If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Idiot Sally Field looks OK, not enough to get more than a 1 rating. These JEW Commies, they went down south to "save" "The People". They went down to bring the idiots under ONE UMBRELLA, ONE VOICE, gee I wonder who controlled that voice.I wonder what happened to the factories after they workers were "helped" by the JEW Commie Rabble Rousers.

It's the summer of 1978. Norma Rae (Sally Field) works in a textile mill with her whole family. Her mother is going deaf from the noisy factory. Her father Vernon (Pat Hingle) threatens union organizer Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman) who comes knocking on their door. She's a single mom and she ends her affair with a married man. She marries fellow worker Sonny (Beau Bridges). She starts helping Reuben causing tension in her relationships.Sally Field is brilliant as an ordinary woman. She is eminently likable. The movie is a straight forward union story. It has a good sense of realism. It helps to have the noisy mill going. It's a great movie.

For members of the audience who remember Sally Field from her performances in Mrs Doubtfire and Forest Gump, this film should come as a surprise. As the star of 'Gidget', playing a Californian surfer girl who had never heard of Charles Manson or Sharon Tate, Field was indelibly sweet and her persona seemed oblivious to the upheavals that the United States were undergoing in the late sixties. Field found herself in another television series called 'The Flying Nun', which was largely held in derision, even if it won the ratings. Let's just say that Sally Field was someone who put in a great deal of effort to sustain her credibility in the most arduous of circumstances. She was Burt Reynold's girlfriend for a time (although we shouldn't hold that against her,) and then won the part of Norma Rae; she promptly and surprisingly won an Oscar as Best Actress in a leading role for her troubles since no one had ever suspected that she could actually act. Her Oscar was a triumph, and nobody could begrudge her for it. Now, for the movie! Set in an industrial town in the South, where the only employment available is in a large woollen mills, Field plays a young woman with two children on the road to nowhere, working beside her mother in the mills after her father's retirement. Her mother is becoming deaf from a lifetime of drudgery and Field has a proposal from a man with his own children that she decides to accept because she simply has no other choice than to take him up on his offer. The mills have a bad name for not allowing its workers to join a union, and trouble arrives in the person of a dedicated union man from the North (played by Ron Liebmann) determined to take the issue up with management and have union benefits in place for the workers. Needless to say, the management is not vaguely interested; he befriends Norma Rae at a motel with one of her dates and she gradually becomes a committed union activist and an outspoken critic of the poor working conditions her and fellow workers are expected to endure.Directed by Martin Ritt with a distinctive Southern flavour and an eye for character and local detail, this is a pretty good film with an excellent leading performance from Field who I think deserved her Oscar. Her character starts off as none too bright, but she wins the audience over with the slow recognition that her life and the lives of others around her could, and deserve to be, much better. Ron Liebmann and Beau Bridges who plays Norma's husband provide good support and Field displays a wonderfully tough side to her character that audiences had not previously been aware of. She is cute, but also has spine, which is a very appealing combination.The movie doesn't patronise its audience; the subject of trade unionism is not often brought up in Hollywood movies, much less an entire movie being devoted to it. Finally trapped by the management and forced to serve a (short) time in jail, and almost losing her husband in the process, Norma Rae sticks to her guns and the film ends on an upbeat note as the union is voted into existence by the Norma's fellow workers. Liebmann returns to New York, providing closure to one of those rare relationships between a man and a woman in a Hollywood movie that is mostly one of friendship and regard.'Norma Rae' is one of those films with its heart in the right place, and it also delivers as entertainment with a leaning towards the left-liberal wing of politics. It works as an effective antithesis to the claptrap disguised as entertainment that promotes violence and militarism and is financed by Hollywood, meant to promote an agenda supporting blind adherence to authority and politically reactionary issues.

Norma Rae is definitely one of the most interesting films about the trade union movement, that I have encountered so far. The film is equally fascinating for people, who want to know more about poor labor conditions, or manufacturing and production in general. It was made in 1978, and describes the installation of trade union representatives in a rural USA textile factory. We must credit the USA film makers, since surprisingly I do not know of comparable modern films from West-Germany or France. I like the many shots of the atmosphere at the weaving-looms, since it portrays an industry that was once vital for the early development of our economies. Clothing remains a primary need - but we in the west have lost touch with its production. In the Netherlands, most of the factories were closed in the seventies and eighties, due to the fierce Asian competition. Indeed it is mostly unskilled labor. In fact the film looks like a documentary, and social realism is used in the narrative. The acting of Sally Field (as the working woman Norma Rae) and Ron Leibman (as the organizer Reuben) is convincing, and the dialogs are credible. Obviously the textile factory in the film is a poor representative of its kind. The management is not malicious, but simply primitive, stupid and insensitive. When the father of Norma Rae suffers a stroke of paralysis during work, the overseer orders him to continue until the forthcoming break. A few minutes later the man drops dead in a cart filled with yarn. The noise in the building is ear-splitting, and there are actually some earcaps, but nobody sees to their usage. At a certain moment, it causes the temporary loss of the communicativeness by the mother of Norma Rae. The remaining question to be answered is whether the script writers and the director have done their research with respect to the approach of the trade unions. I think they did, which is quite an achievement, since it concerns a complicated social phenomenon. It is essential to appreciate, that trade unions are meeting-places for the egoism of workers, and not bastions of solidarity. Norma Rae is a textile worker, who becomes engaged in union agitation. She claims, that she acts on behalf of a better future for her children, but in doing so she leaves their care to her husband (I predict that the marriage will not last). The character sketch suggests a strong selfishness. Finally she gets fired, but this may subconsciously be intended, since a better carrier as a union representative looms at the horizon. In addition she is not qualified for unionist agitation: whereas professional unionists normally act their anger and emotions, Norma Rae explodes in fits of rage - although she seems to have an instinct for quitting at the right time. Now and then her feeling of justice is twisted. Temporarily she even accepts a promotion as workplace inspector ("I need the extra money"). Her rise as a union representative seems hardly beneficial for the reputation of the union. In fact, she is visited by two union administrators, who want to depose her. This is prevented by Reuben, the local union organizer. Reuben is a strong advocate of the bottom-up approach, and the mentor of Norma Rae. As a matter of fact, such types exist in trade-unions, think about the justice-for-janitors movement. But actually they are quite rare, because unions are central organizations, which puts such organizers in a perpetual war with their bureaucracy. Therefore in most cases the organizers are hired on temporary contracts. Their conviction and belief in the just cause are unshakable - which is of course partly a facade. Reuben will not stop when Norma Rae must face to be laid off, or when a pregnant picketer is beat up. In the end we see him horse riding to the setting sun, on his way to defeat the next injustice. In conclusion, the film is a true depiction of real life. Nevertheless, the events in the film are also exceptional and provide the myth, that trade-unions need to justify their existence. The film makers seem to have grasped, that stupidity is everywhere and not restricted to entrepreneurs.