Our daily bread
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Our daily bread |
| Original title | Our Daily Bread |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1934 |
| length | 74 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | King Vidor |
| script |
Elizabeth Hill Joseph L. Mankiewicz |
| production | King Vidor |
| music | Alfred Newman |
| camera | Robert H. Planck |
| cut | Lloyd Nosler |
| occupation | |
| |
Our Daily Bread is a 1934 American film.
action
Mary and John Sims live in the big city. Like millions of other men during the Great Depression , John is unemployed. For the slightest job, he has to queue up with hundreds of others at the placement every day and still get nothing. To the desperate couple, Uncle Anthony's idea appears to be the solution, because Anthony gives them a farm with a piece of land. They are supposed to be farmers out of the city and into the country, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt is promoting with his New Deal .
Full of optimism, John and Mary arrive at the run-down farm and get to work. Unfortunately, John is not a farmer, so that his ignorance quickly brings both of them to the edge of despair. When John helps a family of farmers who have broken down by car at his farm, the tide turns. The desperate farmer, driven from his own family, was on his way to California , where he hopes to find new work. John offers the man to become a partner on his farm. The cooperation works extremely well. This gives John the idea to share his country with others and to provide for everyone's daily bread through collective work. With signs on the road, he invited more hopeless people to his farm and soon employed a sizeable group of job seekers.
With John in charge, everyone starts a new life together in a large community of former unemployed people. But Uncle Anthony's farm is also polluted and is to be auctioned. The auction organized by the county sheriff threatens the families with the total loss of their land.
When some speculators want to buy the farm at the auction, the farm workers use a trick to prevent this and can thus buy the land themselves for $ 1.85. The men want to give the farm to John, but after this selfless gesture, John is more motivated than ever to make his vision of collective work a reality.
The way there is still difficult. The farm residents experience the first financial relief when they receive a surprising $ 500 from the attractive Sally. She had received the money from the worker Louie, who - as a wanted criminal - wants to face the police in order to get the money for the commune. In order to receive the reward, Sally poses as Mary Sims. The pretty blonde is not only a savior, but also competes with Mary for John's favor, which puts a strain on the marriage of John and Mary. In addition, the survival of the community is threatened again, as a drought threatens the first harvest. But everyone is working together to create a canal that carries water to the fields and in this way can save the harvest and the survival of the community.
background
King Vidor could not find any producers in Hollywood for this film project and had to invest his own money in the production. He only received support from Charlie Chaplin , who made sure that the film was distributed via United Artists .
Reviews
“An excellently staged, socially critical drama about problems in the American world of work, which convincingly implements President Roosevelt's ideas of the New Deal policy. Despite the all too naive optimism, a remarkable plea for self-determination and solidarity. "
The utopia for overcoming the Great Depression through the Führer principle ran for weeks in Berlin in 1936 and was rated "artistically valuable" by the Propaganda Ministry. The Lichtbild-Bühne wrote about the film, which fluctuated between realism and pathos:
"Without a doubt, we are dealing with one of the most effective and impressive films, (...) whose basic idea: 'Only community leads to success' is extremely timely."
Web links
- Our daily bread in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our daily bread. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .