Word: mora
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...then draws from newsreels to document lengthening breadlines, middlewestern duststorms and ragged transients riding freight trains through a despondent land in search of work. Mora uses his selections from Depression vintage cinema to juxtapose reality and fantasy as he 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...
FRANKLIN Roosevelt and Cagney emerge as the two interpreters of the 1930s for the American people. Mora's attention to F.D.R. is reasonable, but his excessive treatment of Cagney is unconvincing. One of the cult heroes of the 1930s, Cagney reasserted the qualities of aggressiveness and independent thinking in Lady Killer (1934) and G-Men (1935), but this revival of ruggedly self-reliant attitudes was not as important as F.D.R.'s uniquely successful exorcism of fear and death during the New Deal...
...Mora devotes equal footage to both Cagney and Roosevelt, but F.D.R. rightfully assumes a more important role in Mora's analysis of the Depression. Roosevelt is successfully depicted as the gentlemanly savior of the working classes, the voice of reason in the face of Republican conservatism and most of all, a great actor and showman, winning over huge blocks of votes by sheer charm. The film shows him at home playing with his grandchildren, and cruising in the Long Island Sound in his family yacht. But never is Roosevelt so effective as when he mimics his political antagonists. Mora records...
...Roosevelt never breakfasted on grilled millionaire, America's class structure wasn't significantly changed during his tenure either. But Mora gives his audience a glimpse of the millions who gained employment through F.D.R.'s pet programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. We see a policeman sternly advising an itinerant freight train rider to "Return where you came from and collect relief and find a government...