Norma Rae (1979)

Norma Rae is a lively working mother in a Alabama milltown. She works at the Henley mill alongside her family and friends and is content with her "nothing special" life until she meets Reuben, a dedicated labor organizer from New York. She realizes how intolerable the mill's working conditions are, and begins the long struggle to unionize her factory.
 
"...Field gives a funny, tremendously affecting performance with moments of startling power and anger."  David Denby, New York Magazine
"Field is excellent in Oscar-winning performance..."  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"...an intelligent film with heart."  Variety
 


Editor's Note

Set in the industrial South and based on a true story, Martin Ritt's NORMA RAE is a moving portrait of a woman's fight to improve both her own life and the deplorable conditions that exist in the mill where she works. Norma Rae (Sally Field) has worked at the textile mill for years, but when a union organizer from New York comes to town, Norma takes on the hostility of the mill's management and the apathy of her coworkers to try to unionize the mill. Field plays Norma Rae as a passionate woman who realizes her own potential and her need to rebel against the status quo. She is also infuriated by the conditions at the mill. When Norma, uneducated and poor, finally expresses her disgust with life at the mill, it is an electrifying moment, and Field radiates this energy for the rest of the film, providing an emotional core and drive that gives the picture its power.


Plot Summary

NORMA RAE is a thrilling drama about factory workers in the South who are fed up with their dangerous, unhealthy working conditions. When a Jewish union leader from New York arrives to help them organize, he meets the impoverished and uneducated Norma Rae. Together they become a team, ready to wage a tough war against management.