Norma Rae is something of an oddity in that the technical quality of the film-making and acting is beyond reproach but the story itself, while based on true events, seems to skim the surface of key events in a situation that is treated with deep significance but never manages to distinguish itself. No doubt it was significant to the real-life characters involved, but, for me, the story just came across as a run-of-the-mill 'little (wo)man against the system' tale.
Sally Field gives a bright and forceful performance as Norma Rae, a cotton mill worker and single mother living with her parents, who also work at the mill. In fact, the mill is the town's main employer and, as such, sees fit to run roughshod over the rights of its employees. The film does a good job of capturing the feel of the unpleasant environment in which these people work: machines clatter incessantly and are densely packed into the prison-like factory, creating a hot and noisy hell from which there are few opportunities to escape. And yet the film never really delves too deeply into the conflict between the workers and the management - which should have formed the core of the story - other than in a strictly conventional "good guys vs. bad guys" manner. All the management are depicted as mean-spirited and unsmiling, with no redeeming features, who stoop to phone tapping and incitement of racial hatred to try and foil the plans of Union representative Reuben Warshawsky (a sharp and edgy Ron Leibman) to win the work force over. Maybe it really happened like that, but the impression lingers that the makers deliberately depersonalised the management figures who are all peripheral in order to enhance the heroic status of their lead character.
Warshawsky, with the help of Norma Rae, finds it tough going to convert the workers, attracting a group of only seventeen out of 800. Presumably this is because of the worker's fears of repercussions from the management, but again this is never really made clear, and there is little feeling of the awakening of a sleeping giant as the call for an organised union grows: one minute there are just a handful of recruits, the next the whole workforce is downing tools as Norma is hauled off to prison. This is in keeping with the jarring compression of the time scale in which the story takes place. How long exactly does Sonny, Norma Rae's love interest, court her? The sequence of events is that Warshawsky arrives in town, Sonny takes Norma out on their first date, then Sonny proposes and they get married while poor old Warshawsky is still trying to drum up interest in his union. Either Sonny and Norma enjoyed the briskest of whirlwind romances or Warschawsky was the most stubborn man in the South and would still be canvassing the mill's workforce to this day had he not met with success.
I don't know whether such inconsistencies are down to laziness or simply the demands put upon the screenplay by the true turn of events but, either way, it irritates throughout. By trying to touch all bases the union story, the domestic strife, the father (Pat Hingle) and daughter relationship, the friendship between Norma and Warshawsky, Norma's growth as a person, etc the film devotes too little time to each and suffers badly as a result; it all looks pretty shallow by the final credits and, in my book, must go down as a missed opportunity on the part of Martin Ritt and the writers.
Sally Field gives a bright and forceful performance as Norma Rae, a cotton mill worker and single mother living with her parents, who also work at the mill. In fact, the mill is the town's main employer and, as such, sees fit to run roughshod over the rights of its employees. The film does a good job of capturing the feel of the unpleasant environment in which these people work: machines clatter incessantly and are densely packed into the prison-like factory, creating a hot and noisy hell from which there are few opportunities to escape. And yet the film never really delves too deeply into the conflict between the workers and the management - which should have formed the core of the story - other than in a strictly conventional "good guys vs. bad guys" manner. All the management are depicted as mean-spirited and unsmiling, with no redeeming features, who stoop to phone tapping and incitement of racial hatred to try and foil the plans of Union representative Reuben Warshawsky (a sharp and edgy Ron Leibman) to win the work force over. Maybe it really happened like that, but the impression lingers that the makers deliberately depersonalised the management figures who are all peripheral in order to enhance the heroic status of their lead character.
Warshawsky, with the help of Norma Rae, finds it tough going to convert the workers, attracting a group of only seventeen out of 800. Presumably this is because of the worker's fears of repercussions from the management, but again this is never really made clear, and there is little feeling of the awakening of a sleeping giant as the call for an organised union grows: one minute there are just a handful of recruits, the next the whole workforce is downing tools as Norma is hauled off to prison. This is in keeping with the jarring compression of the time scale in which the story takes place. How long exactly does Sonny, Norma Rae's love interest, court her? The sequence of events is that Warshawsky arrives in town, Sonny takes Norma out on their first date, then Sonny proposes and they get married while poor old Warshawsky is still trying to drum up interest in his union. Either Sonny and Norma enjoyed the briskest of whirlwind romances or Warschawsky was the most stubborn man in the South and would still be canvassing the mill's workforce to this day had he not met with success.
I don't know whether such inconsistencies are down to laziness or simply the demands put upon the screenplay by the true turn of events but, either way, it irritates throughout. By trying to touch all bases the union story, the domestic strife, the father (Pat Hingle) and daughter relationship, the friendship between Norma and Warshawsky, Norma's growth as a person, etc the film devotes too little time to each and suffers badly as a result; it all looks pretty shallow by the final credits and, in my book, must go down as a missed opportunity on the part of Martin Ritt and the writers.