Word: ritts
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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...
...southern town. Her plight evokes far more sympathy than that of many recent feminist heroines like Erica from An Unmarried Woman or the French nymphets in One Sings, the Other Doesn't. While directors no longer trumpet forth about making black films, many still want to make women movies. Ritt escapes this well-intentioned pot-hole by creating a central figure who's got not only XX chromosomes but grit and brains as well...
...when the 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...
...emphasize just how platonic the bond between Norma and Reuben is, Ritt marries her off to Sonny Webster (Beau Bridges), the archtype 'good ole boy.' Handsome but lethargic, this youthful Billy Carter barely peeps while his new bride flies about doing labor organizing with the self-described 'lefto' from Central Park West. Bridges tries valiantly to inject this regional stereotype with credibility but unfortunately, his Sonny comes off like a muscle-bound teddy-bear blessed with the patience of Baptist Mother Theresa. Supposedly a divorced father, Sonny behaves with such liberated understanding that it seems impossible any woman would depart...
...other flaw comes from ommission. Apparently, the New South as seen by Ritt really doesn't have any racial problems. Throughout the first three-quarters of the film, blacks and whites co-mingle with utter amiability. But when the plot thickens and a smattering of biolence is called forth, out pops "racial tension." Ritt uses the issue mechanically and it shows...