Our Daily Bread

Year: 1934
Genre: Rural Drama
Directed: King Vidor
Stars: Tom Keene, Karen Morley, John Qualen, Barbara Pepper, Addison Richards, Lloyd Ingraham, Nellie V.Nichols, Henry Hall
Production: Viking Productions

If I had the ability to read minds, a version of Our Daily Bread would probably be playing in the minds of every self-professed anarcho-communist I met in college (I met a lot surprisingly). For much like the passions of youth, the thoughts on culture and politics in this movie are bold, provocative, and not very well thought out. Not to worry comrades, with a little bit of elbow grease, "aw-shucks," and "gee-willickers" you too can be a part of a commune that will force you to listen to Utah Phillips all night long. What happens if and when you don't like the way things are headed; Suck it up!

Collectivism is fun y'all!

To be fair to the film, it was a far different and more volatile time in 1934. The film begins in a nameless Depression Era city with John (Keene) who struggles to find work. Mary (Morely), his wife calls upon Uncle Anthony (Ingraham) an old codger with a vacant plot out in the country. John and Mary know nothing about rural farming life but lacking any other options, they decide to take a chance and take the lot until it can be sold. John and Mary find working off the land nearly impossible until a friendly migrant (Richards) and his family help them out in exchange for room and board. Then John gets an idea; an idea that culminates in dozens of men, women and children, finding hope on a burgeoning co-op farm.

'Murica: we don't allow commie ideas like farming

It's truly shocking that a movie as unabashedly this side of Mission to Moscow (1943) can be made by a director who was a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. The Alliance was responsible for the vast majority of friendly witnesses to the House Un-American Activities Committee and was spearheaded by the likes of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Leo McCarey and Walt Disney. The group's aim was simple; defend American ideals from being eroded from the inside out (mostly by communists). Perhaps gossip columnist Hedda Hopper forgot this little film while bad mouthing the likes of Paul Robeson and Dalton Trumbo. Or perhaps Vidor's adaptation of the interminably petulant The Fountainhead (1949) was enough to make him beyond reproach.

Ha! Our child got rickets!

There are remnants of other, finer films in Our Daily Bread not the least of which is director King Vidor's Silent Era populist opus The Crowd (1928). In-fact this movie was meant to be a sequel of sorts, providing a concrete solution to the foibles John and May Sims faced in 1928. At this point in his career however, King probably didn't know how this whole sound thing worked. Whatever visual vocabulary King seems to want to replicate here, is immediately undone by pat dialogue so on the nose you'd swear just out of shot actors and crew members were chuckling. Of course if Our Daily Bread was a sequel one is prompted to ask what happened to their small son; tuberculosis? They sure are very quaint and naive for a bereaved couple if that be the case.

There's also smatterings of Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans (1927) in the form of Barbara Pepper's femme fatale Sally; a lost girl meant to represent the encroachment of selfish, city life upon a proverbial Garden of Eden. Again what would have worked in pantomime comes across as one dimensional and eye-rollingly goofy. Her appearance after the noble (and poorly written) sacrifice of convict Frank (Hall) catapults the movie into outright parody.

Personally I found the simplicity of the dialogue and the supposed character conflicts laughable even by 1930's standards. Those looking to see a movie much more attuned to communist/socialist fervor should check out the austere but riveting Salt of the Earth (1954). At least that film had a more immediate and compelling conflict than "will the wheat grow?"

Final Grade: F