SALT OF THE
EARTH (Herbert Biberman, 1954)
1. How does Salt use sound, lighting, editing, camera position, movement and other devices to present its perspectives on the individual and society?
2.
What
are the visual and spatial details used by Biberman in Salt of the Earth to convey the antagonistic ethnic relations
between Mexican-Americans and Anglos? What are the details that convey positive
relationships?
3.
Whose
voice (or voices) narrate/s the story line in the film? What is the perspective
from which we are made to view the world? Why do you think Biberman chose this
voice to narrate the story? What effect do the narrator’s “narrated
experiences” have on the viewer?
4.
Why
do you think Biberman filmed Salt in
black and white? What effect does this visual detail have on you?
5.
Opposition
is a technique widely used by Anaya in Bless
Me, Última to create conflict at many levels. What are the visual and
spatial details used by Biberman to convey cultural, racial, social, gender,
and psychological conflict in Salt?
1.
What
visual and cultural images dominate in the film?
2.
Do
you think the “message” of the film is tied only to “particular historical
circumstances,” or is it of “universal and timeless validity”?
3.
Salt was intended to question
cultural, gender, and social stereotypes. Keeping in mind the fact that the
film was made in the early 1950s, do you think it was successful? How are the
Mexican-Americans portrayed? How are the Anglos portrayed? How are the Anglo
bosses portrayed? How are the women (Mexican-American and Anglo) portrayed?
4.
Do
Anaya’s novel and Biberman’s film complement each other? Or should they be
considered as two separate “texts”? Does the film clarify or expand thematic
and/or social elements/components present in the novel? If so, which ones?
Which film messages do you think stand on their own?
5.
Paul Jarrico and Herbert Biberman, in the essay published in California Quarterly
refer to Salt as
“a love story of two mature and decent people” (p. 60). Do you agree? In what
sense is the film a romance?
6.
How
do Esperanza and Ramón change in the course of the film? Do you think that this
transformation is an important to the film? Why? Why not?
7.
One
of the most important scenes in the film is the “intercutting flash shots”
between Esperanza as she struggles to give birth to Juanito, and Ramón who
struggles to liberate himself from the Anglo policemen who arrest, torture and
brutalize him. Wilson’s intent as evident in the screenplay was to “merge these
two images.” What social or symbolic message did Wilson and Biberman mean to
convey with this scene? Do you think it is successful?
8.
Some
believe that gender conflict overrides social/class conflicts in Salt. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
9.
Some
viewers maligned the film as “Communist propaganda.” Others embraced the film
with rousing accolades. What explains
these opposing perceptions of the film? What, for example, explains the Mexican
reaction to the film at its premiere in Mexico City? [The Mexicans believed
that Biberman had made the “first Mexican
film.”] How do we view the film today? In what sense was the film different
from Hollywood films of the time?
1.
In
1977, Michael Wilson asserted that “We were all political—the film came out of
our political beliefs” (Lorence, p. 97).
What particular view of art does this statement confirm?
2.
What
constitutes “propaganda” in your view? Is there a distinction between
“propaganda” and “politicized art”? Is there a distinction between “politicized
art” and “art….as a profoundly social activity” generated by “social
cataclysms” that cannot be ignored (Steinberg)?
3.
Review the General Seminar Questions, especially #1, #3 and #7. How
would you answer these questions after viewing Salt of the Earth and reading the testimonials by Jarrico and
Biberman, Rosaura Revueltas, Juan Chacón, during and following the making of the
film and its subsequent suppression?
4.
Review the “Serious Questions” file. How would you respond to the
questions raised by Biberman (and ASP) in light of government censors in the
United States during the 1950s? Do you think the film could/would be censored
today? Why or why not?