Word: 1930s
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dearie," whispers a coyly melancholy Ginger Rogers. That much director Philippe Mora makes starkly clear in his latest film, Brother Can You Spare a Dime? But the vast diversity of the Depression experience for each segment of American society obscures Mora's otherwise successful representation of America in the 1930s; the film becomes a canvas on which he depicts his personal intepretation of the national consciousness during that...
...1930s is not a period that lends itself easily to documentary; the portrayal of a clearly defined national mood is elusive; American tastes and attitudes fluctuated as often as the stock market. The decade was characterized by an erosion of faith in many traditional institutions, values and heroes; its political mood was a melange of extremism, tension and demagoguery...
Mora's chronology of the 1930s is unnecessarily obscured from his viewers by the lack of any narration or subtitles identifying the scenes. Most viewers are hard pressed to identify the shock-stricken father of John Dillinger being interviewed after his son's violent death at the hands of J. Edgar Hoover's newly armed G-men. The significance of many of the scenes is reduced by their brevity and the breakneck pace at which Mora carries the viewer through the period...
...pans the gloomy landscape that characterized the era. While he often contrasts the grim reality of life during the Depression with such fanciful films as Gold Diggers of 1933, starring Ginger Rogers, he uses similar clippings to demonstrate a haunting similarity between fiction and fact in the 1930s. Random scenes from King Kong (1932-33), for example, invite a comparison of the fright inspired in New York subway passengers by the ravages of an overgrrown ape to the frenzied fear of bank failures felt by investors during the Depression...
...evening clothes sit around having brandy and cigars after dinner and listen to D.B. Norton--a Ronald Reagan figure if there ever was one, say: "There's been too much permissiveness in this country, too much loose talk. America needs an iron hand." To which the men, archetypal 1930s lounge lizards with beautifully cut moustaches and social registers in their back pockets, respond: "Hear, hear, quite right, D.B." and thump on the table in a hollow variant of old-time prep school enthusiasm. The movie's scene could just as easily have had California regents like Edward Carter, the president...