A heart-wrenching realistic look at the suffering of the American migrants during the Great Depression. The political realities of this film are startling for the time. You can still feel, especially in how they treat the politics, having a dumb man who doesn’t even know what a Red is, how tense the time period was for ideas.
You can feel, as the audience, the danger of even beginning to mention collective welfare. It makes it seem miraculous how FDR passed the New Deal in this climate. You can feel the Red Scare infuse all the decisions of the body politic in this film from the policemen down to the government camp director even.
The cinematography is beautiful and we’re seeing compositions like the massive amount of sky and a lone figure walking across it come into play definitely moving away from the theatrical stagey style shooting of the 20’s that focused more on filming the actors within sets rather than placing them in a frame that is a painting in and of itself. The 30’s have brought us “out of focus” and onto the locations.