| Salt of the Earth | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Herbert J. Biberman |
| Screenplay by | Michael Wilson |
| Produced by | Paul Jarrico |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography |
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| Edited by |
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| Music by | Sol Kaplan |
| Distributed by | Independent Productions |
Release date |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Languages | English Spanish |
| Budget | $250,000 |
Salt of the Earth is a 1954 Americanfilm drama written byMichael Wilson, directed byHerbert J. Biberman, and produced byPaul Jarrico. Because all three men wereblacklisted by theHollywoodestablishment due to their alleged involvement incommunist politics,[1]Salt of the Earth was one of the first fullyindependent films made outside of the Hollywoodstudio system.
It was also one of the first motion pictures to advance thefeminist social and political point of view. Its plot centers on a long and difficultstrike, based on the1951 strike against theEmpire Zinc Company inGrant County,New Mexico. The company is identified as "Delaware Zinc", and the setting is "Zinc Town, New Mexico". The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike. Shot in a style influenced byItalian neorealism, and making atmospheric use of New Mexico's landscapes,Salt of the Earth employed mostly local miners and their families as actors.[1][2]
The film was initially mired inRed Scare controversy and was suppressed. Eventually though, it was seen by more and more people until it came to be recognized as an important cultural, political and aesthetic work. In 1992, it was selected to theLibrary of Congress'sNational Film Registry of significant U.S. films.[3]
Esperanza Quintero is a miner's wife in Zinc Town,New Mexico, a community which is essentially run and owned by Delaware Zinc, Inc. Esperanza is thirty-five years old, pregnant with her third child and emotionally dominated by her husband, Ramón Quintero.[4] We know from her concern about heronomásticos ordía de mi/su santo (a.k.a.Name Day) that it is 12 November as that is theonomásticos of persons named Esperanza.
The majority of the miners areMexican-Americans and want decent working conditions equal to those of white or "Anglo" miners. Theunionized workers go on strike, but the company refuses to negotiate and the impasse continues for months. Esperanza gives birth and, simultaneously, Ramón is beaten by police and jailed on bogus assault charges following an altercation with a union worker who betrayed his fellows. When Ramón is released, Esperanza tells him that he's no good to her in jail. He counters that if the strike succeeds, they will not only get better conditions right now but also win hope for their children's futures.[4]
The company presents aTaft-Hartley Act injunction to the union, meaning any miners who picket will be arrested. Taking advantage of a loophole, the wives picket in their husbands' places. Some men dislike this tactic, seeing it as improper and dangerous. At first, Ramón forbids Esperanza from picketing, but she eventually joins the line while carrying her baby.[4]
The sheriff, by company orders, arrests the leading women of the strike. Esperanza is among those taken to jail. The women are loud and unruly in jail and make it so unendurable for the sheriff, he releases them.[5] When Esperanza returns home, Ramón tells her the strike is hopeless, as the company will easily outlast the miners. She insists that the union is stronger than ever and asks Ramón why he can't accept her as an equal in their marriage. Both angry, they sleep separately that night.[4]
The next day the company evicts the Quintero family from their house. The union men and women arrive to protest the eviction. Ramón tells Esperanza that they can all fight together. The mass of workers and their families prove successful in saving the Quinteros' home. The company admits defeat and plans to negotiate. Esperanza believes that the community has won something no company can ever take away and it will be inherited by her children.[4]
The Non-Professional Cast
Herbert Biberman was one of the ten Hollywood screenwriters and directors who refused in 1947 to answer questions from theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities about their affiliations with theCommunist Party USA. The "Hollywood Ten" were cited forcontempt of Congress and jailed. Biberman was imprisoned in theFederal Correctional Institution atTexarkana for six months. After his release, and unable to obtain work in Hollywood, he met with fellow blacklistees about establishing their own production company and collaborating to make movies.[6] In 1951, they formed the Independent Productions Corporation (IPC).[1]Salt of the Earth was the sole production that IPC was able to finish.[7] Other blacklistees who participated in the movie includedPaul Jarrico,Will Geer, andMichael Wilson.[3][8]
Before production commenced inSilver City, New Mexico, the mainstream press already labeled the film dangerous and subversive because it was known to be the creation of blacklisted professionals, and because theInternational Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (a.k.a. "Mine Mill") was helping to fund it. The Mine Mill union had been expelled from theCIO in 1950 for its unwillingness to purge suspectedCommunists from its leadership.[5]The Hollywood Reporter warned readers that "H'wood Reds are shooting a feature length anti-American racial issue propaganda movie."Newsweek headlined its attack on the film, "Reds in the Desert".[9]
As Tom Miller notes in aCinéaste article, the early negative publicity made it difficult to assemble a film crew: "TheInternational Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees—IATSE, anAFL affiliate—refused to allow its members to work onSalt of the Earth because of the movie's politics. That the Hollywood unions wouldn't let their members work on such a pro-union film was bitter irony."[9] As a consequence, IPC had to scramble to put together a makeshift crew.
Only five professional actors were cast. The rest were residents ofGrant County, New Mexico, or members of Mine Mill, Local 890, many of whom took part in the strike that inspired the movie. Juan Chacón was a real-life union local president. In the film he plays theprotagonist who has trouble dealing with women as equals.[10] The director was reluctant to cast him at first, thinking he was too "gentle", but both Revueltas and the director's sister-in-law, Sonja Dahl Biberman (wife of Biberman's brotherEdward), urged him to cast Chacón as Ramón.[11]
According to one journalist's account, "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot,anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading ladyRosaura Revueltas was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead ... The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."[12] Afterprincipal photography ended,laboratories wouldn't process the film, which delayedpostproduction work for months.[13] As producer Paul Jarrico recalled in a 1983 interview, "I had to trot around the country with cans of film under my arms, putting the film through different labs under phony names. We had a lot of trouble, but we did complete the film, despite the obstacles."[14]
WithMcCarthyism in full force at the time of release, the movie establishment did not embraceSalt of the Earth.Pauline Kael, who reviewed it forSight and Sound, panned it as a simplistic left-wing "morality play" and said it was "as clear a piece of Communistpropaganda as we have had in many years."[13]Variety praised several elements in the film but called it "a propaganda picture which belongs in union halls rather than theatres."[15]
Bosley Crowther, film critic forThe New York Times, reviewed the picture somewhat favorably, both for its direction and screenplay:
Salt of the Earth is, in substance, simply a strong pro-labor film with a particularly sympathetic interest in the Mexican-Americans with whom it deals....But the real dramatic crux of the picture is the stern and bitter conflict within the membership of the union. It is the issue of whether the women shall have equality of expression and of strike participation with the men. And it is along this line of contention that Michael Wilson's tautly muscled script develops considerable personal drama, raw emotion and power.[16]
As anti-Communist fervor waned, the movie started to be judged on its merits. By 2021, the review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics (based on thirteen reviews) had given the movie a positive rating.[17]
AlthoughSalt of the Earth received limited distribution inWestern andEastern Europe in the 1950s and won awards there, it was nearly impossible to see it in theUnited States. After its opening night in New York City, it languished for a decade because only thirteen theaters in the country were willing to show it.[18]Roy Brewer of theIATSE leveraged his ties with the projectionists' union to cancel numerous bookings.[19] TheAmerican Legion threatened to picket any theater that exhibited the movie.[20]Salt of the Earth was denounced by theU.S. House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, and theFBI investigated the film's financing, looking for evidence of foreign funds that could justify prosecution under theForeign Agents Registration Act.[21]
In 1959, officials from theUnited States Information Agency testified before aHouse Appropriations subcommittee that a handful of movies, includingSalt of the Earth, "were giving the United States trouble overseas." RepresentativeFrank T. Bow (R-OH) said, "such films were painting a false picture abroad of the United States and that something should be done about it."[22] It wasn't until 1965 thatSalt of the Earth was re-released.
The story of the suppression ofSalt of the Earth, as well as the people and labor struggle it depicts, inspired anunderground audience of unionists,feminists,Mexican-Americans, leftists,film historians, and labor scholars.[13] The movie found a new life in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early '70s and reached larger audiences through union halls, college campuses, art houses, women's associations, andfilm schools, even though it was projected with a relatively poor16mm stock.[18][26]
In subsequent decades, the film was shown on public television and released on videocassette. In 1997,Turner Classic Movies screenedSalt of the Earth which further raised its profile beyond the initial cult following.[27] In the early 2000s, the film's 50th anniversary prompted a number of commemorative events, including a national conference hosted by the College of Santa Fe in whichSalt of the Earth was called "one of the most important and controversial films in American cinema history."[24] In an interview, political commentatorNoam Chomsky praised the film's portrayal of union activity: "[T]he real work is being done by people who are not known, that's always been true in every popular movement in history ... I don't know how you get that across in a film. Actually, come to think of it, there are some films that have done it. I mean, I don't see a lot of visual stuff ... but I thoughtSalt of the Earth really did it. It was a long time ago, but at the time I thought that it was one of the really great movies—and of course it was killed, I think it was almost never shown."[28]
The "Salt of the Earth Labor College" located inTucson,Arizona is named after the film. The pro-labor institution (not a collegeper se) holds lectures and forums related to unionism and economic justice. The film is screened on a frequent basis.[29]
In 1987, alaserdisc version was released by theVoyager Company.[30] On July 27, 1999, a digitally restored print of the film was released onDVD by Organa through Geneon (Pioneer), and packaged with the documentaryThe Hollywood Ten, which reported on the ten filmmakers who were blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In 2004, a budget editionDVD was released byAlpha Video.
Because the film'scopyright was not renewed in 1982,[31]Salt of the Earth is now in thepublic domain.[32][33]
The film was adapted into a two-actopera calledEsperanza (Hope). The labor movement inWisconsin along withUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison opera professorKarlos Moser commissioned the production. The music was written by David Bishop and thelibretto by Carlos Morton. The opera premiered inMadison, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2000, to positive reviews.[34]
John Sayles'Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980) includes a wry homage toSalt of the Earth. When the reunitedbaby boomer characters are briefly jailed, they reminisce about their radical college days when they were locked up in aSecaucus,New Jersey jail and chanted "We want the formula! We want the formula!" to bewildered guards. The guards didn't realize it was an allusion to aSalt of the Earth scene in which the picketing Mexican-American women are arrested and thrown in jail. Esperanza has her infant child with her, and all the women chant "We want the formula!" to pressure the sheriff to either bring formula for the hungry baby or let them out of jail. He opts for the latter.[35]
A documentary titledA Crime to Fit the Punishment, about the making of the film, was released in 1982 and directed by Barbara Moss and Stephen Mack.[36] The title comes from a Paul Jarrico quote regarding the blacklistees who formed Independent Productions Corporation: "I have said thatSalt of the Earth was our chance to really say something in film, because we had already been punished, we had already been blacklisted. I used the phrase, 'We wanted to commit a crime to fit the punishment.'"[14] The documentary premiered on May 1, 1982 in Silver City, New Mexico, with many of the survivingSalt of the Earth cast and crew members in attendance.[37]
Afilm drama, also based on the making ofSalt of the Earth, was chronicled inOne of the Hollywood Ten (2000). It was produced and directed byKarl Francis, starredJeff Goldblum andGreta Scacchi, and was released in European countries on September 29, 2000.[38]
A fictionalized account of the movie's production figured prominently in theAudiblepodcast series,The Big Lie (2022). Based on source material written by Paul Jarrico, the production features voice performances fromJon Hamm,Kate Mara,Ana de la Reguera,Bradley Whitford,John Slattery,Giancarlo Esposito, andDavid Strathairn, and was written byJohn Mankiewicz and Jamie Napoli.[39][40]
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