Transmission
1 January
1936
The Plow That Broke the Plains
The Plow That Broke the Plains
Network
US Resettlement Administration
Running time
25 min
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936). US Resettlement Administration. Held by the Internet Archive;
The Plow That Broke the Plains
The first film the United States government made for commercial cinemas: the ploughing of the southern plains, the drought, and the migration out.
- Year
- 1936
- Made by
- US Resettlement Administration
- Directed by
- Pare Lorentz
- Free to use because
- A work of the United States government — no copyright, anywhere
The note
Lorentz was a film critic with no production experience and a government budget of six thousand dollars. What he produced is the beginning of the American documentary as an art form, and it is above all a piece of sound — Thomson's score, built on cowboy songs and hymns, and a narration written in verse cadence and spoken by Thomas Chalmers. Commercial distributors resisted it; audiences did not. Federal work, no copyright.
The Plow That Broke the Plains, 1936. US Resettlement Administration. Directed by Pare Lorentz. This is the film’s soundtrack: narration, score and location sound, streamed from the Internet Archive’s master. No picture — the audio is the work. A work of the United States government, and therefore free of copyright anywhere it is used.