WINONA, Minn. – The 1954 film “Salt of the Earth,” reviled at the time as Communist propaganda, will be shown at the Winona Arts Center to mark Cinco de Mayo. Time: 7 p.m., Friday. Tickets: $5 at door. The evening snack platter: Salsa and chips and non-alcoholic sangria. The film is now considered a classic. The story was built on a strike against a powerful mining company in New Mexico and how exploited miners and their families navigated the strike.
Rarely screened. Opened in New York City but was rarely seen in the United State for another 10 years. Fearful of the McCarthy Red Scare at the time, 12 theaters screened it.
“Salt of the Earth” profile
The plot centers on a 15-month 1951 strike by miners in New Mexico. Director Herbert J. Biberman cast actual miners and their families. The film is considered one of the first from a feminist social and political point of view. It was blacklisted in part because it was endorsed by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, whose leaders had been called Communists. The project was denounced in Congress. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigated allegations, never proven, of hostile foreign financial backing. Paranoid critics predicted the film would be used overseas as anti-American propaganda. The American Legion called for a nationwide boycott.
Anti-Communist vigilantes attacked the film crew during production and burned homes of union members. Rosaura Revueltas, the leading lady, abandon the set under threat of imprisonment and deportation. She fled to her native Mexico. Then the FBI pressured Mexican federales to interfere with shooting her remaining scenes.
The film was processed and edited in secret locations in California. The negatives were closely guarded. Film-processing labs were told not to work on the film.