| |  | DVD : The Plow That Broke the Plains & The River / Gil-Ordonez, Post-Classical Ensemble |  | | | | | | | | | |
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0747313552153
Label: Naxos
Manufacturer: Naxos
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Naxos
Release Date: January 30, 2007
Running Time: 112 minutes
Sales Rank: 25179
Studio: Naxos
Theatrical Release Date: 1935
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) are landmark American documentary films. Aesthetically, they break new ground in seamlessly marrying pictorial imagery, symphonic music, and poetic free verse, all realized with supreme artistry. Ideologically, they indelibly encapsulate the strivings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's `New Deal'. Virgil Thomson's scores for both films are among the most famous ever composed for the movies. Aaron Copland praised the music of The Plow for its `frankness and openness of feeling', calling it `fresher, more simple, and more personal' than the Hollywood norm. He called the music for The River `a lesson in how to treat Americana'. Special Features include: George Stoney on The Plow and The River * Stoney on The New Deal, The River, and Race * Charles Fussell on Virgil Thomson * Virgil Thomson on Virgil Thomson (audio only) * Original beginning and ending of The Plow * Option to view The Plow and The River with original sound track and narration
Amazon.com:
Art and propaganda meet to powerful effect in these two documentaries from the 1930s. Written and directed by Pare Lorentz, both The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River were made (in black & white) by the U.S government and clearly intended to promote President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, a series of initiatives designed to help the country recover from the Great Depression. Yet that fact detracts not at all from their artistry, as the combination of Lorentz's visuals and words and composer Virgil Thomson's music (the voice-over narration and the scores for both films were 're-created' in 2005 for this release) is often quite genuinely transcendent. Released in 1936 and sponsored by the U.S. Resettlement Administration, The Plow focuses on the Great Plains, those millions of grassy acres sprawled between Texas and Canada--'a high, treeless continent,' the narration tells us, 'without rivers or streams, a country of high winds and sun, and of little rain'--and how, after settlers wiped out the Indians and buffalo who once inhabited the area, the great prosperity and progress that followed eventually left the land over-grazed and over-farmed, turning it into a parched, cracked Dust Bowl, its people impoverished and desperately in need of food, care, jobs, and another chance. The River, from the following year, details the remarkable growth of trade and travel along the Mississippi River, where the booming farming, lumber, iron, coal, and steel industries stripped the surrounding land of its soil and roots, leading to the weakening of the river's levees and disastrous flooding (shades of New Orleans 2005), with government agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Farm Security Administration offering the best chance to escape this ruinous cycle.
The films are filled with striking images and poetry, but in the end, it's Thomson's music that makes the greatest impression; truly cinematic in scope, it draws on well known tunes ('There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight'), hymns ('The Doxology') and the composer's own brilliance to create a thoroughly American sound whose moods perfectly match and enhance what we see on the screen. An hour or so of bonus features includes discussion of all the films' elements (Thomson himself weighs in during an old audio interview), as well as the original beginning and ending of The Plow. --Sam Graham
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Day After
I got this cd because there was no soundtrack available for the 1983 movie "The Day After".The score from the 1937 documentary "The River" is the same music.
Rating: - The Plow That Broke the Plains & The River
This complemented "The worst of hard Times Book" which helped me under stand how I was raised In Nebraska,
the reason for Social Security and the Path Our country has followed. Our parents and ancestors had it rough but perseved.
Rating:  - Apocalypse Then
These stark and dark films are accounts of the land misuse which led to two of the nation's greatest environmental disasters.I found "The Plow That Broke the Plains" especially riveting.The black and white presentation further lends barrenness to these accounts and focuses the viewer more closely on the mechanized devastation.The films demonstrate to what extent the federal government involved itself in national environmental crises in the 1930's, an involvement which may not be possible to ... Read More
Rating: - Two American Classics
Film Schools regard these Lorentz documentaries right up there with Flaherty.Must see! Must hear!The score is fantastic!
Rating: - Two Masterpieces of Documentary Film Restored with Newly Recorded Musical Scores by Virgil Thomson
Pare Lorentz's two groundbreaking 1930s documentaries, paid for by the US government and making no apologies for their propagandist intentions, are here presented with the evocative scores by composer Virgil Thomson played in modern sound by the Post-Classical Ensemble with Angel Gil-Ordóñez conducting. There are unnerving modern resonances in these two films, one about the plow's partial destruction of the great plains that led to the Dust Bowl (reminding us of the modern near-depletion of the ... Read More
The Plow That Broke the Plains & The River / Gil-Ordonez, Post-Classical Ensemble | | | |
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