Our Daily Bread | Classic Drama Film | King Vidor | Romance | English

Old Romantic Film: Our Daily Bread - A group of down-on-their-luck workers combine their abilities to make a Gallafentian-style commune... and bread!

Our Daily Bread (1934)
Director: King Vidor
Writers: King Vidor(story), Elizabeth Hill(scenario), Joseph L. Mankiewicz(dialogue)
Stars: Karen Morley, Tom Keene, Barbara Pepper
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: United States
Language: English
Also Known As: Hell's Crossroads
Release Date: 30 July 1934 (USA)
Filming Location: Tarzana, Los Angeles, California, USA

Storyline:
John Sims is a man with big ideas but little follow through. Unemployed, unable to find a job, and having no money with the economy being as depressed as it is, he and his loving wife Mary Sims are a few days away from being evicted and thus homeless. Not wanting a handout per se, Mary is hoping that her visiting Uncle Anthony will at least be able to offer John a job. What he offers them instead is an unused farm property - one hundred sixty acres - for which he has no use, and which the bank holding the mortgage doesn't want in the value being virtually worthless, it at least giving them a place to live and work until they decide their next step. It isn't until they arrive that they truly discover how little they know about farming, especially as a transient Swede named Chris, passing by much like them looking for work, and his wife Hilda show them more about farming and rural life in one day than they could have imagined. It is then that John comes up with his next big idea: to amass others looking for work to form a cooperative on the farm. Each person, providing what they have available, would barter among themselves their services and belongings with the others who need such, they all living on the property in small houses they build themselves, they all sharing equally what they have, and they selling whatever surplus they may have, especially in what they raise, for other things they may need to purchase. In finding such like minded people solely by posting a sign along the road, John is able to form that cooperative, the people, in turn, voting, that their governance structure will be John, the one who brought them all together, as "boss", with others assigned needed administrative roles. The question then becomes whether John can follow through especially when the situation throws them curve balls, such potential ones being people in their midst who are solely out for themselves, or the fickle nature of farming which is highly reliant upon Mother Nature's cooperation.

Reviews:
"King Vidor turned his back on Hollywood and made this independent film in a time where it wasn't a smart idea to walk away from the major studios. In the film, Karen Morley and Tom Keene play a husband and wife suffering from unemployment but their rich uncle gives them some farm land to try and get it off the ground. Unable to do it themselves, they open their land up to other poor farmers so that they can all help one another and try to make a life off the land.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well made this film was. Even though it features a very low budget it does have some terrific direction and some of the best cinematography from this era. The only thing that hampers the film is the incredibly bad performance by Keene who would go onto act in the infamous Edward D. Wood, Jr. film Plan 9 From Outer Space. Keene is so over the top and out of place that you can't help wonder why Vidor didn't step in and do something.

Outside of that the film is pretty powerful from start to finish even though this era was full of films dealing with unemployment. Morley is very good in her role and supporting players John Qualen, Barbara Pepper and Addison Richards are very good as well.
The final moments of the film deal with the farmers trying to dig a two mile ditch so that water can reach their corn and this here is one of the most beautiful and powerful sequences I've seen in any film."

Also Known As (AKA):
(original title) Our Daily Bread
Australia Our Daily Bread
Austria Welt ohne Geld
USA (reissue title) Hell's Crossroads
USA (working title) The Miracle of Life
USA Our Daily Bread
Yugoslavia (Serbian title) Hleb naš nasušni

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[cbass]

I’m so glad I read a comment and the reply, otherwise I’d of missed this move. What a great movie! The trench digging was incredible scene

[rubytuesday]

A nice little movie with a good print as always. Big thanks as always AF.

[cynthiaself]

This is such an inspirational movie. Tiny home community from the past. If only Illinois would give up some of the fields to house people instead of using thousands of acres for corn and soy. There would be hope of a better life for many.

[JanetWilham]

good old movie--not like the trash today.

[nicholasreid]

Well-meaning if somewhat naive collectivist film from the early 1930s. How come this print has German credits at the beginning (when it's entirely in English with no German subtitles)?