Women as Striking as Mine Workers in ‘Salt of Earth’

About the only unqualified compliment I can give the blustery but vague “Hoffa” is that it’s pro-labor. The movie--at least the first half, before it bloats with confused Mafia shenanigans--does glorify the working man as a kind of Sisyphus toiling against a mountain of Big Business.

If “Hoffa,” in the end, is a grand idea that succumbs to all those bad Hollywood impulses leading to outsized star vehicles (Jack Nicholson harrumphs his way through), then a 1953 film far from the mainstream can serve as its antithesis. “Salt of the Earth” (screening Friday night as part of UC Irvine’s “Inside Outsiders” series) is small-framed and unsophisticated--but nonetheless esteemed as a human rights statement.

A minor legend, really, is this Herbert J. Biberman-directed picture about striking New Mexico mine workers (almost all Latinos) and their feminist-driven wives and sisters. Based on a 1951 protest and made during the height of the Communist scare, the key figures (Biberman, producer Paul Jarrico and writer Michael Wilson) were all blacklisted once “Salt of the Earth” was completed.

The harassment began on the set. Rosaura Revueltas, the lead actress and one of the few professionals, was deported. Biberman had to go to Mexico to shoot a few last scenes with her. And the day-to-day filming was a struggle, as recalled by Zelma Wilson, the screenwriter’s widow:

“The set was buzzed by airplanes. Goons were sent around to beat people up,” she recalled in a recent interview. “The strike they were writing about had a great deal of violence, and there was a great deal of violence during the making of the movie.”

Although it never did receive a wide release, “Salt of the Earth” became a cult artifact, both here and in Europe. Now it’s considered a seminal piece of American agitprop, a clumsy but earnest use of film to propagandize a worthy cause.

The good guys and bad guys are offered up almost from the first frame, when Esperanza’s (Revueltas) emotional narration hangs over a triumphant score and scenes of the near-squalid mine workers’ shacks. The pregnant Esperanza tries for a big bite of poignancy: “The house is not ours, but the flowers, the flowers are ours. . . . I’m a mine worker’s wife . . . . I wished that my child would not be born, no, not into this world.”

Quick switch to trouble at the mine, where her husband, Ramon (Juan Chacon), complains about the dangerous working conditions. Later, he and his wife argue over what’s more important, the lack of safety in the mines or the lack of sanitation in the shacks. They do agree that the mine owners, responsible for both, are exploiting everybody.

The film moves predictably to the strike, where the men join the line and face rough treatment from the local cops, portrayed as a grinning gang of crackers lead by Will Geer, who was also blacklisted after the movie came out. Eventually, the women join the protest, walking the picket line for their husbands, becoming equal partners in the fight.

It’s this portrayal that has charmed feminists as least as much as unionists. “Salt of the Earth” is credited as one of the first pictures to deal squarely with women’s issues; the wives are not bashful when confronting their husbands about how equality extends beyond the mines and into everywhere else, including the kitchen.

All in all, “Salt of the Earth” is such a sermon to the faithful that it can seem like a leftist version of one of those patriotic pictures put out by the government during World War II to keep up morale. The characters tend to speechify, not talk to one another, and the atmosphere is idealized, although Biberman is striving for a gritty earthiness.

As a director, he has little visual style--the film is not especially watchable. But it is admirable in very specific ways. Biberman and the rest paid a price for their convictions, and that gives “Salt of the Earth” a certain honor beyond the valuable message.