At first sight Salt of the Earth and On the Waterfront seem two structurally independent and unrelated movies that only share some basic theme elements in their plot. However, analyzing both, side by side and frame by frame, can give us a more profound understanding of the American film industry, Hollywood in particular, and its relation to the McCarthyism in 1950s, a dark chapter in the US history.
Salt of the Earth, directed by Herbert Biberman, is a 1954 blacklisted movie based on a true story about the struggles of Mexican American zinc miners and their families in Silver City, New Mexico, which resulted in an immense strike against the Empire Zinc Company. Similarly, On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan in 1954, is a Hollywood movie that depicts the lives of workers on the waterfront of Hoboken, New Jersey and their struggles with the corruptions in the mob-run labor unions.
Despite the general similarities in their core plot and the fact that both were made in the same year, these two movies depict totally different, if not opposite, views on the union struggles and how the workers had responded to the injustice that they were facing, as well as the social gender roles. Moreover, the production limitations along with the socio-political tendencies of the writers, directors and producers of each movie and their political and economic status at the time of filming, have resulted in a clear difference, both in technical cinematic quality, as well as the inner message of the plot of each film.
To understand these differences it seems crucial to see why and under what circumstances these films were made. During the 1950s, many US citizens were questioned and in some cases accused by a congressional panel, headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, to belong to the Communist Party or having socialist tendencies. Along with McCarthy, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) attacked the Hollywood movie industry.
Accordingly, “actors, writers, [directors,] and producers alike were summoned to appear before the committee and provide names of colleagues who may have been members of the Communist Party” (ushistory. org). Even though HUAC attacked the movie industry as a whole, the options it gave the defendants mainly divided the film makers into two major groups: “Those who repented and named names of suspected communists were allowed to return to business as usual… Uncooperative artists [on the other hand,] were blacklisted from jobs in the entertainment industry” (ushistory. rg). The blacklisted artists no longer were able to work legally or under their own real names. As a result, not only they could not afford to produce high quality films with professional actors in Hollywood studios with reasonable lighting and filming equipment, they could no longer receive the usual income, or the academy awards for their artistic work. Knowing this brief history of the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s with its socio-political background is very helpful in our evaluation of the two movies since each picture belongs to one of these two ideologies.
Elia Kazan, along with Budd Schulberg, the co-writer of the On the Waterfront, both were among those artists who chose to name the names and free themselves from the accusations, jail, and unemployment. Salt of the Earth director Herbert Biberman and everyone else in his crew, on the other hand, were blacklisted. This ideological difference between the two groups and the consequences of their decisions resulted in a significant production quality difference between the two: while Kazan was able to gather professional actors and superstars for his film, Biberman mainly used the actual mine workers and union members as his actors.
Kazan could use various locations inside the city and high quality make-up and lighting (especially evident in the car scene where Charley gives Terry his gun). Meanwhile, Biberman had to make his film secretly and not very open to public, therefore most of the scenes in movie occur either in closed spaces such as houses, or in the deserts of New Mexico where not many people were present and they could use sun light. This unvolunteered method of filmmaking helped Biberman to distance his cinematic style from the typical narrative Hollywood productions.
Therefore, Salt of the Earth is more like Italy neorealist cinema than American movies, both in its socially conscious content and its simple, documented form. Unlike Salt of the Earth’s semi-documented style, On the Waterfront is full of symbolism and allegorical meanings. For instance, pigeons symbolize the innocence and kindness of Terry or in fact Kazan himself. Terry is not portrait as a murderer mob, but rather a poor victim of his trust to the bad guys, especially Johnny Friendly, whom also symbolizes the Communist Party with his ironic name and his cartoonish portrait in the movie.
One can argue that on the Waterfront was in fact Kazan’s answer to his fellow artists who critiqued him for giving their names. This can be found throughout the movie, from several usages of “rat” to the way his friends treated him after his confessions in the court (Eddie asks him whether they are his “real” friends), or perhaps the most obvious at the end where he yells at Friendly, “And I’m glad what I done! ” emphasizing on the fact that Kazan himself is not ashamed of giving his friends names in order to get back to the movie business.
In Kazan’s mind, naming names was something to be proud of since the communists, in his view, were anti-Americans and giving them up was a patriotic act. He followed that trend while making On the Waterfront as well. As George Orwell writes in his essay, Notes on Nationalism, “As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit... The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can elieve only by making some sharp retort” (4). The fact that Friendly and his guys are portrayed as heartless murderers and vigilantes and they symbolize the Hollywood ten is especially fascinating considering the fact that in reality, “During the… [production of Salt] in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film’s leading lady was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead” (Hockstader).
In On the Waterfront, most actors are white and only one woman has a supporting role in the entire movie. However, the gender and racial discrimination in choosing actors is somewhat understandable since the main intention of Hollywood industry, and Kazan’s crew in particular, was to make as much money as possible and the movie-goer crowd at the time was more interested in seeing white, professional actors on the screen. Moreover, Kazan’s film mostly evolves around the love story between Terry and Eddie and even more so around Terry’s persona and character.
In contrast, Salt of the Earth is not a story about one particular antagonist, but a society, a situation, a struggle. This is why the fact that most actors in this movie are not famous, professional, or white does not hurt the outcome. In fact, since the story is not about one person, but a situation, the message of the film more powerful and socially conscious compare to Kazan’s film. Schulberg’s scenario plays safe when it comes to the role of women. Eddie is the typical passive female character who lacks decisiveness.
However, considering the social norms at the time, it would not be fair to be too harsh on Kazan’s film. On the other hand, Salt of the Earth must be praised for its true and brave depiction of women and their almost equal role in the movie. Esperanza is confident, active and bold (she speaks her mind at the union conference and even hits the sheriff with her shoe in one scene), in contrast to Eddie’s submissive role in Kazan’s film. In Waterfront, we only see the relationship among workers in one or two scenes in the entire movie – for example, where Pop
Doyle gives his dead son’s overcoat to one of the workers who were wearing a rag coat. In contrast, Salt of the Earth is all about relations between the miners and their families. Their strikes, their parties, their gatherings, their fights, their discussions all are apparent in the movie (for example the women strikers in the jail scene, or the scene where the police takes away their radio, yet the union workers do not give up and start playing guitar. It worth noting that “Perhaps Salt of the Earth …. which, whatever its limitations, anticipated both the feminist and independent film-producing movements by more than a decade (not to mention its premature concern for the Chicano), is but a crude specimen of what might have been… ” (Navasky). What the audience would learn by heart after watching On the Waterfront is neither the workers in the waterfronts of New Jersey, nor the mob who controls this system.
Instead, what comes to our mind by the name of the film is only Marlon Brando’s character, and not even his lover since she does not have an independent character in the movie and her role is defined based on the antagonist of the film, not her own actions. Johnny Friendly is also portrayed as the root of all evil and when he is gone at the end of the film, all the workers come back to work while nothing has fundamentally been changed in the union system. Kazan focuses on one corrupt person, instead of trying to find out what corrupt system had enabled that person to gain that position in the first place. omparison, Salt of the Earth ends with women resistance against the sheriff who wanted to evict Esperanza and Ramon from their home, and when the sheriff asks Ramon to silence Esperanza and the other women, he responses that “the women will not listen to the men anymore and cannot be stopped,” and their resistance forces the sheriff to leave them alone. These two endings can perfectly summarize the main agenda of each film, as well as the purpose of this paper, which was comparing and contrasting the form and the content of each film.
