 Initially,
in 2000, Dr. Smith envisioned a documentary focusing primarily
on rural electrification and the Parkinson family. The Parkinsons,
after all, had been the principal actors in a film that
helped electrify the American farm. And, as noted above,
their contribution to American history had not ended in
1940. Fortunately, Sally Brannan, Jim Parkinson, and John
W. Parkinson allowed Smith to copy photographs in their
possession. Some were family photographs; others were production
stills taken on location by Peter Sekaer and Edwin Locke
in 1939 and 1940. These photographs showed Ivens and his
crew filming the Parkinsons. What great pictures and what
a great story!
But the story was not just about the Parkinsons
and rural electrification. There was also the story of how
the film was made and who was involved in that production.
This included Helen van Dongen and her assistant editor
Lora Hays; Douglas Moore, a Pulitzer Prize winning composer
who wrote the score for Power and the Land; and
Moore’s good friend, Stephen Vincent Benet, the great
American author and Pulitzer prize winning poet. Benet had
been brought in to write the narration. By they time Benet
and Moore had been brought in, Ivens and the U.S. Film Service/REA
staff had completed a rough cut. Moore and Benet viewed
this largely finished film before starting their work. The
collaboration of Moore and Benet, under Ivens’ direction,
imparted a distinctive American rural flavor to the final
film.
It certainly has to be one of the most effective
combinations of narration and music in an American documentary
film of that period. Indeed, the REA advertised Power
and the Land as the “companion film to The
River and The Plow That Broke The Plains.
Because this REA film is worthy of comparison to the work
of Virgil Thompson and Pare Lorentz, Smith prepared essays
for Moore and Benet (that can found on our web site). Thomas
Carr Benet, Stephen’s son, was gracious enough to
review these drafts. Tom also provided movie footage of
his father and mother and photographs of the Moore and Benet
families. Patricia McAndrew, who authored an essay on Stephen
and Rosemary Benet (in David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle’s,
eds., Stephen Vincent Benet, 2003) also forwarded
Smith historical photographs. She also sent on a copy of
her award-winning half-hour documentary The Stephen
Vincent Benet Story: Out of American Earth, shown in
1998 by WLVT, the PBS station in Bethlehem, PA.
 And
what about Ivens and Lorentz? Joris Ivens was one of the
most well-known documentary film makers of that time. He
was the first Dutch filmmaker to win an international reputation,
and he made over eighty films during his lifetime (1898-1989).
In the 1930s, Ivens had established his reputation with
a series of social conscience and anti-fascist films, including
The Spanish Earth (narrated by Ernest Hemingway)
and 400 Million. Ivens, as the director of Power
and the Land, supervised the daily shooting, and, working
with Helen van Dongen (assisted by Lora Hays), the final
editing. And Ivens was working for Pare Lorentz, the head
of the United States Film Service. Lorentz, having already
won awards for The River and The Plow That
Broke the Plains, was known as “FDR’s Filmmaker.”
Indeed, Verne Newton, a Roosevelt era scholar and documentary
filmmaker (a program on FDR and Harry Hopkins), has described
Lorentz (in a statement found in Power for the Parkinsons)
as the “George Washington” of American documentary
film. Clearly, the story of the interaction between Ivens
and Pare Lorentz had to be included in this new documentary
on the making of Power and the Land.
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