Salt of the Earth

The only movie banned by the United States government, the neo-realist Salt of the Earth (1954) is a film of stunning beauty and grace made by three blacklisted filmmakers on location in New Mexico, depicting the real-life story of the 1951-1952 strike by Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers against the New Jersey Zinc Company in Bayard, New Mexico. Local 890 was the Mexican American chapter of the union and the story interweaves the miners' hostility toward the company regarding the lack of on-the-job safety regulations, poor company housing with no indoor plumbing, and lesser pay compared to white workers as well as disruption within the Mexican American community regarding the newly-formed Women's Auxiliary--which in both real-life and in the film, won the strike after male employees were barred from striking by court injunction (courtesy of the Taft Hartley Act of 1935). The film offers a blistering critique of racism, patriarchy, and the exploitation of workers, yet balances very human and nuanced portrayals of the inner conflicts of the miners, their wives, Mexican tradition, the white union representatives, the company bosses, and the local police. A local union meeting is transformed into a community meeting, allowing wives and sisters an equal vote. When women and children are arrested they literally overflow the small jailcell, turning the deputies into the prisoners. The eviction scene that closes the film is another particular triumph. Salt of the Earth was directed by Herbert J. Biberman, one of the original Hollywood Ten who would not name names when called before the House Un-American Activities Commission in 1947. Biberman was one of only two directors (along with Edward Dymtryk) in the original ten, and served six months in federal prison for his refusal to talk. The film was written by Michael Wilson, an Oscar-winning co-writer of A Place in the Sun (1951) who served in the Marines during WWII before being blacklisted (and later wrote the 1969 Che! starring Omar Sharif as Guevara and Jack Palance as Fidel Castro), and was produced by Paul Jarrico who had written a U.S. military-funded pro-Soviet movie during WWII called Song of Russia (1943) for MGM. It was Jarrico who came across the striking miners during a vaction in Taos, and who quickly put the film in motion. The production, though free from Hollywood, was beset by protests from neighboring towns and the national press, investigated by the FBI, denounced by the House of Representatives, and banished following its premiere from U.S. theaters though it triumphed in Paris and Mexico City. The cast was largley made up of local miners and actual participants in the 1951-1952 strike; foremost among the "non-professional" actors was Juan Chacon (the President of Local 890) who starred as Ramon Quintero, the de facto leader of the strikers (begun after a Mexican miner is killed in a highly-aviodable accident) . The true heart of the film, however, was Esperanza Quintero, the reticent-leader of the women (and community) played by the Durango-born actress Rosaura Revueltas. Revueltas, who appeared in Emilio Fernandez's The Torch (1950) with Paulette Goddard and Pedro Armendariz, was blacklisted after the movie was released and eventually deported to Mexico, where she continued to work in theater and film. It is somehow extremely fitting to realize that Salt of the Earth was released almost simultaneously with Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando and Eve Marie Saint. Brando's performance as Terry Malloy, the heroic informer against mob (union) corruption helped the film sweep the Oscars, though it remained a see-through attempt by Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg (who personally named Biberman) at self-exoneration for talking when called before the same committee, with exactly as much to gain or lose, as the filmmakers of Salt of the Earth.