Wednesday night at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, I’ll be introducing—probably with a very, very short introduction—a double bill of Our Daily Bread and The Plow that Broke the Plains. You can find details here.
They’re pretty remarkable films, released only two years apart, but what a two years. The wild, really kind of crazy and fantastic hope1 in Our Daily Bread yields to the brutal, dismal—I don’t know if I want to say realistic per se, but certainly more realistic and inconclusive picture of The Plow that Broke the Plains. Just as, broadly speaking, you could say the New Deal went from the idea of We Can (and Should) Do Anything to We Need to Work within Clear Limits over the same period.
Really, I guess you should watch Vidor’s fable first and then Lorentz’s documentary.
Anyway, I’ll have something to say in this line tomorrow night.
1Which is described as leftist. But do you notice in the scene where they talk about what form of government they want to have, they reject democracy and socialism, and conclude, it’s a big job and we need a big man to run it? Hmmm.
10 comments
March 31, 2009 at 7:10 pm
ben
Way to schedule it for a night I can’t attend, dude.
March 31, 2009 at 7:24 pm
andrew
Have you seen the “hmmm, benevolent dictatorship might not be so bad” film, Gabriel Over the White House? It’s somewhat disturbing how calmly it portrays everything working out.
March 31, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Erik
High winds and sun.
March 31, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Bitchphd
You gotta get this show on the road. I suggest arranging a screening at UCSB soon.
April 1, 2009 at 5:12 am
Jonathan Rees
I’m not trying to kill the party (besides you don’t get Eric this way), but both those films are available online. “Our Daily Bread” is in the Prelinger Archives, and the “Plow that Broke the Plains” is both there and on YouTube.
April 1, 2009 at 5:46 am
eric
It’s as if I didn’t link to them in the post.
April 1, 2009 at 10:16 am
ben
Students today, you know? Never do the reading.
April 1, 2009 at 10:46 am
Josh
How about a little more warning next time?
April 2, 2009 at 4:42 am
GB
I’m finally about to read your short introduction to the Great Depression, Eric. I’d encourage students of the Great Depression to study how other countries handled the Great Depression – or didn’t. It makes you appreciate just how great FDR was and how well the Democratic Party handled the crisis. In Australia, we had people pining after a big man. American scholars should read up on Francis De Groot, Jack Lang and the Scullin government and D.H. Lawrence’s “Kangaroo”.
Sydney, Australia
April 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Michael Dunne
I read the “Very Short Introduction” a few months ago, and found it very readable and informative. I’ve always like history, but never had much interest in the 30’s until this economic crisis (sorry, Eric). But now I want to know more.
One question that popped into my head recently is that in the 30’s, it seems like Congress was much bolder than the present Congress (at least during the early years of the New Deal). It seems that Congress was even leading FDR at times. Now it seems like Obama is constrained by how much of his program he can get through Congress.
Did the Democrats have a fillibuster-proof majority in the 30’s? Or was the fillibuster not used as much as today? Or were the Democrats just that much bolder then? Or is there some other explanation?