Our Daily Bread Sliced Thin
King Vidor’s 1934 film Our Daily Bread is aptly named, for the film is of a prayer than an actual solution to the Great Depression. Like other Socio-political films of the era, it tries to offer a solution to the problems faced by so many Americans. However, Vidor’s message gets lost somewhere between the poor production, the bad acting, and the inconsistent ideology of the film. For those reasons what comes out at the end is an almost silly climax with little realism that offers the same amount of help that an escapist vehicle of the same period would offer.
Vidor’s vision first began with his 1928 classic film of a couple being subjugated by the big city, The Crowd, which is the first part of a series of films Vidor wanted to do that depicted the lives of average American men and women (Vidor 221). The film follows the protagonist, John, as he slaves away in his office doing paperwork like so many other insignificant men. When John leaves work he is still just going through the motions, for his courtship and marriage to the heroine of the film, Mary, seems like a part of the city routine. Their marriage is enclosed by the city that their marriage suffers until Mary becomes pregnant. Here Vidor makes his point with his images of births in quantity (Bergman 76).
John’s downfall in the film begins with the death of his child. Hit in the street by a truck, the child lies dying as John tries seems to fight the sights and sounds of the city that killed his daughter. Her death continues to haunt John as he relives the scene over and over at work. Eventually he loses his job and his wife, and he wanders around with nothing to live for. He reunites with Mary in the end and they attend a show, where on the program is an advertising slogan that he is responsible for. He rejoices in this achievement, and is then able to laugh at the show, joining the rest of the people in the crowd. It is a touching and realistic ending that Vidor called “A perfectly natural finish for the story of Mr. Anyman” (Bergman 76).
In the early 1930s Vidor wanted to take the trials and unrest of the common man and put it into a film, so he read as many articles as he could on the subject (Vidor 220).
A wolf pack is, at its foundation, simply a family, with the parents (alphas) guiding the activities of the group. Hence, it is easy to believe that dogs are able to bond with human families, especially when the alphas are already parents. The parents view the dog as one of their children, one who remains dependent and will never leave or criticize them (Rogers 1), and in the same manner, the dog views the human parents as if they were his actual parents and as a result, loves and trusts them with his life gladly following them, not once questioning their decisions or actions. For these reasons, humans have found release in the company of dogs because dogs do not judge. By way of example, Sigmund Freud was notably a bad singer and as a result, never sang in public, however he often hummed an aria while petting his dog (Rogers 2). In the presence of dogs, our need to self-censor our words and actions vanishes (Rogers 2). Ultimately, dogs and human beings are able to form such strong emotional bonds through love and
It has been said that the wolf is one of the most voracious and horrifying animals that exist in nature today. But, in all reality, is that actually true? One is unable to make an assumption such as this without a firsthand experience, or so that is expressed in In The Shadow of a Rainbow and Never Cry Wolf. Authors Robert Franklin Leslie and Farley Mowat make every attempt to convey the true nature of the wolf throughout their journeys, as they prove claims falsely accusing wolves, with documented evidence of complete vigilance. These works of literary nonfiction effectively refute anti-wolf claims made within them through being dangerous to the wildlife, dangerous to humans, and viciousness.
Early settlers, all the way back in the 1700s, tried to rid these marvelous creatures from the North American continent, which almost lead to their extinction. They poisoned, trapped, furred, shot and killed all the wolves that posed a threat to their lands and livestock. The settlers seemed to be getting their way in the beginning of the 1700s because as human population increased in America, unfortunately, the wolf population plummeted. They pushed the wolves out of their original habitats and the settlers made their habitats their home. The wolf population could have plummeted for many reasons, but the main reason was the fear the humans had of the wolves. Occasionally, the wolves would hunt in the fields where the settler’s livestock would graze and at the right time, the wolves would ambush the livestock for food. The wolves hunted the cattle because the horses were to much work to kill: the horses had strong hind legs that were a threat to the wolves. Farmers and Settlers also saw these wolves a...
The American stock market took a turn for the worse in 1929. This infamous crash left many Americans monetarily starved. This is poverty is seen in stories such as As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, Americans were poor long before the Great Depression. The Modernist movement, which started at the end of the First World War, showed how postwar Americans experienced an absence. In As I Lay Dying and “Babylon Revisited”, the theme of poverty is used to represent the absence that Americans were feeling during the Modernist movement.
In the Great Depression, with no money and nothing else to do, people turned to anything to keep their attention off of their own poverty and misfortune. They distracted themselves by turning to entertainment, art, and literature. Even in a dark time, the country’s traditions and culture prospered.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
When you meet him you can tell there is something off about him but many people just associated it with his brilliant mind. He later begins showing signs of having a mental illness. Despite his knowledge the illness takes over him and impedes in him doing his work. It gets in the way of his personal and work life. John had to fight the hallucinations and take medication for him to be well. It was hard to see such a brilliant intelligent man go from one extreme to another. It was like as soon as he had his mental out break all was taken from him. With the right medication and with John being compliant in taking his medications he is able to control his schizophrenia and hallucinations and try to return to his old self. With the help of his wife, friends and healthcare team he is able to remember what life was like before his mental illness
As “talkies”, or film with spoken dialogue, made their debut, Americans were struggling through the Great Depression. Being a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment, many people across the nation would attempt to escape into the fictional worlds that movies provided. In the 1934 film, It Happened One Night, the audience embarks o...
Statistics show 16- to 17-year-old driver death rates increase with each additional passenger, which is due to distracted driving. Taking your eyes off the road for 2 (two) seconds, at 60 mph, means you have driven blindly for half the length of a football field. The risk of fatality is 3.6 times higher, when they are driving with passengers than when alone. For many years, the correlation between driving behavior and age has interested highway safety researchers and administrators. It is general knowledge that the greatest risk of motor vehicle crash...
An obvious difference in these films is that the 1931 version played to a Depression audience and that the Coppola version played to a modern audience. (I am being extremely careful because, obviously, the 1931 audience was modern in 1931; however, we like to think of ourselves as being more modern than past generations. There are differences in the audiences which viewed the respective versions in their time, and I hope to prove this point as the paper unfolds.)
The 1930’s and 1940’s were years in which the world was seriously concerned about economy. In 1929, The United States, the world’s economical power, was one of the most affected nations by the great depression: its unemployment rate rose to 25% and the personal income, tax revenue and prices dropped. Many families within the country started to starve and the McCourts were not the exception. Malachy could not get any work to support his family due to the difficult situation in the country, and when he finally found one, he wasted all his wages and money in the pub. Frank’s life in America has good and bad memories. However, the great depression is present in the crisis the family fell into and in the unemployment of Malachy.
For our project, K-POP, we have decided to compare how the digital realm influenced the boom of cosmetic surgery in Korea compared to American plastic surgery, where digital means are a less common tool utilized to increase, accentuate, and bring publicity to this industry. We want to take a deeper look into how Korean pop culture and its technology may be influencing the process one takes to get plastic surgery, such as the advertising it provides for each individual plastic surgery. This is opposite of America, where plastic surgery is more taboo, therefore absent in these spaces. Through this research we are ultimately focusing, emphasizing, and analyzing how the digital realm of each country has recently influenced the plastic surgery industry,
Again, it makes the headlines; an older driver causes a dangerous automobile crash. As the amount of elderly driving has increased in the past decade, the risk for others to be out on the road has increased. In 2012, there were 36 million licensed older drivers in the United States. (Federal Highway Administration, Department of Transportation (US)) As a 34% increase from 1999, it has been noted that seniors are driving past their ability by an average of 10 years. (Federal Highway Administration, Department of Transportation (US)). Elderly continue to drive despite the prominent physiological changes that worsen as they age. The amount of automobile collisions suggests that prevention must occur in order to make the roads safer. By examining older drivers’ medical complications, older drivers must be retested to be able to drive a vehicle.
For most western citizens, however, Korean Pop was unheard of until Psy, a Korean rapper, released his horse dancing music video, “Gangnam Style,” back in July 2012 (Joohee Cho and Sungeun Lee, 2012). Psy, also known as Park Jae-sang, is the very first Asian to hit the top of the music charts for the United Kingdom and number two on United States’ music charts. This has exposed the West to Korean Pop and cracked the door to open up opportunities for other Korean artists and the opportunity for the Korean ...
The concept of fate has existed since the time of the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed very strongly in fate, which can be defined as either a power beyond human control that determines events, or the outcome or end. In "Oedipus Rex," King Oedipus lives and dies by fate. Fate influences the entire plot, thereby allowing for some interesting developments that may be unpredictable to the audience.