PARE LORENTZ: FDR’S MOVIEMAKER
By Dr. Robert J. Snyder, Associate Professor
of Broadcasting
Department of Communication Technologies
University of Wisconsin-Platteville
The River
Despite favorable reviews
for “The Plow” and its reasonable distribution,
Lorentz was frustrated to the point of quitting. In
June of 1936 he walked into Tugwell’s office to
resign. As he turned to leave Tugwell’s office,
he saw a map of the Mississippi River on the wall. The
river valley, he said, would make an obvious subject.
Tugwell asked Lorentz to sit down and offer an explanation.
From that conversation, Lorentz received a call on July
4th that President Roosevelt had provided $50,000 funding
for the project and that Lorentz’s salary would
be bumped to $30.00 a day.
Lorentz
began compiling research notes. His initial plan was to
start at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and film while floating
down the river to the Gulf of Mexico. Lorentz had a clerk
from the Treasury Department assigned to him, making the
finances much more efficient. In the summer of 1936 Lorentz
traveled to the Mississippi and realized the impracticality
of his plan. He decided, instead, to follow the river
through its tributaries. There are few shots of the Mississippi
in the final film. This time around, Lorentz had the advantage
of learning from his prior experience. For example, rather
than film what he came across, he had a production plan,
scheduling shoots in Minnesota, New Orleans and other
locations. Field production wrapped up in mid-January,
1937.
Lorentz
also had a bit of luck. Serious flooding broke out along
the Ohio River. Lorentz sent a crew to Memphis on January
21, where he would eventually join them. The crew worked
their way up the river to Cairo, Illinois, sometimes working
continuously for 36-hour. Lorentz even rented a floppy
winged Waco with a single Lycoming engine to get aerial
footage. Lorentz recalled that the cameraman, Willard
Van Dyke, shot some fine footage, even though Van Dyke
was so scared he leaned out of the plane, pressed the
button and hoped for the best. Lorentz would again hire
Virgil Thomson to compose the music for “The River.”
Thomas Chalmers, a leading member of the Metropolitan
Opera Company in the days of Caruso until an operation
had damaged his singing voice, was the narrator.
Lorentz
decided that one of the overall themes in the movie would
be the close relationship between the land, water and
the people. This combination had, over a few generations,
created problems of national significance. As the film
explained, we had built a new continent since the end
of the Civil War, but at what a cost. The film would conclude
by looking at the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority
as one answer to this problem of the abuse of the natural
environment.
The narration unexpectedly developed into
poetic form. Lorentz had drafted two versions of a report
on the flood for McCall’s magazine. One
was a five-thousand word article that Lorentz felt was
too statistical and too long for the magazine’s
readers. The other report was more lyrical in style. McCall’s
editor chose to publish the latter version and subsequently
the magazine received 150,000 requests for copies. Lorentz
knew this was the way to go. His script for “The
River” would be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
in poetry.
“The River” debuted in New
Orleans on October 29, 1937 to rave reviews. Lorentz worked
out a distribution agreement with Paramount Pictures.
The film was made available to theater owners without
charge, except transportation expenses. “The River”
may have been one of the first documentaries ever telecast
when BBC Television aired it in March, 1938. One reviewer
called it “one of the noblest films that America
has ever produced.”
One
sequence in particular is pure cinematic genius. It begins
with a single drop of water, accompanied by the steady
beat of a kettle drum. In perfect parallel structure,
this single drop of water builds to a visual climax of
catastrophic flooding, with a soundtrack that is a cacophony
of music, sound effects and sense of urgency from the
narrator.
“The River” would be the first
American documentary to be awarded First Place at the
Venice International Film Festival, beating out Leni Riefenstahl’s
film about the Berlin Olympics, “Olympiad.”
“The River” was added to the National Film
Registry in 1990. (http://www.loc.gov/film/filmnfr.html)
