Salt of the Earth (1954)

Esperanza Quintero: [opening narration] How shall I begin my story that has no beginning? My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero. I am a miner's wife. This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowers... the flowers are ours. This is my village. When I was a child, it was called San Marcos. The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town. Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A. Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shaft. In these arroyos my great grandfather raised cattle before the Anglos ever came. The land where the mine stands - that was owned by my husband's own grandfather. Now it belongs to the company. Eighteen years my husband has given to that mine. Living half his life with dynamite and darkness. Who can say where it began, my story? I do not know. But this day I remember as the beginning of an end. It was my Saint's Day. I was thirty-five years old. A day of celebration. And Iwas seven months gone with my third child. And on that day - I remember I had a wish... a thought so sinful...... a thought so evil that I prayed God to forgive me for it. I wished... I wished that my child would never be born. No. Not into this world.

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Not shown in American theaters until 1965.
This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1992.
This was made by blacklisted director Herbert J. Biberman, screenwriter Michael Wilson, producer Paul Jarrico and composer Sol Kaplan largely in retaliation to the fact that they had been blacklisted. They reasoned that since they weren't allowed to work in Hollywood, they might as well make a film as pro-Communist as possible to fit the crime of which they had been accused.
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