Word: rae
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...Norma Rae: When Sally Fields dropped from "The Flying Nun" into Burt Reynolds lap, a teen angel was despoiled, but no one took much notice. Martin Ritt, however, kept an eye on Fields, and plucked her from the backseat of Burt's van, where she last displayed her talents--prone--in Smokey and the Bandits. In Norma Rae, Ritt allows Fields aging starlet cuteness to work for her. A sassy, kick-around mill worker, Norma Rae is a woman cashing in on the vestiges of squirrel-mouthed, cheerleader prettiness. The story is hokey, but it plays. Widowed by a beer...
...idealistic halo surrounding unions has deteriorated into a fearful contempt for leaders like Jimmy Hoffa and the New Orleans police chief "who'll wreck the city if our demands aren't met," Ritt has made a movie about places disenchantment hasn't reached...because unions aren't allowed. Norma Rae sharply reminds us that yes, there places where people work for substandard wages and who are forbidden to unionize. The scenes in the textile mill lack the blatant horror of coal mining but instead, they capture the numbing, back-breaking monotony which is just as lethal to the spirit...
Thematically, Norma Rae comes off with nary a hitch--the pro-union sentiments and the subtle feminist message are powerfully conveyed to the audience. But the film has two, fairly significant flaws, one of characterization and one of atmosphere...
With the exception of Bridges, all the actors turn in fine performances. Complementing Sally Field's tour-de-force, Pat Bingle in the role of her father deftly shades his performance so that it explains not only his character but also where Norma Rae got her fire-cracking sparkle. The ensemble acting of the management staff in the factory deserves kudos as well. Rather than performing as a contingent from the Ku Klux Klan in mufti, the six men act with an understated assurance which suggests, but does not exaggerate, both their down-home humanity and their anti-semitic hostility...
...LEFT the theater, a Reuben look-alike pressed a pamphlet into my hand. Urging a J.P. Stevens boycott, it outlined that company's many offenses. Like many people, I had always professed undying concern about unions and 'brown lung' and then promptly forgotten. The highest recommendation for Norma Rae is this--it won't let you forget...