Das Salz der Erde

I had never worked a day of construction until the Summer of 2001. I applied, got hired, and immediately recieved rank of apprentice under the dumbest white guy I'd ever met. While I'm trying to learn maps and numbers, all the minorities were grouped together for the grunt work. I didn't know it, but it seems that there is a war between the whites and the Mexicans on most construction sites, and apparently the port-a-johns are used as the venue for slanderous discussion. Salt of the Earth is almost fifty years old. It illustrates inequality between whites & Chicanos, male & female, and rich & poor. Is it possible that fifty years later nothing has changed? We've achieved nothing as a human race. Sadly, this lack of achievement is what allows this film to have great meaning to modern-day viewers like myself. I've got a tag line for this movie: "Don't fight 'til the end. Fight to win."

In the early 1950's, film studios were under attack from two directions. Small screen TV had put a big dent in theatre attendance, while the Mc Carthyite cold war had put a big chill in the cultural milieu. A formerly lucrative industry found itself suddenly reeling, with a future no longer very certain. In short, the commercial winds had changed and Hollywood needed an overhaul. To meet TV's challenge, studio moguls introduced big screen Cinerama, biblical spectaculars and full-cleavage romance goddesses; to please congressional investigators, they fired unrepentant left-wingers and blackballed them from future employment. Social commentary, never much of a staple, disappeared entirely, while the escapism of Westerns, Tennessee Williams, and bedroom innuendo took over. The 50's had arrived with a vengeance.

Against this backdrop, Salt of the Earth appears to have parachuted in from another planet. In retrospect, the film's look, feel, and values, plus use of non-actors, represent an anti- Hollywood aesthetic in just about about its purest form. Instead of the usual ersatz, there are company shacks, a desolate land, and real workers sometimes speaking a foreign tongue about hot water and labor solidarity. This was and is about as far removed from the fabled dream factory as any commercial film before or since. To my knowledge, Salt is the only professional movie made in America by known communists. And though I've seen it a number of times, I've yet to detect a theme that any conscionable liberal would disagree with. The emphasis throughout is on reform, not revolution.

So why was the movie so thoroughly ostracized. Aside from the obvious negatives, there are two aspects that challenge patriotic assumptions about the power of the individual. The strikers win because of their solidarity, that is, their capacity to overcome internal divisions in pursuit of common goals. But more importantly, theirs is a leaderless solidarity. Unlike so many other labor films, no one person arises in Salt to take charge or direct the actions of the others. No single iconic personality dominates. Community of labor is the real agent of change and victor here, while no one individual can be pointed to as indispensable. Second, through the pivotal role of Esperanza (a professional actress), the individual is shown as flowering amidst the common effort. Far from being submerged in a faceless mass, she discovers through participation a heightened sense of individualness and a wealth of hidden talents. Moreover, a stronger, more confident Esperanza means a stronger, more confident strike effort. In short, it's not individuality versus the group, but individuality from within the group. I don't know how subversive these ideas ultimately are, but I do know they challenge decades of iconic film-making, in which the omnipotent movie star, a John Wayne or a Sylvester Stallone, is transformed into a demi-god and exalted above the common folk. Against this grain, Salt seeks to empower its audience, not dis-empower.

There are many fine touches in the film. I'm glad the workers are not romanticized, nor are the bosses or their law-enforcement allies caricatured. Instead the hardscrabble families are treated as ordinary people, able, nevertheless, to act intelligently beyond the cultural limits placed upon them. Ordinarily, the viewer would expect a heavy hand with such politically charged material; however, the producers have the good sense to hew to a lighter approach that features unexpected deposits of humor, as when the men whine about being forced to hang out the wash. This furnishes both a good laugh and an incisive piece of social commentary. In fact, most of the movie's considerable humor comes from its strong feminist subtext, certainly a striking exception to the Ozzie and Harriet stereotypes of the period.

Despite an obvious appeal to cultural historians, Salt is much more than a mere artifact. There is, of course, no more Mc Carthy-led purge, and miners' wives have long since gotten hot water and indoor plumbing thanks to labor militancy. Nevertheless, the film's social themes continue to reach beyond that long-ago period. Women continue to strive for equality, just as the workers' wives in Salt struggled as domestics against the chauvinism of their husbands. Moreover, the need for racial equality remains as pressing now as it was in Michael Wilson's prescient screenplay. And, of course, there's labor's ongoing battle to get something like a fair share of the wealth it produces. Far from being a dead artifact, the power of this suppressed treasure along with the courage of the men and women who made it, continues to echo across the decades, furnishing inspiration to generations to come.

Despite the crap the filmmakers had to endure to get this one done, it took its share of pans when it came out: A pious piece of agitprop full of too-good-to-be-true and too-bad-to-be-believed stick figures, etc etc. Today, it holds up well - first, its use of "real" locations and "real" people appears more valuable in a documentary sense the farther away we get from the time it was made. Second, the production values, especially the cinematography - the Blacklist claimed some of the more talented technicians in Hollywood, and Salt of the Earth benefits richly from their work.

Third, the themes remain quite relevant. When we see footage of, say Bolivian coca growers taking to the streets to overthrow their country's US-sponsored tycoon president, what's so surprising about a community of Mexican American workers standing in solidarity against an exploitative mining company? When we see Justice for Janitors bringing the owners of LA's office towers to the table (at least), what's so far-fetched about workers in Salt of the Earth grabbing a bit of justice for themselves? I could go on.

From the vantage point of 2003, Salt of the Earth looks like a refreshing change. Agitprop is news to a lot of people today - it can be powerful if done well, yet we're now all conditioned to think that any form of dramatic art that doesn't center obsessively on the isolated individual is false and/or sentimental. Is Salt of the Earth really more sentimental than On the Waterfront (made about the same time), in which a corruption struggle on the New Jersey docks serves merely as the scenery for Marlon Brando's emoting about his boxing career?? Come on!!

People who stand in solidarity really are powerful. Americans are taught not to think so, but it's when they stand up together, not separately, that they win the biggest victories (and I don't mean in uniform, either).

As a U.S.-born Latina whose family has lived in the northern New Mexico/southern Colorado region since the early 1700s, I'm ashamed to say I had never heard of this film. I was trolling through Netflix for something to watch one night when this popped up in my "suggested films" list. Boy, am I ever glad I watched it.

My grandfather was a coal miner in southern Colorado, and the coal-mining industry (and its effects on Hispanos of the Southwest) has been an interest of mine all of my life. Quite simply, this film brought history to life for me. The actors, location, themes, language, and other details were so authentic, that I felt I was watching a documentary at times. I felt a spiritual connection to my grandparents, who lived and worked in coal mining camps in the early part of the 20th century. I grew up hearing their stories, and the devastation of the Colorado Coalfield Wars and the Ludlow Massacre.

This is, quite simply, a stunning cinematic achievement, especially given that it was written and filmed in 1954. Sadly, many of the prejudices and themes in the film resonate today. Little has changed for many of the hardworking Hispanos who have called the Southwest home for centuries.

This film has a rare and beautiful honest quality seldom seen to this magnitude in pictures. Made during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s it was produced completely by a blacklisted crew and professional cast. The film itself was banned in the U.S.A. by congress until the late 1960s. The picture is based on a true story of Mexican-American mine workers on strike in New Mexico. It deals with the wives of the miners having to to step up and work the picket lines in place of their husbands who were legally banned from picketing. Many of the cast members were actual participants in the original strike and the leading lady was deported before the film was even finished. The story of the struggle to make this film would actually make a good film. Ironically the film is very patriotic and shows what truly makes America great; it's people. A strong man and woman's picture with a genuinely beautiful fighting human spirit. It's one of a kind.