A Classic

Number one in the Observer's list of 50 lost movie classics; Herbert Biberman's 1953 film, Salt Of The Earth can now be viewed on-line here at the Christie Books Channel.

This is how the Observer described it,

Made at the height of McCarthyism by blacklisted left-wing artists (the director was jailed as one of the Hollywood Ten; screenwriter Michael Wilson's name was kept off Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia), this politically committed movie recreates a strike by Mexican-American zinc workers against the appalling conditions at their new Mexican mine. A marvellous mixture of naivety, passion, agitprop and forceful feminism, it was the subject of official harassment during production and banned from US screens for a decade but became a cult movie for young radicals in the 1960s.

UPDATE
Not everything on the channel is good. I have just watched a repulsive four minutes of unutterably stupid propaganda called Mr Blair Goes to War (yawn).