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Norma Rae |  | Actors: Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Robert Broyles, John Calvin, Booth Colman
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.98
Buy New: $4.80
as of 3/16/2010 08:14 EDT details
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Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 4703
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: FOXD2239748D
UPC: 024543013747
EAN: 0024543013747
ASIN: B000059HAN
Theatrical Release Date: 1979
Release Date: April 17, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com essential video
Veteran director Martin Ritt (Sounder) directed this earnest and very popular tale of a naive textile worker, widow, and mother in the U.S. South who becomes empowered by standing up for her rights in the workplace. Sally Field stars in the Oscar-winning title role as a woman who has been content to go along with the status quo until she realizes that she is entitled to more and can succeed if she stands up for herself. Her fight to improve deplorable working conditions at the textile plant causes a rift between her and the people closest to her, but her determination brings a new awareness to her and to all the women with whom she works. Ritt's typical, socially conscious story uses the politics of Norma Rae's struggle and also its emotions to build the film to a rousing climax. --Robert Lane
Product Description
Grinding out her life in a small Southern town as a worker in a non-union textile shop, Norma Rae (Sally Field) joins forces with a New York labor organizer to unionize the mill.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 17-DEC-2002
Media Type: DVD
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
 Now more of a time capsule and a commentary on Free Market Capitalism February 25, 2010
Todd B. Frary (Atlanta, GA USA)
Hollywood has a rich tradition of producing topical that subsequently wind up becoming video time capsules, summing up where we were as a society at the time. In 1979 "Norma Rae" was a trenchant look into the pervasive poverty of the American South and unions as a means to shift that paradigm. It was a groundbreaking performance for Sally Field, normally cast as the ingénue, and for Beau Bridges as her put-upon husband. I'd not seen the film in its original release, but seeing it 30 years on certainly does give it a different feel. At the time of its initial release it was as pro-union a film as could be imagined. Thirty years on it now feels more like an elegy for an industry shipped overseas as a result of higher wages and globalization. The unionization of "Norma Rae" ironically proved to be the undoing of the mills and the millworkers. The mill itself plays a prominent role in the movie, and the work seems little changed from even a hundred years prior. The loud roar of the machines pervades the movie, the cotton lint floating in the air coating the machines and workers alike a rough symbolism of how the workers and machines have become one.
"Norma Rae" is also pitch-perfect for the times, capturing the racism and anti-Semitism of the era; something rarely attempted in today's politically correct times. Field is superb as the flawed yet indomitable Norma Rae, and it's easy to see how she won the Oscar for her performance. The end is fittingly unsentimental and atypical for a Hollywood film with Norma Rae seeing Rueben, the union organizer, off to yet another destination. You couldn't create a better ending as sentimentalists would have the two running off together, but realists know Rueben is a man on a mission. The parting is the perfect metaphor for how the mills and their jobs would move on, seeking better opportunities, leaving the millworkers behind, jilted and unemployed. The deeper meaning of "Norma Rae" is that the millworkers and the mills needed each other desperately. Once one became a free agent the cycle of dependency was broken and mills were free to court other better options.
"Norma Rae" ultimately is more about the message but little thought as to the consequences. While unions could break the cycle of poverty for millworkers it proved to be a Pyrrhic victory, and if anything hastened the demise of their jobs. And to that end "Norma Rae" becomes an even more damning condemnation of Free Market Capitalism without ostensibly intending to do so. "Norma Rae" was certainly a polarizing movie at the time and it remains so today. Few who watch it now will be inspired to join a union or feel compelled to be unabashedly pro-union; it's quite simply not going to change many minds. If anything it's a glimpse into who we were as a people and as a society.
Norma Rae February 18, 2010
Arnita D. Brown (USA)
Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory. Typical under-dog story that is so well-made that its success makes for a very memorable experience. A good supporting cast which includes Ron Leibman, Pat Hingle and Beau Bridges all add to Field's show-stopping performance. This movie is good from start to finish, but a few wonderful moments towards the end make it seem even better than it already is. A great movie.
An old great movie February 14, 2010
katie
I don't own this dvd but I've seen the film several times and it's wonderful. Sally Field did an exceptional acting job and the story line was intriguing and historically interesting. It deals with the unfair labor practices in earlier times and what people had to do to overcome the terrible working conditions in some factories. It's not just about labor practices, there is also a romantic part to the story and also about how working mothers try to handle the muliple jobs they have and all the frustrations that go with that.
Labor's Told Story-Partially September 16, 2009
Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
On the face of it today a story about an impoverished, hard-nosed widowed woman trying to support several children working in a southern textile mill and who seeks to unionize the plant against one of the major textile companies might rate a documentary or docu-drama treatment but, perhaps not much else. The demographics and the audience would probably not be there for such a commercial endeavor, Sally Field or no Sally Field. That says more about the state of the organized labor movement in this country, the dramatic decline in union membership, the lack of recent successful major union organizing drives, the "globalization" of industry that has de-industrialized America and the attenuation of links between the old trade union movement forged in the class battles of the 1930s and 1940s and their grandchildren, today's youth.
Back in 1973, however, this film was a hit not only because of the well-done performances by Sally Fields, as that down-troddened but spirited woman turned effective union organizer and Ron Liebman, as the northern union organizer called in to advice (?) Norma Rae. 1950s "red scare" black-listed writer Martin Ritt, who directed this film, also deserves kudos for not overburdening the film with unnecessary sentimentality. The times then thus were not out of joint for such an effort. The residue of 1960s radicalism and pro-working class sentiments still hung in the air. Moreover, the times were just becoming ripe for serious films about the trials and tribulations of women, especially working women and their problems, under the sign of the burgeoning women's movement.
Of courser this particular review is posted here today because, unfortunately, the real-life model for the character of Norma Rae Crystal Lee Sutton has just passed away in North Carolina at the age of 68. I will finish up here by quoting a remark that I made in another space about her passing that also reflects on the highlight dramatically tense moment in the film:
"No labor militant, or even just a simple friend of the international labor movement could do anything but cheer at that moment in "Norma Rae", based on the actual experience of Crystal Lee Sutton, when Sally Field silently holds up a handmade sign that said "Union"- and everyone downs tools. Such events are the stuff not just of labor legend, but under the right circumstances revolution. Farewell, Sister." I need say no more.
"Sally Field Is Outstanding" June 27, 2009
Terry Richard (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada)
Sally Field proved to Hollywood that she was more than just "The Flying Nun" when she starred in Norma Rae. Winner of the Best Actress Oscar in 1979 for the film, Sally stars as an uneducated mill worker who struggles to form a union in her workplace. The picture also received the Academy Award for Best Song for "It Goes Like It Goes" sung by Jennifer Warren. The film co-stars Ron Leibman, Beau Bridges, and Pat Hingle. Martin Ritt did a superb job directing.
The DVD is filled with bonuses including the film being in widescreen format, scene selection, a 20 minutes backstory on the film, the original theatrical trailer, and subtitles in english and spanish.
New York Magazine says, "Sally Field gives a funny, tremendously affecting performance with moments of startling anger and power".
Showing reviews 1-5 of 33
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