The River (1938 film)

Infobox Film
name = The River


imdb_id = 0029490
director = Pare Lorentz
writer = Pare Lorentz
cinematography = Floyd Crosby
Willard Van Dyke
distributor = Farm Security Administration
released = February 4, 1938
runtime = 31 min.
country = USA | language = English

"The River" (1938) is a short documentary film which shows the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States, and how farming and timber practices had caused topsoil to be swept down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico.

It was written and directed by Pare Lorentz and, like Lorentz's earlier documentary "The Plow That Broke the Plains", was also selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in 1990. Both films have notable scores by Virgil Thomson that are still heard as concert suites.

The two films were sponsored by the U.S. government and specifically the Resettlement Administration (RA) to raise awareness about the New Deal. The RA was folded into the Farm Security Administration in 1937, so "The River" was officially an FSA production.

ee also

* "The Plow That Broke the Plains"
* Farm Security Administration

External links

*imdb title|id=0029490|title=The River
*The River [http://www.archive.org/details/RiverThe1937 (part 1)] and [http://www.archive.org/details/RiverThe1937_2 (part 2)] at The Internet Archive (missing part 3)
* [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/FILM/lorentz/front.html Pare Lorentz]
* [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/FILM/lorentz/river.html The River]
* [http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/ThePlowTheRiver.htm The River review]