Salt of the Earth
About Salt of the Earth
In Zinc Town, New Mexico, Mexican-American miners at Delaware Zinc strike for the same conditions the Anglo miners already have. Ramon Quintero helps run the strike and still expects his pregnant wife Esperanza to stay in the house. After months without a contract, the company gets a Taft-Hartley injunction that will jail any miner who pickets. The wives take the line. Ramon forbids Esperanza to join; she goes anyway, with the baby. The sheriff jails the women leaders, then lets them out because they will not be quiet. The company tries to evict the Quinteros. Miners and families block the eviction, the company agrees to talk, and Esperanza says the children will inherit what the town won.
Cast & crew
More about Salt of the Earth
Herbert J. Biberman directed. Michael Wilson wrote it. Paul Jarrico produced. Sol Kaplan composed the score. Stanley Meredith and Leonard Stark photographed it. The story uses the 1951 strike against Empire Zinc in Grant County, New Mexico, under the fictional names Delaware Zinc and Zinc Town. Most of the players are local miners and their families. Rosaura Revueltas plays Esperanza. Shot in 1953.
Themes
Background
The Taft-Hartley injunction in the plot is the same legal tool that, in the Empire Zinc strike, pushed the miners' wives onto the picket line. The film opened in New York on 14 March 1954 and was effectively shut out of American theaters until a 1965 re-release.
In film history
The Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry in 1992. In the 1950s it was easier to see in Europe than in the United States.
Making
The company on screen is Delaware Zinc. The strike it follows is the Empire Zinc walkout in Grant County. Revueltas's deportation meant some of her remaining scenes had to be finished without her on the New Mexico locations.
Audiences
Only thirteen theaters in the country would play it after opening night. European festivals did: Karlovy Vary gave it a shared top prize in 1954, and Paris gave it the International Grand Prize in 1955.
Look
Stanley Meredith and Leonard Stark shot the picture in Silver City, New Mexico, using the town and the mine country rather than a studio backlot. The style follows Italian neorealism in that choice of nonprofessional players and real places.
Music
Sol Kaplan composed the score.
Preservation
Selected for the National Film Registry in 1992.
Notes
- Biberman, Wilson, and Jarrico were blacklisted. Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten, had served six months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana.
- Independent Productions Corporation, formed in 1951 by blacklisted filmmakers, finished only this feature.
- Will Geer, also blacklisted, is in the cast.
- During the New Mexico shoot, rifle shots were fired at the set, a plane buzzed the company, and the trade press called the picture subversive.
- Immigration authorities deported Revueltas to Mexico before filming ended.
- Labs refused the negative. Jarrico later said he carried cans from lab to lab under false names.
- After the New York opening only thirteen U.S. theaters would book it. Roy Brewer of IATSE used the projectionists' union to kill dates, and the American Legion threatened pickets.
- The House of Representatives denounced the film. The FBI looked for foreign money behind it.
Awards
- Crystal Globe (Grand Prix) for Best Feature Film, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1954), shared with True Friends
- Best Actress, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Rosaura Revueltas, 1954)
- International Grand Prize, Académie du Cinéma de Paris (1955)
Scenes
- The injunction benches the men, and the women take their places on the line.
- Esperanza is jailed with the baby and the women make the jail unworkable.
- The town turns out to stop the eviction of the Quintero house.
Influenced by
- Italian neorealism
Also available
- Internet Archive (clacinonl_SaltOfTheEarth)