to use images as vehicles of emotion in the right way, without ever succumbing to banality or being too emphatic. One can see in Norma a feminist figure, however, one must be cautious that the term "feminist" should be stripped of all its exuberant and caricatural connotations. Norma fights for everyone, men, women, and blacks, "Black people have never given me problems, I only had them from whites."

Martin Ritt brings us back to an Alabama full of all its flaws but also its slow rhythms, the warm and reassuring sense of family relationships. It is very hot in the summer of '78 in which the story takes place, and the sultriness is a constant companion for these people. Sally Field delivers one of her most intense performances (awarded with a well-deserved Oscar), her talent is remarkable, and she manages to give her character a real soul in all her roles: worker, unionist, mother, and partner. A figure of Norma Rae that is real and moving, a heroine close to all of us, the protagonist of a simply beautiful story.