Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Another Ivens short documentary that, like my preceding viewing of RAIN (1929), has in common its theme (in this case, the sea) and its source (the "Wonders In The Dark" poll). As far as I know, this has not been officially issued anywhere on home video – so I caught up with it on "You Tube" which, quite surprisingly I must say, has become a veritable treasure trove of offbeat cinema and music-related viewing material!Set during the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, this deals with the willful desiccation of a river- bed to make way for farming land. Apart from the fact that, had God intended this particular stretch of land to be farmed, He would not have put a river there in the first place, what follows is even more head-scratching: while jobless Dutch workers are appositely engaged for this venture, U.S. capitalist leaders are forcing American farmers to destroy their produce because this new influx has tipped the economical balance in favour of supply over demand! Meanwhile, millions of unemployed U.S. workers march in protest over the local farms which have been left unattended to rot for the same reason!

This film is a strange mixture of a documentary and a political pamphlet. Ivens first shows how thousands of courageous workmen toiled for years to give Holland new fertile soil to grow wheat on. When you see the first harvest, you think the film is over, but suddenly the tone changes dramatically: "but we all know wheat isn't grown for eating, but for speculating". The last ten minutes of the film are a strident accusation against the industrialists who rather burn wheat or throw it into the sea than lower the price so poor people can afford to buy it. At the time millions of people in Europe and America were ruined because of the economic depression and there was also a famine in Manchuria. Ivens shows images of hunger marches in New York and London and corpses of starved Manchurians, accompanied by the endless repetition of the word of an anonymous industrialist: "We stikken in het graan" (we're smothered by wheat). A very effective movie, also thanks to the vigorous music by Eisler, and very useful in reminding us that destroying good food while people are starving was, is and will always be plain murder, whatever the economical reasons behind it may be.