NFR Project: ‘The River’
Dir: Pare Lorentz
Scr: Pare Lorentz
Pho: Floyd Crosby, Willard Van Dyke, Stacy Woodard
Ed: Lloyd Nosler, Leo Zochling
Premiere: Feb. 4, 1938
31 min.
Pare Lorentz made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker with The Plow that Broke the Plains in 1936. This examination of the Dust Bowl and plans for its mitigation was lauded by many, but abhorred by some as it appeared to them to be government propaganda. I wrote about it here.
For his second great documentary, Lorentz chose to cover the Mississippi River, that great avenue of commerce and travel. Once again, there was a didactic side to the film – Lorentz brings up deforestation and overfarming, and posits the dam construction work of FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority as the solution to flood control and recovery of farmland and forest.
Lorentz chose a lyrical, poetic approach to the subject. He invokes the might of the river, and reels off a list of its tributaries in Whitmanesque style. He covers the river’s past, giving us shots of abandoned Southern mansions and including a quote from Robert E. Lee. Then he turns to the present, outlining the region’s problems with water and advocating government interventions to fix it.
The film does not deal in concrete specifics – the images are generic, and are chosen for their aesthetic beauty. Men and mules are silhouetted against the sky; water drips, meanders, and rushes. The Virgil Thomson score is outstanding, providing depth and weight to the scenes that are edited together. This time, Lorentz followed a filming schedule and created a budget, allowing him to work efficiently and with more assured focus.
Once again, there was some trouble with viewers and critics, who found it to be pushing the government’s agenda, which it certainly is. But Lorentz’s strong sense of imagery, backed up by an equally strong poetic narration (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry), transcends the programmatic aspect of the film, giving us a stirring portrait of natural and man-made forces at work.
The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Under Western Stars.
