The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936)
The River (1938)
Does one encourage action about the materials in the film or something outside the film? In these two films are we exhorted to do something about the way the Plains were damaged or about the Mississippi flooding or did the films have an “ulterior” motive?
The Plow that Broke the Plains is linked with The River since they are by the same director and funded by the same government agencies
Lorentz was hired by F.D. Roosevelt to make films which would help him get "The New Deal" approval. The New Deal was a series of economic programs that were brought into law in the US between the years 1933 and 1936. They involved both executive orders and/or laws that Congress passed during Roosevelt's the first termt. These laws were made as attempts to deal with the problems of the Great Depression (1929- start if WWII), and dealt with what became known as l the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. They would give Relief for the unemployed and poor; and theRecovery was for the economy back to normal levels; and the financial system was to be "Reformed" so that there would not be a repeat of thes depression in the future.[
Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Prof. Rexford G. Tugwell, who taught economics professor at Columbia University was the advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt when he ran successfully for the president in 1932. After that ne became employed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The RA (as it became known) was created through an "Executive Order"..Tugwell became its first and only head.
The RA was divided into four divisions: (1) Rural Rehabilitation, (2) Rural Resettlement, (3) Land Utilization, and (4) Suburban Resettlement.
. Tugwell wanted to move some 650,000 people from 100,000,000 acres of land that were agriculturally exhausted and worn-out. The idea was not popular among the majority in Congress.This goal seemed socialistic and amost tyrannical to some. Some felt it was a threat to deprive influential farm owners of their tenant workers. As a result the RA had only enough resources to relocate perhaps a few thousand people from about 9,000,000 acres. They also wanted to, but failed to construct "greenbelt cities" that planners admired as models for a "cooperative" future.
The River was produced by the Farm Security Administration (the titles indicate it is a United States documentary film) which was a part of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
The Plow that Broke the Plains psuhes hard on the fact that wheat was necessary to win WWI and indicates this was part of what exhausted the land. The film makes no attempt to handle what would have happened had there been no Plains in terms of the war effort. This area was called “America’s Bread basket” and while the film condemns the over planting, it seems to offer no solution until the end and in part the solution resulted from the scientists trying to undo what had been done.
Pare Lorentz (December 11, 1905 – March 4, 1992) Critic and critic of censorship
Lorentz is regarded as the most influential documentary filmmaker of the Great Depression. He was perhaps the strongest advocate for government-sponsored documentary films.He served as a filmmaker for US Army Air Corps in World War II and made many technical films, documentation of bombing raids, and synthesizing raw footage of Nazi atrocities for an educational film on the Nuremberg Trials. Despite this enormous body of work he is remembered most as "FDR's filmmaker". because of these two films
Initially his connectin to film was as a film critic. He went to Hollywood, where he wrote several articles on censorship. He also did a pictorial review of the first year of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, called "The Roosevelt Year: 1933". Roosevelt, impressed with the articles and the book, invited Lorentz in 1936 to make a government-sponsored film about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl (despite the fact that little of Oklahoma was in "the dust bowl"
Although Lorentz has bever made a film, hez was appointed to the Resettlement Administration as a film consultant. He was given $6,000 to make a film, which became The Plow That Broke the Plains.. Lorentz wrote the script, and hired a former Meropolitan opera baritone, Thomas Chalmers to read the narration. He also got American composer Virgil Thomson to write the score. These two heloed make the 30 minute film have the impact it did (does). The film had its first public showing on May 10, 1936 at Washington's Mayflower Hote. It had a preview screening in March at the White House. where Roosevelt was impressed. After FDR was re-election in 1936, he gave Lorentz the opportunity to make a film about conservation - a favorite topic of the president. Lorentz then made The River, a film gloffying the Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA which looked to control flooding. Roosevelt was a great believer in the idea that science could do anything, However, perhaps more importantly to the two of them , it halt the destruction of the forests by providing cheap, readily-available hydro-electric power to a wide area rather than using wood fuel to run turbines,. The River won the "best documentary" category at the Venice International Film Festival. The text of River appeared in book form, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry that year. It is generally considered his most masterful work.
In 1938 Republicans gained seats in Congress power shifted in a more conservative direction. The flow of money for Federal commissions for film making projects like Lorentz's was halted. Lorentz managed to make one more film before the US enteredt World War II, The film The Fight for Life (1940) is called "semi-documentary" that deals with the struggle to provide adequate natal care at the Chicago Maternity Center. The film used a book by Paul de Kruif as a basis and John Steinbeck worked on the project with Lorentz.
A downturn in the ecomony led Roosevelt to attempt to "redistrinute the wealth" through a number of techniques including raising taxes, putting in place Social Securirty, creating the Works Progress Admonistration, National Youth Association, CCC in preparation for what he called "The Great Society" which would emerge. The Supreme Court found much of the legislation passed unconstitutional. Roosevelttried to have certain judges who were over 70, so he could appoint judges who like his programs (sound familiar?)..
Despite his programs, there was a down turn in the economy (pro Roosevelt people claim this was a result of normal business cycles while anti-Roosevelt people held it was a result of his policies).
What ultimately ended the depression was the arrival of WWII. This has always made people suspicious since then that whenever there is a downturn in the economy, the country should have a nice war to revive it. Some people see this as favoring big business while others see it as employing many of the unemployed.
When people criticized Roosevelt for his “giving away money” to unemployed people he pointed out they spent it in the stores that individual people owned. The store owners argued it was tghe money that was taken away from them in taxes that became the "hand-out money" and hence they were in effect giving their wares away. So people argued both sides depending on how it was to their advantage. So what else is new?
It is into this mess that The Plow that Broke the Plains. and The River are made. In part the films are made as a justification of Roosevelt’s New Deal, thus giving rise to the question as to whether the films are made as educational films or propaganda (conscious raising or brainwashing)
Lorentz worked basically without a script and hired several cinematographers to “go photograph”. They were unhappy with this and a sat down in a room in Texas where they prepared a script as an ultimatum. All three being left wing and one a Marxist, they blamed everything on capitalism. Lorentz, although a leftist himself, promptly fired all three.
Lorentz wound up having to get stock footage from Hollywood which was difficult since Hollywood did not want the government getting into the movie business. None the less he was able to grab some out takes from commercial filmssuch as the logs going down the sluiceway.
It seems clear that Lorentz had watched Russian films and his parallels between tanks and tractors is clear as is the linking of a WWI song "Mademoiselle from Armentières" (or "(H)inky Dinky Parlez-vous" (variant: "Parley voo")
. Two problems which remain are those of the staging of pieces of the film and also the nature of the narration.
Some of the material has clearly been staged (other than that which was lifted from other films). The same people appear over and over in The Plow that Broke the Plains and scenes like the building of the dike with the mule, in The River were like in Flaherty’s films, anachronistic. Dikes by that time were built by tractors not mules, although people still knew how to do it. The rolling of the bales of cotton was also staged.
Music
The music for the films, like Night Mail, was written by a well known composer, Virgil Thomson born in Kansas City Missouri, thus giving him something of a Midwestern background. Thomson was hired hired over other composers who spoke to Laurentz about the aesthetics they wanted to create, but Thomson apparently asked “How much do I get paid?” and Lorentz saw in this someone he could rely on to get the job done on time. Among the other composers was Aaron Copeland (Kaplan – his name was changed while his family (Lithuanian Jews) were in Scotland waiting to come to the US) Copland was born in Brooklyn and grew up not far from the Brooklyn Museum. Both Thomson and Copeland are scene often as the originators of American classical music.
Thomspn used Hymn tunes, cowboy tunes, and what he called white spirituals which were British songs modified for the American context, that he knew from growing up in Kansas City Missouri
Thomson also wrote the score for Flaherty’s Louisiana Story, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1948. His scores in all three of these films are based on folk tunes and what he termed “White spirituals”. He uses, for example, variations on the doxology (a short hymn praising God) common in protestant American churches. The one used in the film normally has the words:
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow"
This doxology in widespread use in English, in some Protestant traditions commonly referred to simply as The Doxology or The Common Doxology begins "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow". The words are thus:
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Amen.
Althuogh Thomson said the words to the songs was not important in his choosing them, the words would have been known to him and his audience and they would have responded at least subconsciously to them. Thomson was said to have had a friend who was having a serious operation and he said he would worry constantly which was his only form of acceptable prayer.
The scores are harmonically simple and scored for a smaller orchestra than common used and also makes use of Saxophone, banjo, guitar, harmonium and other “American” sounding instruments.
Narration The narration is a voice over, not spoken by anyone involved in the film, but some omniscient being. What impact does this have on the viewers? Do they believe more what the film says?
This “invalidates” the film as a documentary in Cinema Verite terms. The voice is clearly a proponent of the government’s position on the problems. We might ask if this is what distinguishes educational films from propaganda?
There is certainly some skewing of data – About ¾ of farmers did not leave. Many people did move into California
See: http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-dust-bowl
The last two are:
While farm families migrating to California during the 1930s, like the fictitious Joad family, were often derided as “Okies,” only one-fifth of them were actually from Oklahoma. (Plus, many of those Oklahoma migrants were from the eastern part of the state outside of the Dust Bowl.) “Okie” was a blanket term used to describe all agricultural migrants, no matter their home states. They were greeted with hostility and signs such as one in a California diner that read: “Okies and dogs not allowed inside.”
The film was shown largely to groups in the South where the “New Deal” was having some difficulties.
The River, like The Plow that Broke the Plains indicates that the problem comes from over forestation and produces “answers” at the end of the film which advocate damn building which is now seen by many as making worse problems than the flooding. One argument is that “People shouldn’t live in a flood plain”
Religion
At the time the film was made the country was far more religious. The doxology music for example, was recognized at least subconsciously by most people. Today many people don’t know the word or what it is.
The Plow has been described as having biblical parallels. Evangelical parableWe start in Paradise. People appear and sin. Disaster follows and there is a hint of salvation in the offing (the TVA) which has undergone some changes and is in some serious problems with environmentalists.
The original ending (about 4 minutes longer) talked about the causes (claimed to be largely over forestation and over farming with little discussion about the fact that “the rains failed” which had nothing to do with farming or deforestation. Clearly the fact that grass grew and wheat grew initially were indications that the land could support vegetation. The original ending however is something of a “let down” to power of the film and Lorentz ultimately cut it out to make the film more powerful
The role call of the rivers and other repeated elements in the text are powerful markers that strss the "Americaness" of tjhe films. Interestingly enough, alhtough The Plow that Brokle the Plains repeats over and over that this is a land without rivers, streams, water, the map showing the river system in The Rover clearly indicate rivers like the Nebraska, flowing through the "riverless" prairie.
In BOTH FILMS we have