Our Daily Bread

America during the Depression. John and Mary cannot find work in the city and are in debt. A relative gives them an abandoned farm. Neither knows anything about farming. A Swedish farmer passing on the road helps them, and an idea forms: bring in other people who are stranded and work the farm collectively. A community forms quickly; everyone does what they know and barter replaces money. Then the drought comes. King Vidor directs. He also paid for most of it himself; no studio would finance it. Its politics were argued over. Because of the collective idea some took it for communist propaganda and others found it close to a fascist collectivism; Vidor rejected both and said the idea came from American pioneer communities. Its known passage is the irrigation ditch at the end. The community digs a channel for miles and brings water to the fields; the sequence is almost entirely without music, cut to rhythm, and is a frequently cited example of montage in film history. The weakness is the characters; they stay at the level of types and the romantic line is forced. It runs about seventy minutes. It counts as one of the directly political works of American cinema in the Depression. Who it is for: viewers who like thirties American cinema and socially minded classics. Who it is not for: the acting is flat, the script is thin, and the film's idea stands in front of its characters.