Aggiungi una trama nella tua linguaThis documentary is about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States when a combination of farming practices and environmental factors led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.This documentary is about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States when a combination of farming practices and environmental factors led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.This documentary is about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States when a combination of farming practices and environmental factors led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
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- QuizAccording to Timothy Egan's book 'The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl' (2006), this film is "the only peacetime production by the American government of a film intended for broad commercial release."
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Title Card: This is a record of land... of soil, rather than people - a story of the Great Plains: the 400,000,000 acres of wind-swept grass lands that spread from the Texas panhandle to Canada...
- Curiosità sui creditiThe film's opening prologue: This is a record of land . . . of soil, rather than people -- a story of the Great Plains: the 400,000,000 acres of wind-swept grass lands that spread up from the Texas panhandle to Canada . . . A high, treeless continent, without rivers, without streams . . . A country of high winds, and sun . . . and of little rain . . . By 1880 we had cleared the Indian, and with him, the buffalo, from the Great Plains, and established the last frontier . . . A half million square miles of natural range . . . This is the picturization of what we did with it.
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Played as part of the score when WWI breaks out
I call attention to this because a literal reading of the prologue matched against these opening and closing shots is hardly a tale of triumph. The plow that broke the plains really did break them, it appears-- at least to this point in 1936. Hopefully, an improved agronomy has prevented these latter scenes from repeating.
Nonetheless, the documentary itself represents a triumph of artistic imagery (Lorenz) and musical score (Thompson)— and a tribute to its New Deal sponsors. From the first lone rider to the great cattle herds to the mighty plows to soaring WWI demand and finally to the dustbowl and its refugees, the story is elegantly related. I agree that the narration too often goes over the top, but the basic idea works. And I really like that last shot of the lone tree skeleton with its tiny bird's nest looking hopefully to the future. All in all, the 25 minutes adds up to a powerful work of documentary art.
(In passing—I think there are two ways of construing the rather puzzling shots of British WWI tanks plowing forward. In context, the tank armies are juxtaposed with armies of tractors plowing over the plains. Thus, we might view each army as subduing a resistant foe, in the latter case, a difficult land. Or, possibly, the tractors can be taken as a mechanized army of harvesters supplying foodstuffs for a mechanized army of tanks. And even though the two construals may be taken as odes to the power of mechanization, I detect a dark undercurrent to the film as a whole that hardly coincides with the usual tales of "the winning of the West".)
- dougdoepke
- 7 ott 2009
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Dettagli
- Data di uscita
- Paese di origine
- Lingua
- Celebre anche come
- Плуг, нарушивший равнины
- Azienda produttrice
- Vedi altri crediti dell’azienda su IMDbPro
Botteghino
- Budget
- 6.000 USD (previsto)
- Tempo di esecuzione25 minuti
- Colore
- Proporzioni
- 1.37 : 1