Executive Summary
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), directed by Pare Lorentz, stands as a landmark documentary that chronicles how human greed, short-sighted capitalism, and collective tunnel vision transformed America's Great Plains from a vast "ocean of grass" into the ecological catastrophe known as the Dust Bowl[web: 2][web: 4]. This 25-minute film, the first government-sponsored documentary for commercial release, presents a powerful—and prophetic—statement about the dangers of unregulated, profit-driven exploitation of natural resources[web: 32]. While the film evokes themes of capitalism and greed, it stopped short of radical critique, reflecting instead an ideological tension between its director and his more politically radical collaborators who wanted to explicitly blame "human greed and how lousy our social system was"[web: 2][web: 14].
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I. Historical Context and Production Background
The Birth of a Government Documentary
The Plow That Broke the Plains emerged from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs, specifically the Resettlement Administration, which sought to generate public support for drought relief and federal land management policies[web: 11]. Lorentz, working with a modest $6,000 budget, assembled a "dream-team" of cinematographers including Paul Strand, Ralph Steiner, and Leo Hurwitz—all members of the Communist Party who harbored considerably more radical political views than their director[web: 35][web: 41].
The Ideological Clash
The production was marked by significant ideological friction. Strand and Hurwitz "wanted the film to be all about human greed and how lousy our social system was," but Lorentz demurred, noting "I couldn't see what this had to do with land use or dust storms"[web: 2][web: 14][web: 47]. This fundamental disagreement led Lorentz to offer his leftist collaborators "the choice of a paid trip home or recognition of their subordinate position on the project"—a position they accepted begrudgingly[web: 41]. The result was a film that critiques capitalist exploitation more implicitly than its socialist cameramen would have preferred.
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II. Narrative Structure: A "Fifty-Year Melodrama of Nature"
Lorentz conceived the film as a "fifty-year melodrama of nature" with a forceful narrative arc[web: 2]:
Era | Content | Theme |
1880s–1900 | "Ocean of grass" ideal for grazing cattle | |
1900–1914 | Farmers arrive, begin plowing land | Hubris begins |
1914–1919 | "Wheat will win the war!" WWI boom | Greed accelerates |
1920s | Mechanization, speculation, expansion | Tunnel vision peaks |
1930s | Drought, dust storms, abandonment | Consequences arrive |
The film opens with sweeping shots of grasslands devoid of people. Narrator Thomas Chalmers intones: "This is a record of land, of soil rather than people, a story of the Great Plains… A high, treeless continent without rivers, without streams. A country of high winds, and sun and of little rain"[web: 11]. This refrain becomes a warning echo throughout the film.
III. Themes of Human Greed
The documentary powerfully illustrates how the entrepreneurial culture of agricultural capitalism transformed the Great Plains into a commodity. As historian Donald Worster observed, the entrepreneurs behind the "Great Plow-up" were "embued with the values and world view of American agricultural capitalism. They smelled an opportunity to create a profit on the Plains and, in the classic way of entrepreneurs, they charged out to create that profit"[web: 40].
The film shows how farmers, driven by profit motives, "put too many cattle and sheep in it. We granted homes in rangeland that never should have been plowed. We tore up grass. We invented new machinery making it possible for one man cheaply to plow thousands of acres"[web: 11]. This litany of excess serves as the film's central indictment.
Wartime Speculation and the "Golden Harvest"
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One of the film's most striking sequences depicts the World War I wheat boom. Chalmers narrates "wheat will win the war!" while jarring visual shots intercut between "an army of invading tanks" and "an army of tractors invading the plains"[web: 48]. From 1914 to 1919, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas expanded their wheatlands by 13.5 million acres, primarily by plowing up 11 million acres of native grass[web: 40].
The message, as one analysis notes, is that "greedy farmers caused the Dust Bowl by overexploiting the land with technology during the 1920's go-go years"[web: 9]. Virgil Thomson's musical score—sardonic blues numbers accompanying scenes of speculation—brilliantly captures this critique, described by one musicologist as "such a wonderfully sardonic musical portrait of what speculation did to the land"[web: 55].
IV. Tunnel Vision: Ignoring Warnings and Ecological Limits
The Refusal to See
The documentary portrays a collective blindness that Lorentz treats as almost willful. Despite extensive scientific literature on the risks of dryland farming and decades of experience with drought cycles, the warnings were "almost studiously disregarded in the 1920s plow-up"[web: 40]. The film captures this tunnel vision through its refrain: "Settler, plow at your peril. 200 miles from water, 200 miles from town, but the land is new"[web: 7].
This short-sightedness wasn't born of ignorance but of economic culture. The farmers leading the Great Plow-up were "people with access to capital and expertise; some of them were in fact men and women of education and broad sophistication"[web: 40]. Their tunnel vision emerged from an entrepreneurial culture that "deliberately made, with no end of paradox, the pursuit of private wealth into a social ethic"[web: 40].
Technology as Enabler of Destruction
The film presents mechanization—particularly the tractor—as a tool of capitalist desire that enabled unprecedented destruction. The documentary shows how "one man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families," while the operator "became just another inhuman component of the capitalist machine, 'a robot in the seat' who loved the land no more than the bank loved"[web: 24].
V. The Film's Paradox: Technology as Both Cause and Cure
A Contradictory Narrative
Scholars have noted a fundamental paradox in Lorentz's argument. The documentary suggests that "modern technology and settlement of the plains ultimately led to the Dust Bowl, but also implies that these same factors, with the addition of state intervention, could remediate the crisis"[web: 11].
The film's closing minutes pivot to government solutions: "The federal government has worked strenuously during the past few years to restore the land. The Soil Conservation Service, the Forest Service, the CCC, and the Resettlement Administration are cooperating with the Department of Agriculture"[web: 11]. These solutions include "modern equipment, irrigation, good lands, electricity"—the very technologies blamed for the disaster.
State Absolution
Critics note that the film's use of the vague pronoun "we" throughout ("We put too many cattle... We granted homes... We tore up grass... We invented new machinery") "fails to acknowledge the role of the state in the formation of the disaster"[web: 11]. Federal land acts, homesteading policies, and wartime agricultural mobilization—all contributed to the catastrophe but escape direct blame. The result is what one scholar calls "a perspective that rejects state responsibility and instead blames drought and technology as causes of the Dust Bowl"[web: 11].
VI. Artistic Achievement and Propaganda Function
Film as Social Force
Documentary filmmaker William Greaves, who first saw the film in 1952, recalled how it "opened my eyes to the possibility of film as a social force, as well as an artistic medium"[web: 32]. He praised Lorentz's skill in "carefully setting up the conflict, identifying the protagonist (greed), then moving the story inexorably toward the climactic moment"[web: 32].
The film combined:
- Eisensteinian montage: Stock footage and original shooting combined masterfully
- Poetic narration: Sparse commentary creating powerful refrains
- Dramatic score: Virgil Thomson's Americana-infused music, which Copland called "a lesson in how to treat Americana"[web: 52]
- Political messaging: Supporting New Deal intervention while implicitly critiquing capitalist excess
Propaganda vs. Education
The film has been characterized as both propaganda and documentary, depending on perspective. For the federal government, it "circumvented largely republican-controlled media platforms and thus provided a way to promote support of drought relief and New Deal policies"[web: 11]. At one screening, Lorentz overheard an audience member conclude: "They never should have plowed them plains"—evidence the film's message penetrated[web: 26].
VII. Legacy and Continuing Relevance
Cultural Impact
In 1999, the Library of Congress selected The Plow That Broke the Plains for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"[web: 7]. The film helped establish documentary as a legitimate artistic form and influenced generations of filmmakers.
Enduring Warnings
The documentary's core message—about the dangers of short-sighted, profit-driven land exploitation—remains relevant. As one contemporary analysis notes, "the film makes a powerful—and prophetic—statement about the dangers of unregulated, profit-driven exploitation of natural resources"[web: 32]. The Dust Bowl pattern has repeated in subsequent droughts (1950s, 1970s, 1980s), each time revealing that the entrepreneurial culture Lorentz critiqued "remains the dominant agency on the plains today"[web: 40].
Conclusion
The Plow That Broke the Plains stands as a complex cultural artifact that simultaneously critiques and excuses the forces behind America's greatest environmental disaster. Its treatment of human greed and tunnel vision is powerful but circumscribed—radical enough to alarm conservatives yet too moderate for its socialist collaborators. The film's ultimate message is perhaps less about blame than about consequences: when profit motives override ecological wisdom, when technological capability outpaces ethical restraint, when individual gain trumps collective stewardship, disaster follows.
Lorentz's documentary remains a haunting reminder that the attitudes underlying the Dust Bowl—commodification of land, economic individualism, risk-taking divorced from consequence—are not historical artifacts but persistent cultural forces. As Worster concluded, "it was not the ragged, pervasive specter of drought but the human mind and its ill-considered land practices—a mind marking its presence by straight fence lines—that was the main culprit"[web: 40]. That mind, with its capacity for both greed and vision, tunnel and panoramic, remains the subject of Lorentz's enduring meditation on American land use.
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