Salt of the Earth

Salt of the Earth is an American  written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico. All had been blacklisted by the establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics.

The film is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view. Its plot centers on a long and difficult strike, based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. In the film, the company is identified as "Delaware Zinc," and the setting is "Zinctown, New Mexico." The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike. In style, the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film.

Plot
The film opens with a narration from Esperanza Quintero (Rosaura Revueltas). She begins:
 * "How shall I begin my story that has no beginning? My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero. I am a miner's wife. This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowers... the flowers are ours. This is my village. When I was a child, it was called San Marcos. The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town. Zinc  Town, New Mexico, U.S.A. Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shaft..."

The issues the miners strike for include equity in wages with Anglo workers and health and safety issues. Ramon Quintero (Juan Chacon) helps organize the strike, but at home he treats his wife as a second-class citizen. His wife, Esperanza Quintero, with their third child, is passive at first and reluctant either to take part in the strike or to assert her rights for equality at home. She changes her attitude when the men are forced to end their picketing by a Taft-Hartley Act injunction. At the union hall, the women convince the men after a long debate that they should be allowed to participate and they join the picket line.

Cast
Professional actors
 * Rosaura Revueltas as Esperanza Quintero
 * Will Geer as Sheriff
 * David Wolfe as Barton
 * Mervin Williams as Hartwell
 * David Sarvis as Alexander

Non-professional actors


 * Juan Chacón as Ramon Quintero
 * Henrietta Williams as Teresa Vidal
 * Ernesto Velázquez as Charley Vidal
 * Ángela Sánchez as Consuelo Ruiz
 * Joe T. Morales as Sal Ruiz


 * Clorinda Alderette as Luz Morales
 * Charles Coleman as Antonio Morales
 * Virginia Jencks as Ruth Barnes
 * Clinton Jencks as Frank Barnes
 * Víctor Torres as Sebasatian Prieto


 * E.A. Rockwell as Vance
 * William Rockwell as Kimbrough
 * Floyd Bostick as Jenkins
 * and other members of Mine-Mill Local 890

Production
The film was called subversive and blacklisted because the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, (Western Federation of Miners), sponsored it and many blacklisted Hollywood professional helped produce it. The union had been expelled from the CIO in 1950 for its alleged communist-dominated leadership.

Director Herbert Biberman was one of the Hollywood screenwriters and directors who refused to answer the House Committee on Un-American Activities on questions of CPUSA affiliation in 1947. The Hollywood Ten were cited and convicted for contempt of Congress and jailed. Biberman was imprisoned in the at  for six months. After his release he directed this film. Other participants who made the film and were blacklisted by the Hollywood studios include: Paul Jarrico, Will Geer, Rosaura Revueltas, and Michael Wilson.

The producers cast only five professional actors. The rest were locals from Grant County, New Mexico, or members of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890, many of whom were part of the strike that inspired the plot. Juan Chacón, for example, was a real-life Union Local president. In the film he plays the, who has trouble dealing with women as equals. The director was reluctant to cast him at first, thinking he was too "gentle," but both Revueltas and his sister-in-law, Sonja Dahl Biberman, wife of Biberman's brother Edward, urged him to cast Chacón as Ramon.

The film was denounced by the United States House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide boycott of the film. Film-processing labs were told not to work on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it. After its opening night in New York City, the film languished for 10 years because all but 12 theaters in the country refused to screen it.

By one journalist's account: "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading lady [Rosaura Revueltas] was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead....The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."

Critical response
The Hollywood establishment did not embrace the film at the time of its release, when McCarthyism was in full force.  charged at the time that it was made "under direct orders of the Kremlin." , who reviewed the film for  in 1954, said it was "as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years."

The New York Times film critic reviewed the picture favorably, both the screenplay and the direction, writing: "In the light of this agitated history, it is somewhat surprising to find that Salt of the Earth is, in substance, simply a strong pro-labor film with a particularly sympathetic interest in the Mexican-Americans with whom it deals...But the real dramatic crux of the picture is the stern and bitter conflict within the membership of the union. It is the issue of whether the women shall have equality of expression and of strike participation with the men. And it is along this line of contention that Michael Wilson's tautly muscled script develops considerable personal drama, raw emotion and power." Crowther called the film "a calculated social document."

The film found a wide audience in both Western and Eastern Europe in the 1950s.

The review aggregator reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on eleven reviews.

Awards and recognition

 * Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: Best Actress: Rosaura Revueltas; Crystal Globe Award for Best Picture, Herbert J. Biberman, Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czech Republic; 1954.
 * Academie du Cinema de Paris: International Grand Prize; 1955.
 * In 1992 the selected the film for preservation in the United States  for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
 * The film is preserved by the in New York.

Later history
The story of the film's suppression, as well as the events it depicted, inspired an underground audience of unionists, leftists, feminists, Mexican-Americans, and film historians. The film found a new life in the 1960s and gradually reached wider audiences through union halls, women's centers, and s. The 50th anniversary of the film saw a number of commemorative conferences held across the United States.

The "Salt of the Earth Labor College" located in Tucson, Arizona is named after the film. The pro-labor institution (not a college, per se) holds various lectures and forums related to unionism and economic justice. The film is screened on a frequent basis.

Around 1993, Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor and political commentator Noam Chomsky praised the film because of the way people were portrayed doing the real work of unions. He said, "[T]he real work is being done by people who are not known, that's always been true in every popular movement in history...I don't know how you get that across in a film. Actually, come to think of it, there are some films that have done it. I mean, I don't see a lot of visual stuff, so I'm not the best commentator, but I thought Salt of the Earth really did it. It was a long time ago, but at the time I thought that it was one of the really great movies—and of course it was killed, I think it was almost never shown."

Other releases
On July 27, 1999, a digitally restored print of the film was released in by  through Geneon (Pioneer), and packaged with the documentary The Hollywood Ten, which reported on the ten filmmakers who were blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This Special Edition with the Hollywood Ten film is still available through at organa.com. In 2004, a budget edition was released by. A version was released by the.

Because the film's was not renewed in 1982, the film is now in the public domain and may be viewed, and downloaded, by using.

Adaptations
The film has been adapted into a two-act called Esperanza (Hope). The labor movement in Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin–Madison opera professor Karlos Moser commissioned the production. The music was written by David Bishop and the by Carlos Morton. The opera premiered in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2000, to positive reviews.

A, based on the making of the film, was chronicled in One of the Hollywood Ten (2000). It was produced and directed by Karl Francis and released on September 29, 2000 in Spain and European countries. It has not been released in the United States as of 2011. The film has been shown at many film festivals around the world.