The Plow That Broke the Plains is a 1936 short documentary film that shows the cultivation of the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada following the Civil War and leading up to the Dust Bowl as a result of exploitation of the Great Plains' natural resources.The Plow That Broke the Plains was the first film created by the US government for commercial release and distribution through the Resettlement Administration as part of President Roosevelt's New Deal program. The Resettlement Administration recruited Pare Lorentz to produce The Plow That Broke the Plains to support its campaign of showing the public that the search for profits in the West resulted in the displacement of settlers, misuse of the land, and ultimately resulted in the dust storms that affected the Great Plains regions in the 1930s. The film was one of the most widely publicized attempts by the U.S. federal government to communicate to its citizens through motion pictures.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was written and directed by Pare Lorentz independentlyPaul Strand - Leo Hurwitz while the music score was written by composer Virgil Thomson. The film was narrated by the American actor and baritone Thomas Hardie Chalmers.
In 1999, The Plow That Broke the Plains was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Background The initial inspiration for The Plow That Broke the Plains came from Pare Lorentz's desire to make a film on the New Deal that would provide Americans with a fresh look at their country. Lorentz became particularly interested in the drought and dust storms of the early thirties which inspired him to write a lengthy piece on the Dust Bowl for Newsweek. In 1935, Rexford Tugwell, the head of the Resettlement Administration, initially recruited Pare Lorentz as a film consultant as part of the Resettlement Administration staff, because the agency administrators were interested in creating a film about the Dust Bowl. While the Resettlement Administration sponsored extensive photographic surveys of rural poverty conditions, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Tugwell became interested in using motion pictures as a medium which would bridge gaps in communication between the government and the public. The Director of Information for the Resettlement Administration John Franklin Carter asked Lorentz if he thought a motion picture could be used to interpret the general objectives of the Resettlement Administration which included: improvement of impoverished farm families, prevention of waste due to improper land use, structured utilization of land resources, recultivation of worn out and submarginal land, and relocation of families. Following Lorentz agreement to focus on land use and misuse and an estimate that the film could be produced with six-thousand dollars, Tugwell put his support behind the production of a film about the Dust Bowl.
In a letter, Tugwell expressed that the film was to function as an internal educational tool for the Resettlement Administration and its employees to visualize and understand better the problems confronting them and to aid the administration in preventing the results of soil erosion related problems in the Great Plains. Additionally, the film was also to align with the goals of the Resettlement Administration and would explain the causes of the Dust Bowl, while also making a strong case for resettling destitute farmers, retiring marginal farmland from production, and restoring the grasslands in the West.
In a review of his own film, Lorentz commented in McCall's Magazine that he had two primary objectives: To show the audience an exciting portion of the country and to portray the events that led to "one of the major catastrophes in American history," the Great Drought and the Dust Bowl. With a limited budget, Lorentz could only map out a small portion of the reality experienced in the Great Plains within a 28-minute frame. He, therefore, had to abstract, simplify, and compress the history of the Great Plains, while still attempting to portray the plains environment and history in a work of art that would not only elicit emotional responses from the audience but coerce them into corrective action that would rehabilitate the area and prevent future ecological catastrophes. Therefore, Lorentz envisioned the film as a "lyric educational exercise, both practical and aesthetic, incorporating the history of the Great Plains from the first cattle drives to the punishing drought then entering its 6th year."
Lorentz's depiction differed from other portrayals of the Great Plains region. While photographers tended to emphasize the people of the plains as blameless victims, and mural artists emphasized the glorious past of the pioneer, Lorentz wanted to present the environmental tale of the Plains as one of decline and refused to see the dust storms as a natural disaster, instead depicting these events as human-created tragedies.
The Plow That Broke the Plains also had the benefit of promoting New Deal programs and as President Roosevelt indicated to Lorentz himself, softening the public for subsequent New Deal measures related to public works and health. The use of film also helped Roosevelt circumvent largely Republican-controlled media platforms to promote New Deal policies. Because the film was also released during an election year, it was bound to also generate political rancor.
Plot The Plow That Broke the Plains begins with a written prologue appearing as words on the screen that gives a physical description of the Great Plains region as well as a brief history of the plains. Following the written prologue, a map shows the outlines of the Great Plains region within the United States and the political boundaries of the states within it. The motion picture scenes are introduced by displaying the vast grasslands of the Great Plains with narrator Thomas Chalmers speaking about the weather and geographical features of the land, reiterating that the plains are a region with "high winds and sun without rivers, without streams, and with little rain." The following scene introduces the first settlers of the region, the cattle farmers. The narrator continues on, explaining that following the cattle came to the railroads bringing even more settlers who established towns and attracted additional pioneers and plowmen. The next sequences show the arrival of settlers through wagons and caravans as well as the first settlers constructing settlements and breaking the soil in order to farm. The narrator reiterates the phrase "high winds and sun without rivers, without streams, and with little rain" but ends with a warning, "settler, plow at your peril."
Following this, the next sequence shows the mechanization of agriculture and the production of grains and crops. The narrator comes back in as the scene transitions to farmers plowing dry soil and a woman sweeping dust from a staircase, explaining that the "rains failed and the sun baked the light soil" and that "many left" the region. Despite the narrator stating that many settlers were disappointed, a new hope for increasing profits came in the form of World War I. The following scenes show newspapers that display the declaration of World War I and the resulting prices of wheat soaring due to demand. The atmosphere of the film changes to an uplifting and patriotic tone as farmers use mechanized agricultural equipment to prepare the fields for planting and harvesting crops. The narrator exclaims, "wheat will win the war!" multiple times while scenes of wheat and grain production appear alongside scenes of war. While scenes of settlers using mechanized farm equipment to harvest the crops continue, the narrator explains how millions of acres were converted over to farmland followed by more images of newspaper articles announcing that large acreage was available to purchase to establish more farmlands.
Following the scenes showing extensive plowing and harvesting, the film cuts to images of dried land, animal bones, and abandoned farm equipment. The narrator again states that the rain did not come and the sun-baked millions of acres of plowed land, with footage of arid plains. As a result of this desertification, massive dust storms swept across the plains, causing people to take shelter, with homes buried under the dust. The narrator states that "once again they headed West," referring to the settlers losing hope and migrating in search of better opportunities. Within the final sequence, the narrator exclaims "Four hundred million acres the Great Plains seemed inexhaustible yet in 50 years we turned a part of it into a Dust Bowl" and continues to list the factors that led to the Dust Bowl, such as too many cattle and sheep, plowed lands that should have been left untouched, removal of native grasses to hold soil, and farm machines that made it easy for a single person to plow many acres. The narrator continues to explain that the federal government has been working to salvage whatever land is left and restore it through New Deal initiatives including the Soil Conversation Service, Forest Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, while the Resettlement Administration worked to resettle the stranded farmers. The viewer is left with one last message from the narrator who warns that conservation is necessary in order to save the rest of the plains and that "another decade of reckless use, and the grasslands will truly be the great American desert."
Production Early production and filming The early production period, which consisted of Pare Lorentz conducting research and developing a rough shooting script lasted from June to September 1935. To make the film as inexpensive as possible, Lorentz did not use any professional actors and shot all footage on location. Because sound technology was still new, bringing the equipment into the field to capture human voices and sounds would have been nearly impossible. Therefore, The Plow That Broke the Plains was initially a silent film with a musical score and narration added later. On September 3, Lorentz secured cameramen Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, and Leo Hurwitz, each with experience in documentary film production and influenced by the work of Soviet filmmakers. Lorentz scouted locations for filming through examining and researching photos taken by the Resettlement Administration and began filming in September 1935 in Montana.
Over the next 7 weeks, Lorentz and his cameramen traversed eight states from the Montana-Wyoming border to the Texas Panhandle. Because The Plow That Broke the Plains was Lorentz's first film, he had difficulty communicating his ideas to the cameramen and filming locations became a point of contention between Lorentz and the crew. Additionally, the cameramen became concerned that the final script had not yet been written either. This resulted in Steiner, Strand, and Hurwitz creating their own script that voiced their own political positions that indicted capitalism, human greed, and a "lousy social system" for the devastation of the Great Plains and its residents. Following the Dust Storm sequences in Texas, Lorentz fired the crew and headed to California where Resettlement Administration photographer Dorothea Lange helped him capture scenes of migrants searching for work. Additionally Lorentz needed to finish the film with stock footage, but because the Hollywood community wanted to prevent the film from being completed as many considered it New Deal propaganda, they instructed studios and film libraries to refuse Lorentz's requests. Through friends, Lorentz was able to obtain the stock footage and complete the film after learning how to cut and edit the film himself, due to not having any budget to hire an editor.
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