Our Daily Bread (1934)
Directed by King Vidor
1934/USA
King W. Vidor Productions (as Viking Productions, Inc.)
First Viewing
John Sims: Don’t worry Mary. I know things are hard now but we’ll make it in the end.
Mary Sims: But how, John? Who’s going to save us?
John Sims: Not who, Mary, what. The bread will save us, the bread.
John and Mary Sims (Tom Keane and Karen Morely) are about to be evicted when Mary’s uncle offers them a farm which is about to be foreclosed on. Although they know nothing of farming, they move there. They meet a dispossessed Swedish farmer (John Qualen) who shows them the ropes. Then John gets the idea of starting a cooperative where tradesmen will work on the barter system. Before he knows it, he has an entire village on the land and the men are plowing the fields.
King Vidor made this film with his own money as a labor of love, having been captivated by the “back to the land” movement as a solution to the woes of the Great Depression. The acting is earnest, but not particularly great. Unfortunately, I could not watch the film without questioning most of the basic premises. If these people could make a go of it why were so many farmers losing their farms in the Depression? Of course it helped that the land was essentially free (somehow these people manage to get it for $1.85 at a foreclosure auction). The seed etc. was miraculously available free. Finally, these folks dam and divert a stream a couple of miles away to solve their drought problem. In real life, the farmers whose lands were naturally irrigated by the stream would have been there in a heartbeat with guns.
Excerpt – Jinnovation in Depression-era farming
