King Vidors' 1934 film Our Daily Bread is aptly named, as the film is a prayer rather than an actual solution to the Great Depression . Like other sociopolitical films of the era, it attempts to offer a solution to the problems faced by so many Americans. However, Vidor's message gets lost somewhere between the film's poor production, poor acting, and inconsistent ideology. For these reasons, what emerges in the end is an almost silly climax with little realism that offers the same relief that an escapist vehicle from the same period would offer. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Vidor's vision began with his classic 1928 film about a couple subjugated by the big city, The Crowd, which is the first part of a series of films that Vidor wanted to make that depicted the lives of average American men and women (Vidor 221). The film follows the protagonist, John, as he works in his office doing paperwork like so many other insignificant men. When John quits his job, he's still going through the motions, as his courtship and marriage to the film's heroine, Mary, seems like part of the town's routine. Their marriage is surrounded by the city which their marriage endures until Marie becomes pregnant. Here, Vidor makes his point with his images of births in abundance (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 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 again at work. Eventually he loses his job and his wife, and he wanders with no reason to live. He finds Mary at the end and they attend a show, where on the program there is an advertising slogan for which he is responsible. He rejoices at this feat and can then laugh at the spectacle, joining the rest of the crowd. It's a touching and realistic ending that Vidor called a perfectly natural finish to Mr. Anyman's story (Bergman 76). In the early 1930s, Vidor wanted to take the trials and troubles of the common man and put them into a film. he read as many articles as he could on the subject (Vidor 220). He came across an article by a university professor in Readers Digest who proposed the establishment of agricultural cooperatives as a solution to unemployment. Vidor used this concept to formulate his story with his wife, and the two began working on the script. They completed the story in four months, which they titled Our Daily Bread. It followed a trend of other back-to-earth films released in 1933, such as King Kong, State Fair, The Life of Jimmy Dolan, and Strangers Return. Once the script was completed, Vidor tried to sell the idea to Irving Thalberg at MGM. , but although he expressed appreciation for the story, he did not consider it appropriate for MGM (Vidor 221). Vidor didn't have better luck with anyone else until he brought in Charlie Chaplin, co-owner of United Artists. UA agreed to publish the photo, but Vidor still had to produce it himself. To get financing, he put in everything he could, raising about $125,000 to budget his film. With this money, Vidor was able to make his film about an ideal social system, where people work together towards a common goal with a relationship based on trust to form a utopian community, showing the romantic idealist in Vidor (Welsh 446). Vidor wanted to take the same protagonists from The Crowd, John and Mary, and place them in Our DailyBread so that we can move them out of the city and show them in a rural environment. Vidor wanted to offer an alternative lifestyle that involved getting away from big cities and living off the land. His concept of agricultural cooperatives suggested moving away from industrialization and focusing on refocusing on the country's agricultural assets to get us out of the depression. In Our Daily Bread, John and Mary start out in town, both out of work. They get a break when Mary's relative gives them the rights to an abandoned farm, so they save what they can and leave the city for the countryside. However, their ignorance of agriculture pushes them to turn to others, an immigrant farmer and his family. They know how to farm and offer their services in exchange for being able to stay on the land with them. This starts a trend because they start hiring unemployed people who are passing through. The community that forms is made up of people from all professions; there is even a criminal who acts as a town cop. And they also have trouble in the form of the town naughty girl, platinum blonde Sally. With the people in place, the commune holds a campfire meeting to decide which direction they want their cooperative to go. John is willing to transfer ownership of the land to the group. Political rhetoric of varied nature continues, with ideas oscillating between fascist, socialist and communist, but the group decides to have a strong leader in a democratic system, and that leader is John, despite his inexperience in agriculture. The town is struggling when a drought hits and the corn harvest is in danger. The town has to look for food because it has no money to buy supplies. The criminal offers to turn himself in to the authorities so that the town can collect the $500 reward offered to him, but the town refuses. The problems of the commune cause John to lose interest not only in the farm but also in his wife while he becomes in love with Sally. When things seem at their darkest, John decides to return to town with Sally. However, soon after leaving, John has a vision of an irrigation ditch they can build from a nearby stream that could save the crops. He turns around and presents his idea to the community, which supports it and begins to explore it. The sequences were shot by Vidor as if they were a ballet (Vidor 224). The films ends with The Gap being a success, with full and healthy crops in a very fantastical ending. It's this lack of realism that makes Our Daily Bread an inferior film, especially as a follow-up to The Crowd. The Crowd was a heartbreaking look at the madness of urban life that showed how contentment could only be achieved by losing your sense of self. Our Daily Bread is an unrealistic solution to the Depression, which is also hampered by its mediocre acting and characters, especially John, played by Tom Keene. Perhaps the poor acting can be excused by the fact that Vidor didn't have much of a budget to work with, but the character he presented in John was not a good example of a working class hero. John is weak and incompetent and it doesn't make sense for the cooperative to elect him as leader of the cooperative. When things get complicated, John takes the opportunity to run away with Sally. And it is not the guilt of having left his wife that brings him back, but his vision of an irrigation ditch that makes him turn back. His vision of the irrigation ditch is also a questionable plot mechanism. John is not an experienced farmer, but the immigrant who first arrived at the cooperative is. It is unreasonable to conceive..