The River 1937

Shows the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States, and how farming and timber practices had caused topsoil to be swept down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To license footage from this subject, go to: http://www.travelfilmarchive.com

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Mississippi
• River
• 1937
• 1930s
• stock
• footage
• environment
• erision
• logging
• cotton
• pickers
• steamboat
• sawmill
• floods
• poverty
• homeless
• eating
• damns
• farmers
• power
• plants
• hyrdroelectric

[slightlygrouchy]

Thank you so much for posting this film. I wrote my dissertation on The River, using a VHS which I no longer have. Many still consider Pare Lorentz' film the best American documentary ever produced. It is a powerful, lyrical and beautiful propaganda film whose Walt Whitman like commentary won the Pulitzer Price for poetry.

[Ingo64]

Great film and great music. Without the movie "The Day After" where the music is used, too, I would never have learnt about this film.

[seeplecash]

@kurthoop This film is a critique of American industrialization from its founding up until the late 1930s. "We cut the top off... and sent it down the river... and moved on." The only pride that Lorentz was expressing was pride of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River IS the character.

Also, he's reading a poem and uses film to illustrate the themes.

You don't know what you're talking about and you didn't watch the whole film because you didn't have the attention span for it.

[kurthoop]

Rather than an educational film about the industry, the film is used to express all the work that "we" do, and how many times "we" can say "down" or "rolled" with little to no other dialogue. I am not a fan of Americana style expression of industrial awesomeness.

[Thistledowne]

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been looking for it since I took a wonderful class at the University of Missouri - Columbia taught by Dr. Michael Budds.  He showed us this film with the Virgil Thompson composed Americana soundtrack. A bit disturbing as it's meant to be propaganda, but what an amazing impact.