Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

GregP89 Excellent film, several yrs prior to 'Norma Rae' sally field took her acting abilities to a higher level with her performance in the 1976 made for TV film 'Sybil', essentially a remake of 'the Three Faces of Eve'. In fact, Oscar winning actress Joanne Woodward who won Best Actress for this latter film, was a Supporting actress in 'Sybil', an d portrayed the Therapist Counselor medical Expert working with Sally Field. Nonetheless, one of the Great "Travesties" that Actress Sally Field did upon winning the 1979 Oscar for Best Actress was forgetting to thank the love or her Life (at that time), Burt Reynolds ("who was in the audience seated next to her") during her acceptance speech. 21 yrs later, in 1998, Actress Julia Roberts would repeat the same mistake by forgetting to thank her Live-in-lover Actor Benjamin Bratt ('who was in the audience seated right next to her') during her acceptance speech, in winning Best Actress for 'Erin Brockovich' (2000).Both actresses upon received the script and looked to their lover and said "DO YOU THINK I CAN DO THIS PART?...I Don't THINK I CAN, I'VE not DONE ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE.....OH DO YOU REALLY THINK I CANDO IT"?. Wisely, both Burt and Benjamin (TV series leading man) both told their girlfriends,..honey you can anything you can put your mind to....that's why i love you. Both actress auditioned for their respective roles...AND the "Rest is History".

SnoopyStyle 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.

Emerson De Klotz Contemporary historians consider the 1970's a "pivot of change" in world history due to an engaging wave of social progressivism within the Western World. Amidst economic and societal reforms, tides to unionize factory workers had washed over from shores of the 1880's Knights of Labor, only to crash onto rocky beaches of the 1970's unfair labor conditions. "Norma Rae" is based on the story of Crystal Lee Sutton's life as a textile laborer, working beneath employers in a poor environment, that stands up to obtuse societal normalities. The film does a surprising job at portraying the struggles faced when unionizing is attempted. Unbeknownst to most, a dream to unionize often separates a reformer, as well as creates opposite factions within a community. These two factions, those who want change compared to those who are content with the status quo, are depicted very well in the film via Reuben Warshowsky, a labor activist who supports progression, and the textile factory owners, who promote disdain and contempt towards reform. The film instills a sense of pro-unionism within a viewer, which isn't bad-actually, quite the contrary-it's good! "Norma Rae" does a fantastic job at revealing injustices, and promoting a positive cause. To the films disadvantage, it fails to address other problems facing labor unions outside of the factory. Rather ironic, given the movie focuses on unionization, yet fails to unite other platforms for labor progression. This inability does NOT downplay the great screen writing or acting produced, but it fails to communicate different forms of injustice surrounding labor. While focusing on changes in the factory, the film fails to represent problems facing migrant workers in the west along with mining industry in the northeast. The most powerful scene from the film is the dramatization of Crystal Lee Sutton's actual protest, in the mill, where she creates a sign reading "UNION" and stands on her worktable until all machines slow to a silence. Alongside other meaningful scenes, including confrontations with her family, protagonist Norma Rae (a representation of Crystal Lee Sutton) literally taking a stand against injustice in the workplace in both historically significant as well as emotionally. In total, "Norma Rae" works on all levels with the means to tell an amazing story, along with the ability to support a just cause.

bkoganbing Before writing this review I noted that Norma Rae was shot entirely in the state of Alabama, a state known for its anti-union tradition. Was this director Martin Ritt having a private joke shooting it there and did the Alabama film commission know exactly what Ritt was making?The attitudes of the management of the textile mill are pretty typical of Alabama. They want no union no how and no Jewish organizer from New York played by Ron Leibman here is going to change things. Leibman knows he's going to meet cultural resistance so he's got to get a point person among the workers to carry the ball.The person Leibman chooses is Norma Rae played by Sally Field in what turned out to be her first Best Actress Award winning performance. Field is at first glance about as typical as you can get for a textile mill worker. But Field slowly but surely brings out the fact that Norma Rae is a woman who is curious about the world and knows intuitively there's something better out there. The way to get it for herself and her co-workers is to have that union and have some strength in dealing with management.Sally Field's career ever since she left television and Gidget and The Flying Nun had her playing mostly women of a southern rural background, she seems to have taken a patent out on those parts. Right from films like The Way West through the films she did with Burt Reynolds, it seems almost like she was preparing for the parts that got her the Academy Award. I don't think it's a coincidence that her second Oscar for one of the most beautiful films of the Eighties, Places In The Heart is also for a southern woman in a rural setting.Field also gets good support from Beau Bridges whom she finds time to romance and wed while doing all her union organizing and from Pat Hingle playing her father.Besides Field's Oscar for Best Actress, Norma Rae won a second Oscar for Best Song for It Goes Like It Goes which is sung at the opening and closing credits by Jennifer Warnes. Thirty years after Norma Rae was released, I'm almost afraid to say it, but that mill town has probably lost the textile mill to China or to the third world. Hopefully some Norma Raes will emerge in those populations as well.