Herbert J. Biberman – Salt of the Earth (1954)

Quote:
Against the hard and gritty background of a mine workers’ strike in a New Mexican town – a background bristling with resentment against the working and living conditions imposed by the operators of the mine – a rugged and starkly poignant story of a Mexican-American miner and his wife is told in “Salt of the Earth,” a union-sponsored film drama, which opened last night at the Grande Theatre on East Eighty-sixth Street.

It is the story of a husband’s firm objection to women – and, especially, his wife – mixing in the grim affairs of the strikers, and of the strong determination of the wife to participate, along with other women, in the carrying on of the strike.

This is the film that occasioned controversy and violence when it was being made near Silver City, N. M., just one year ago. The facts were then widely noted that members of the independent company making it, including the director, Herbert J. Biberman, and the producer, Paul Jarrico, had been identified before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities as past or present Communists and that the organization sponsoring the picture, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, had been expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations for left-wing leanings.

Threats of Vigilante Action
Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican actress who plays one of the leading roles, was seized as an illegal alien while the production was underway, and fisticuffs and threats of vigilante action occurred in Silver City while the company was there.

Recent sub rosa difficulties of the film’s producers in getting a theatre in which to show it here have further evidenced the pressures against it and the obstructions placed in its way.

In the light of this agitated history, it is somewhat surprising to find that “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. True, it frankly implies that the mine operators have taken advantage of the Mexican-born or descended laborers, have forced a “speed up” in their mining techniques and given them less respectable homes than provided the so-called “Anglo” laborers. It slaps at brutal police tactics in dealing with strikers and it gets in some rough, sarcastic digs at the attitude of “the bosses” and the working of the Taft-Hartley Law.

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.

Conflict of Personalities
For this conflict of human personalities, torn by egos and traditions, is shown in terms of sharp clashes at union meetings, melees on dusty picket lines, tussles with “scabs” and deputy sheriffs and face-to-face encouners between the husband and wife in their meager home. It is a conflict that broadly embraces the love of struggling parents for their young, the dignity of some of these poor people and their longings to see their children’s lot improved.

Under Mr. Biberman’s direction, an unusual company made up largely of actual miners and their families, plays the drama exceedingly well. Miss Revueltas, one of the few professional players, is lean and dynamic in the key role of the wife who compels her miner husband to accept the fact of equality, and Juan Chacon, a non-professional, plays the husband forcefully. Will Geer as a shrewd, hard-bitten sheriff, Clinton Jencks as a union organizer and a youngster named Frank Talevera as the son of the principals are excellent, too.

The hard-focus, realistic quality of the picture’s photography and style completes its characterization as a calculated social document. It is a clearly intended special interest film.
Bosely Crowther, NY Times, March 15, 1954

Herbert J. Biberman - (1954) Salt of the Earth.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 32mn
Size: 	1.38 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	768x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 949 Kbps
BPP: 	0.184
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/3542444DF3CC801/Herbert_J._Biberman_-_(1954)_Salt_of_the_Earth.mkv

Language(s):English, Spanish
Subtitles:English