Norma Rae
Director: Martin Ritt
Before 1974, life in the textile mills of – well, probably anywhere, but here we’re talking North Carolina – were something out of a Dickens novel. Earning $2.65 per hour under intolerable conditions, thirtysomething Crystal Lee Sutton had finally had enough, and teamed up with union organizer Eli Zivkovich, to the great chagrin of virtually everyone in her world.
Sutton and Zivkovich have been renamed to Norma Rae Webster and Rueben Warshowsky, and the backstory has been tweaked for drama, but fact underpins all, and the legendary scene wherein Norma Rae launches her personal version of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore” is verbatim.
Soulful, passionate, sensitive, and determined, Norma Rae shows us the gumption ~ and what it takes to maintain it ~ to say, “Enough. Things must be better.” And trust that you know what, they just might be.
Sumptuous.
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