United States, 1954
Directed by Herbert J. Biberman
With Rosaura Revueltas (Esperanza Quinteiro), Juan Chacón (Ramon Quinteiro), Will Geer (the sheriff), David Bauer (Barton), Clinton Jencks (Frank Barnes), Virginia Jencks (Ruth Barnes)
Can the fight for equality be a simple equation only a ritualized confrontation can solve? Is not there more to it in fact, should it be not rather a wider and more complex questioning, a multifaceted, cross-pollinating fight challenging tenets and habits and then forcing a more united and complete view of humanity?
The story of the zinc mine of New Mexico where this unusual film, produced with the backing of a trade union and outside the regular production system then known in the United States, takes place, starts on the terms of the first question. The anger felt by a highly skilled miner quick to take a stand and to fly off the handle, Ramon Quinteiro, reaches a point of no return when a fellow worker is badly hurt in an accident. As he tells the mine’s chief, Barton, he has been warning such a disaster would occur for a long time, so poor the working conditions imposed on the miners are. To him, it is a shameful discrimination: because he and many other miners are migrants from Mexico and South America the corporate leadership thinks it can skimp here on the safety rules enforced across the board in the big corporation the mine belongs to. These miners are Hispanics and not Whites, so their lives do not seem to call for the same care. The immediate consequence of the accident is a strike, with Ramon Quinteiro as the spark prodding the miners into action, with the backing of the local trade union leaders, like one of the few white folks around, Frank Barnes.
But the men are in for a surprise, highlighted by the camera shifting from the carefully built collection of eye-level shots, closeups, high angle shots, and wider ones too capturing the group dynamics when miners make their point over their boss to a dramatic low angle shot capturing another gathering which is in fact the conclusion of a subplot that has run even before the accident. The image shows their determined wives with placards of their own keenly looking down at the men, eager to support them but also to air their own grievances and wishes. It is also about discrimination: why do their houses lacking access to clean water and sanitation, while in the other mines families do not have to deal with such a basic issue? Exhausted by the daily chore of fetching water, heating up, and disposing of it, the women have suddenly got up in arms.
That is fair, but unusual. Workers’ wives, especially when the worker comes from south of the Rio Grande, are not supposed to have a public and political role but should only care about housekeeping, kids, and the cooking of their husbands’ meals. The point of the story is to show how these upset wives would instead keep on asking that their demands be taken seriously and then their willingness to act and to play a role in challenging the corporation. One meeting of the unionized workers after another, and one argument in the privacy and comfort of a home after another, the film carefully and wittily observes how the ladies win a little fight after another over reluctant and confused guys, to the point they become the toughest and most relentless activists, wreaking even more havoc, feared by the deputies of a tough and vicious sheriff more respectful of big business than of the laws and constitution, eventually forcing the corporation to negotiate – and the workers to understand at long last what the daily routines of a housewife look like and how great a woman can be as an activist and committed citizen. The equality that prevails at the end of the film is indeed even wider than what the miners hoped for, embracing a new view of the relation between genders.
This is a first-person narrative. Most of the plot and the topics is told through the voice-over of the wife of Ramon Quinteiro, Esperanza Quinteiro. The story of a group discovering and embracing a wider view of equality is also, and astutely, the story of a woman discovering and embracing social activism. A wearied and shy woman bearing a third child, Esperanza Quinteiro is the kind of housewife wary of taking a stand even if she is displeased with the hubby’s ways. She takes part in the demonstration planned by the other women of the mining town very reluctantly. But then, one meeting with the unionized workers or the other angry women after another, and one crisis after another, including arguments with the hubby, she gets vocal and grows resolute to make the now broader fighting agitating the mining town a success – not only ending the discrimination in working conditions but also on living conditions and in the treatment they all get before the law. The climax of her tortuous but unstoppable political and personal awakening is the time she is forced to spend in jail with her baby. The coy, easily scared woman is now the fierce mother defending the many rights she feels must protect and feed – hers, her baby’s rights, her husband’s rights, the miners’ rights, the women’s rights, the rights of all for decency and fairness.
It is not entirely stark and somber. The film does deal with the women’s fight wittily, with funny vignettes and wry dialogues, pointing to how hopelessly inexpert at housekeeping and at imagining a woman’s life their men are, showing how many couples found themselves under pressure, with the men struggling to accept their women’s fresh views. It can be funny to watch but in the main case other scenes highlight the gap between Ramon and Esperanza, with the family’s unity in the line of fire at one point.
Director Herbert J. Biberman, who has been a progressive producer, director, and writer in an artistic career which began in 1928 when he joined the leftist Theater guild as an assistant stage manager and then took another turn in 1935 as he shot his debut feature, has been mainly known in 1954 as one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted by the American Film Industry for refusing to testify before the House of Representatives’ Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The logic behind his film is that since he cannot work in the studio system because of his opinions, then he might as well let these opinions drive him to make a film that would be different and above all true to his beliefs and values – he has no longer anything to lose after all. It was also the case of his producer, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, Paul Jarrico who was looking for a director for the independent production company he bravely set up.
“Salt of the Earth” is reminiscent of the Italian neorealist films, starting with a mainly nonprofessional cast, though professional ones also play – the mix is epitomized by the couple at the center of the narrative as Ramon Quinteiro is played by trade unionist Juan Chacón, who led a real strike in a zinc mine in New Mexico in 1951-1952, an event which is the source of Michael Wilson’s screenplay, and Esperanza Quinteiro is played by a star of the Mexican cinema, Rosaura Revueltas. The camera treads the same ground where the 1951-1952 strike occurred and depicts as genuinely as possible the lives and hardship of a mining town, reportage-like, though the title sequence insists the characters are fictional.
The performances can be awkward, the twists and turns can be a bit simplistic or mawkish, some closeups are too obviously designed to turn the characters into powerful icons of social justice rather than relatable folks, and the budget is conspicuously too limited to allow sleeker images. But the film is gripping and moving if only because it is such a brutal reminder of how unforgiving corporations can be and how biased for big business law and order can be, but even more because of the organic, compelling, way it weaves the various demands for equality into each other, both into the fight between workers and capitalism, and into the lives and aspirations of the ordinary people that it put so firmly and passionately at the center stage.