The River (1938)

THE RIVER  (1938)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Pare Lorentz
A Depression-Era documentary about the Mississippi River as both a magnificent resource and a mechanism for catastrophe. Or what happens when you log all the trees off the hills, and it rains, and the rain with nothing to stop it runs down to the river on its way to the sea. The narrative's repetitive and relentless. There's an inevitability about the way the words tumble over each other and double back to tumble over each other again that reflects the cycles of nature. The things we control and those we can't. The horrific collision of weather, erosion and greed. Stuff we ignore at our peril.