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Pare Lorentz
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Pare Lorentz
Pare Lorentz (December 11, 1905 – March 4, 1992) was an American filmmaker known for his film work about the New Deal. Born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in Clarksburg, West Virginia he was educated at Buckhannon High School, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and West Virginia University. As a young film critic in both New York City and Hollywood, Lorentz spoke out against censorship in the film industry.
As the most influential documentary filmmaker of the Great Depression, Lorentz was the leading American advocate for government-sponsored documentary films. His service as a filmmaker for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II was formidable, including technical films, documentation of bombing raids, and synthesizing raw footage of Nazi atrocities for an educational film on the Nuremberg Trials. Nonetheless, Lorentz perennially will be known best as "FDR′s filmmaker."
Lorentz left West Virginia University, in 1925, to begin a career as a writer and film critic in New York City. He contributed articles to leading magazines such as Scribner's, Vanity Fair, McCall's, and Town and Country.
Lorentz also co-authored a 1929 book, Censored: the private life of the movie.
His work as a film critic led him to Hollywood, where he wrote several articles on censorship and The Roosevelt Year: 1933, a pictorial review of the first year of Franklin D. Roosevelt′s presidency. Roosevelt was impressed with the articles and the book, and in 1936, as president of the United States, invited Lorentz to make a government-sponsored film about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
Despite not having any film credits, Lorentz was appointed to the Resettlement Administration as a film consultant. He was given US$6,000 to make a film, which became The Plow That Broke the Plains, a film that showed the natural and man–made devastation caused by the Dust Bowl. Though the tight budget and his inexperience occasionally showed through in the film, Lorentz's script, combined with Thomas Hardie Chalmers′s narration and Virgil Thomson′s score, made the 30-minute movie powerful and moving. The film, which had its first public showing on May 10, 1936 at Washington, D.C′s Mayflower Hotel, had a preview screening in March at the White House. Roosevelt was impressed and, after his re-election in 1936, gave Lorentz the opportunity to make a film about one of the president's favorite subjects: conservation. Lorentz made The River, a film celebrating the exploits of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The TVA mitigated flooding but, more importantly to Lorentz and to Roosevelt, it put a stop to the prodigious pillaging of the forests by providing cheap, readily available hydro–electric power to a wide area. This film won the Best Documentary at the Venice International Film Festival. The text of The River appeared in book form, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry the same year. It generally is considered his most masterful work.
When Republicans gained seats in Congress in 1938, and the congressional balance of power shifted in a more conservative direction, the pipeline of federal commissions for projects like Lorentz's were halted along with the short-lived existence of the US Film Service, which Lorentz headed. In 1940, he produced Power and the Land promoting the Rural Electric Administration. The REA took over its own production, and the film was directed by Joris Ivens, the prolific Dutch filmmaker best known for his anti–fascist documentaries.
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Pare Lorentz
Pare Lorentz (December 11, 1905 – March 4, 1992) was an American filmmaker known for his film work about the New Deal. Born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in Clarksburg, West Virginia he was educated at Buckhannon High School, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and West Virginia University. As a young film critic in both New York City and Hollywood, Lorentz spoke out against censorship in the film industry.
As the most influential documentary filmmaker of the Great Depression, Lorentz was the leading American advocate for government-sponsored documentary films. His service as a filmmaker for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II was formidable, including technical films, documentation of bombing raids, and synthesizing raw footage of Nazi atrocities for an educational film on the Nuremberg Trials. Nonetheless, Lorentz perennially will be known best as "FDR′s filmmaker."
Lorentz left West Virginia University, in 1925, to begin a career as a writer and film critic in New York City. He contributed articles to leading magazines such as Scribner's, Vanity Fair, McCall's, and Town and Country.
Lorentz also co-authored a 1929 book, Censored: the private life of the movie.
His work as a film critic led him to Hollywood, where he wrote several articles on censorship and The Roosevelt Year: 1933, a pictorial review of the first year of Franklin D. Roosevelt′s presidency. Roosevelt was impressed with the articles and the book, and in 1936, as president of the United States, invited Lorentz to make a government-sponsored film about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
Despite not having any film credits, Lorentz was appointed to the Resettlement Administration as a film consultant. He was given US$6,000 to make a film, which became The Plow That Broke the Plains, a film that showed the natural and man–made devastation caused by the Dust Bowl. Though the tight budget and his inexperience occasionally showed through in the film, Lorentz's script, combined with Thomas Hardie Chalmers′s narration and Virgil Thomson′s score, made the 30-minute movie powerful and moving. The film, which had its first public showing on May 10, 1936 at Washington, D.C′s Mayflower Hotel, had a preview screening in March at the White House. Roosevelt was impressed and, after his re-election in 1936, gave Lorentz the opportunity to make a film about one of the president's favorite subjects: conservation. Lorentz made The River, a film celebrating the exploits of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The TVA mitigated flooding but, more importantly to Lorentz and to Roosevelt, it put a stop to the prodigious pillaging of the forests by providing cheap, readily available hydro–electric power to a wide area. This film won the Best Documentary at the Venice International Film Festival. The text of The River appeared in book form, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry the same year. It generally is considered his most masterful work.
When Republicans gained seats in Congress in 1938, and the congressional balance of power shifted in a more conservative direction, the pipeline of federal commissions for projects like Lorentz's were halted along with the short-lived existence of the US Film Service, which Lorentz headed. In 1940, he produced Power and the Land promoting the Rural Electric Administration. The REA took over its own production, and the film was directed by Joris Ivens, the prolific Dutch filmmaker best known for his anti–fascist documentaries.
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