Reviews of Salt of the Earth

As previously noted, contemporary critical reaction was mixed, but in most cases Salt received positive, often outstanding, reviews. Many commentators, while endorsing the film’s gripping social realism, added disparaging remarks concerning stilted portrayals of management and alleged propaganda content. Among the skeptics, none was more outspoken than Pauline Kael. In an extended review, Kael, in 1954, blasted Salt as “as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years.” Ridiculing the Left, she allowed that Salt could “seem true for those liberals and progressives whose political thinking has never gone beyond the thirties.” For deluded leftists, she argued, “Depression social consciousness” was an “exposed nerve” which, if touched, became “the only reality.” To Kael, the key danger in the picture lay in potential Communist exploitation of local grievances and principles that “no thoughtful American” could reject. Communist propaganda, she assured her readers, “captures the direction of groups struggling for status.” In short, Salt constituted “shrewd propaganda for the urgent business of the U.S.S.R.” (qtd. in Lorence, pp. 195-96).

Although he professed respect for Kael’s usually sharp critical faculties, Jarrico insisted that the renowned commentator had a blind spot on Salt that merely reflected the temper of the times. Jarrico was especially concerned about Kael’s employment of “parallelism,” a practice common among 1950s anticommunists. Her argument that Salt’s themes of labor, minority, and women’s rights were Communist ideas was flawed, he insisted. The reviewer’s equation of these themes with Communist ideas, and her simple assumption that they were inserted because the Salt group included CP members, was, in Jarrico’s words, “not enough.” He argued that effective analysis now required a “historical approach” that transcended one-dimensional charges of propagandist intent. (Lorence, p. 196).

Since the beginning of the Salt controversy, labor opponents, industry critics, and government figures had worried about the film’s potential impact on audiences not only inside the United States [by the end of 1954, Salt had run commercially at only 13 theaters in the United States] but outside as well. Roy Brewer, Hollywood proconsul, was especially concerned over the damage allegedly inflicted by the picture in Latin America, where, he insisted nationalists were likely to use the film to generate opposition to American imperialism. Because of these fears, the film’s entry into the foreign market was a matter of serious concern for its most committed enemies.

The Mexican reaction to the film surpassed anything Biberman had experienced in the United States. Laughter, applause, and raw emotion greeted Salt in Mexico City. Every city newspaper was effusive in praise of IPC’s achievement. In an unexpected move, the Catholic Legion of Decency awarded the picture its second highest rating. And for a short time, at least, Rosaura Revueltas was lionized as the accomplished artist she was. Tiempo cited realism and social content in comparing Salt to such great international films as The Grapes of Wrath and Open City, while Novedades recommended it “without reservation” for its “pace, sharpness, and power” in presenting “a piece of reality.” Likewise, El Universal endorsed the film’s “indisputable realism” and La Afición saw in it the achievement of “values of spiritual power” through its emphasis on “indestructive [sic] faith in a just cause.” Even the government news organ El Nacional dismissed the “hostility of certain elements in the United States” and their “labeling it Communist,” with the observation that insistence on “equal treatment for American citizens of a different race is not a Communist demand.” The government recommended that Salt be seen by all who had “not lost their sense of solidarity with brother Mexicans, harassed and exploited on the other side of the border by forces which do not truly represent the American people or their government.” The solidarity surfaced at the premiere in the spontaneous singing of the Mexican national anthem at the film’s conclusion, as Rosaura Revueltas was overwhelmed by emotional demonstrations of affection. Present for the occasion, Biberman reported widespread amazement that North Americans had made “the first Mexican film.” Artist Diego Rivera summarized the Mexican reaction in a word: “estupendo!” (qtd. in Lorence 152).

From France came reports of a “unanimously enthusiastic” response in both press and public forums. Critical reactions ranged from “great” to “masterpiece” and even “classic.” Several reviewers applauded the film’s social realism, which, Paris Soir observed, Zola would “have loved.” Le Monde noted that a long time had passed since the French had “seen such a forthright American film.” Finally, in 1955 Salt was granted the International Grand Prize for best film exhibited in France, awarded by the Academie du Cinema de Paris.

The recognition received in France was more positive than was the response in England and Canada, where Salt produced a mixed reaction. Nathan Cohen of CBL-Canada regarded the film as a “deeply human drama,” in the vein of such classics as The Bicycle Thief and Open City. About half of the British press reaction was favorable, though critics tended to comment on the political controversy surrounding the film, including charges of propaganda content. The Glasgow Herald observed that the film “roars against the brutalities of Big Business.” Acknowledging the difficulty of making an unbiased judgment, Punch described a “perfectly good story, propagandist but ably and ingeniously worked out, well acted and quite gripping” (qtd. Lorence, pp. 150-154).