A nice, sincere, square, old-hat labor movie, which, in the tradition of Black Fury, The Grapes of Wrath, The Whistle at Eton Falls, et al., is a little out of the Hollywood mainstream, but is not the walking-on-water some well-wishers will take it to be. The high-pitched humanistic tone of the thing is set by Jennifer Warnes's Buffy Sainte-Marie imitation on the theme song, and is carried through in Sally Field's characterization of an unlettered Southern textile worker, the chief components of which characterization are her formidable-looking brassiere, her perspiration, and her large, catfish mouth. The heroine's squalid personal life prevents the film from becoming simply a Leftist wallow, but even with all those True Confessions irrelevancies, she is in constant danger of losing the limelight to the toothy Jewish union organizer from New York (Ron Leibman). The embarrassingly written dialogues between these two Platonic comrades give the impression that Norma Rae's conversion to unionism (and, as a bonus, to Dylan Thomas) is brought about not by any perceptible rise in the level of her social consciousness, but by her willingness to accept this Yankee intruder with true Southern hospitality. Written by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.; directed by Martin Ritt. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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