The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936)

THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS 
    D: Pare Lorentz                     (1936)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
The irony in that title is in the use of the word "broke". A landmark documentary about how we created the Dust Bowl by turning over millions of acres of grassland (in a region that didn't get much rain) for the mass production of wheat. You'd expect a movie produced for the New Deal to end on a note of hope. Most of them do. This one doesn't, and I'm not sure it could. At the time of its release, farmers on the plains were still going broke, the land was still blowing away, and the Okies in their jalopies were still on the road heading west, the exodus in progress. You can bet John Ford watched this movie a time or two before he went to work on "The Grapes of Wrath".