--- title: "Norma Rae" year: 1979 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/norma-rae" fi1m_score: 82 critics_score: 80 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-20T06:13:09.530024+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:13:10.072645+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Norma Rae (1979) Directed by Martin Ritt · 1h 50m · MPA PG · Drama **Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 80 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* The mill is so loud the women lip-read, and the men in the office still say they never heard a complaint > Martin Ritt’s story of a Southern mill hand who takes up with a union organiser is plain, loud and simple-minded about its bosses, and it hardly matters. Sally Field plays her without vanity, and John A. Alonzo puts you on the factory floor. ## Synopsis Norma Rae (Sally Field) runs a loom at a textile mill in a small Southern town, the only real employer for miles. Her father Vernon (Pat Hingle) and mother Leona (Barbara Baxley) work the same floor, and she is raising two children on her own. The noise is such that Leona loses her hearing at her machine one afternoon, and the mill doctor tells Norma Rae it happens. Reuben (Ron Leibman), a union organiser from New York, arrives with a box of leaflets and finds nobody willing to be seen talking to him. Management moves Norma Rae up to spot-checker, timing her friends with a clipboard, and her friends stop speaking to her. Sonny (Beau Bridges), a divorced father, wants to marry her. Reuben wants her on the floor with a sign-up sheet. ## Review Norma Rae (Sally Field) runs a loom in a textile mill in a small Southern town, as her father Vernon (Pat Hingle) and her mother Leona (Barbara Baxley) do. Early on, Leona loses her hearing at her machine for an afternoon and the mill doctor says it happens. Reuben (Ron Leibman), a union organiser from New York, arrives with a box of leaflets, and nobody in town wants to be seen with him. Martin Ritt’s film, written by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, is about what happens when the one woman on the floor who cannot keep her mouth shut talks to him. It is a strong film with one plain weakness. Ritt has no interest in whether the company has a case. The men in the front office wear short sleeves and neckties, say “outside agitator” and mean it, and nobody with a name in the film thinks the mill is anything but loud, dangerous and badly paid. What is not settled is what it costs to say so in a town with one employer, and that is the film Ritt actually made. Field, until then best known from television comedy, plays a woman it takes a while to like. She is a widow with children by two men, answers back to everyone, and sleeps with a married man because it is something to do on a Saturday. The film does not soften any of this and Field does not ask for credit for it. Watch her when management makes her a spot-checker and sets her walking the floor with a clipboard, timing her friends: she works out the promotion is a bribe a day after everyone else has, and her face does the working out. The scene with her mother is where the film had us. Baxley sits at her machine while Norma Rae shouts at her, and looks up smiling, because she can see her daughter’s mouth moving and has no idea anything is wrong. We were frightened by it, more than by anything the company does afterwards, because nobody in that room switches off a machine. John A. Alonzo shoots the floor in flat overhead light with lint hanging in it, every surface furred white, and the hard Southern daylight outside is no relief. On the floor the soundtrack is the looms, and the actors lean into each other’s ears to be heard, so when Sidney Levin cuts to a quiet kitchen it feels like coming up out of water. David Shire’s music stays out of the mill, where it could not compete. Walter Scott Herndon gives the mill hands one good chair each and Reuben a rented room full of paper. Ron Leibman plays Reuben as a fast-talking city man who knows he is a joke to these people and has decided to be a useful one. Beau Bridges plays Sonny, a divorced father who proposes almost at once and means it, then spends the rest of the film finding out what he agreed to. One argument with her in a kitchen at night says more about what organising costs the people who did not sign up for it than any speech Reuben makes. Gail Strickland, as Bonnie Mae on the next machine over, has to decide whether being seen with Norma Rae is worth it. Ritt had been here before. He made *The Molly Maguires* about Pennsylvania coal miners in 1970, and Frank and Ravetch had written *Hud* for him in 1963. This is the warmest of the three and the least angry, and we think that is a choice. He wants us to like these people enough to mind what happens to them, and we did. There is a scene late on, on the mill floor, which you have probably seen even if you have never seen the film. We will not describe it, except to say that Field does it without a word and that Levin holds on it exactly as long as it needs. At 110 minutes it does not waste an evening of yours. Turn the sound up. The mill is meant to hurt, and Ritt was right not to turn it down. *Fi1m score 82, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as a stirring contemporary drama about union organizing in a Southern mill town. He singles out Sally Field's spectacular, risk-taking performance as the standout element that demonstrates her dramatic intelligence and force. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/02/archives/film-norma-rae-milltown-storyunionism-in-the-south.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The review calls Norma Rae a rare intelligent film with heart that updates management-labor struggles to a contemporary Southern textile mill setting. It highlights the touching performances by Sally Field and Ron Leibman and the fresh, lively pacing. [Read](https://variety.com/1978/film/reviews/norma-rae-1200424454/) - **The AV Club**, Katie Rife (75/100, inferred): The film builds to its iconic union sign scene, which captures hope amid the preceding soul-crushing character study of Norma Rae's personal and workplace struggles. It portrays her as an outsider fighting for self-respect in a system that grinds down her belief in change. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/sally-field-is-as-mad-as-hell-and-she-s-not-going-to-ta-1798272487) - **Time Out**, GA (60/100, inferred): Ritt's simplistic liberalism weakens the labour relations storyline, making the union activism feel sentimental and facile with an overly easy path to success. The film succeeds more in portraying the protagonist's growth as an independent woman, aided by strong performances from Field and Leibman, though it remains mawkish yet touching overall. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/norma-rae) - **Collider**, Liam Gaughan (90/100, inferred): The critic calls Norma Rae one of the best films of the 1970s and a high-water mark of the New Hollywood era. They single out Sally Field's Oscar-winning performance as the determined working mother turned union leader for its realism and emotional power. [Read](https://collider.com/norma-rae-movie-sally-field/) ## Details - **Director:** Martin Ritt - **Director:** Martin Ritt - **Screenplay:** Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr. - **Cinematography:** John A. Alonzo - **Editor:** Sidney Levin - **Music:** David Shire - **Production design:** Walter Scott Herndon - **Producer:** Tamara Asseyev, Alexandra Rose - **Cast:** Sally Field as Norma Rae; Ron Leibman as Reuben; Beau Bridges as Sonny; Pat Hingle as Vernon; Barbara Baxley as Leona; Gail Strickland as Bonnie Mae; Morgan Paull as Wayne Billings; Robert Broyles as Sam Bolen - **Runtime:** 1h 50m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 2 March 1979 - **Genres:** Drama - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 1979); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Nominee, 1979) - **Budget:** $4 million - **Box office:** $22 million ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AT, CH, DE. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1980: Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Actress (won) - Silver nugget for the best foreign film 1979: Silver nugget for the best foreign film (won) ## If you liked this - *Salt of the Earth* (1954): Blacklisted filmmakers, striking New Mexico miners, and the wives who take over the picket line. - *The Organizer* (1963): Mastroianni as a shabby professor teaching Turin mill workers to strike, and to lose well. - *Harlan County USA* (1976), Fi1m 88: The Kentucky coal strike as it happened; the guns are real and so is the singing. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/harlan-county-u-s-a.md) - *Matewan* (1987): Sayles on a West Virginia coalfield in 1920, with Chris Cooper as the organiser. - *Made in Dagenham* (2010): Ford’s women machinists walk out in 1968; lighter than Ritt, and just as sure who is right. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/norma-rae