Project XX: Life in the Thirties (1959)

This isn't really a documentary, more a collection of doom-laden archive that illustrates just how broke the United States was in the 1930s as the fall out from the Wall Street crash led to the "Great Depression". There are calls for a general strike. Farmers call for action to force prices up so they can earn a decent wage. The Government has to supply food and clothes even though they cannot afford to pay their own employees. Troops have to disperse the protesters and the Capitol dome is shrouded in acrid smoke. President Hoover puts his faith in the private sector, in stimulating growth, but nobody quite knows what caused this catastrophe in the first place. Is it under production or over production? Deflation or Inflation? Despair is taking hold as banks see a withdrawal rush. Hoover gets the boot and Franklin D. Roosevelt comes in with his prospect of a "new deal". Simple idealism or a potential solution as 1933 gets going? Well first thing he does is shut all the banks then makes a public broadcast reassuring a sceptical population and encouraging them to stop hoarding their meagre savings. Bluntly, he lays the blame equally at the doors of the people. Next, he sets up a great range of quangos to identify and solve some of these problems. Loads of bright young things full of innovation and creativity arrive in Washington as Congress passes law after law to facilitate new improvements and developments. Still, there are strikes everywhere. The newly invigorated unions see an opportunity to make their presence felt. We see the first American examples of the sit-in! Organised labour ignores the bosses, the police and even the courts. You'll have got the drift by now, and it's actually quite a compelling watch as violence and chaos are never far away from a society that risks losing that what makes is civilised. It's well edited and Alexander Scourby narrates it in an authoritative, if often overly verbose, fashion to leave us with an interesting look at a decade that probably helped make the USA what it is today - for better or worse. A great use of archive footage.