Pare Lorentz

Pare Lorentz was a filmmaker who produced documentaries for the United States government during the Great Depression and World War II. He is most widely recognized for creating the documentaries that would become known as the “Films of Merit”, The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938). Lorentz has sometimes been criticized for staging scenes in his movies, and filming what some have described as propaganda for the U.S. government.

Pare Lorentz was born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz on December 11, 1905 in Clarksburg, West Virginia. His father, Pare Hansen Lorentz was a publisher, and his mother, Alma MacTaggart Ruttencutter was a musician. Lorentz was surrounded by music his whole childhood and studied the violin for ten years while growing up. In 1921 Lorentz left home to attend college, where he played the fiddle in the campus orchestra and was editor of a student-run humor magazine. He studied at Wesleyan College and later, at West Virginia University.

Lorentz moved to New York City in 1925 without graduating from college. He started going by his father’s name as he began his career as a writer for The New Yorker. Lorentz was working primarily as a film critic and was not afraid to write scathing reviews of popular movies. Many of the opinions expressed in his reviews were so unpopular that he was often fired for writing them.

When Lorentz was only 22, he co-wrote a book with noted lawyer Morris Leopold Renst called Censored: the Private Life of the Movie. The book dealt with the topic of censorship, and was very critical of the film industry. Shortly thereafter, Lorentz married his girlfriend actress Sally Bates. After returning home from their honeymoon, Lorentz was fired for writing a particularly mean-spirited review of a John Berrymore film, where he referred to the movie as “junk”.

Meanwhile, the United States had entered the Great Depression. When 32nd president Franklin D Roosevelt was sworn into office, America had an unemployment rate of over 25%. At the time, Lorentz was among these numbers. In 1933 Lorentz published a book he had written about FDR’s first year in office called The Roosevelt Year. Lorentz had originally wanted the book to be a movie, but lacked the funding to film it. The positive response to The Roosevelt Year led to Lorenz being hired as a political columnist. He didn’t hold the position very long, this time being fired for a positive review he wrote, praising FDR’s controversial New Deal.

Luckily, Lorentz’s book and political column had gotten the attention of FDR, who commissioned the writer to film The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936). The film, which documented the dust bowl that had devastated the great plain states, had a $6,000 budget paid for by the U.S. Resettlement Administration. Lorentz was unqualified to be a film director but "he gave an impression of extreme competence. He was handsome, articulate, and seemed to know everything about film" (Barnouw 114). Lorentz believed that "a government-produced film could be both aesthetically pleasing and politically productive" (Barsam 98).

Filming proved difficult for Lorentz, whose lack of experience and differing political views caused friction between him and his crew. Adding to his problems, the film was over budget, ending up costing around $14,000 more than he had been given to produce it. Upon returning to Hollywood after finishing principal filming, Lorentz found himself black-listed by the film industry elite. He was an unpopular person in Hollywood because of scathing film reviews he had written and his book Censored. Most studios refused Lorentz access to their archives of B-roll footage, which he needed to complete his project.

Lorentz used what was left of his budget to hire film composer Virgil Thomson to write and record the movie’s score. Virgil's score would often use a technique known as "mickey-mousing" which would use changes in the music to "underline points made by word or image" (Barnouw 115). Still, the score was widely praised for its "ironic juxtaposition of images and sound" (Barsam 102) and is still preformed by orchestras today.

After exhausting his financial resources, Lorentz edited The Plow that Broke the Plains himself. The film was a success though some thought it was New Deal propaganda, and many states featured in the film thought they had "been irreparably damaged by being depicted as wastelands" (Barnouw 117).

After the success of his first film, Lorentz was commissioned by the U.S. Farm Services Administration to make another. The resulting documentary, The River (1938) was filmed on a $50,000 budget. The film told the story of the Mississippi River and dealt with such New Deal concerns as flood control, soil conservation, and electrifying rural areas.

The River was praised for its beautiful cinematography and Walt Whitman-like poetic narration. It was "rational to the point of innocence, enthusiastic to the point of naivete" (Barsam 99). It won Best Documentary at the 1938 Venice film festival and was even nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Roosevelt was so moved by The River that he decided to establish the new United States Film Service with Lorentz as its head service director. Lorentz’s first project as the new service director was filming The Fight for Life (1940) a film about the need for proper maternity care in low-income area hospitals.

As republicans gained more seats in congress and the country turned its attention to fighting World War II, the US Film Service was shut down. Lorentz served in WWII, filming over 2,500 hours of bombing raids for the government. He also edited over one million hours of Nazi footage to create the film Nuremberg (1946). Following the war, Lorentz produced his final film Rural Co-op (1947) after which he lived a quiet life in upstate New York. He passed away in 1992. After his death, the International Documentary Association named its annual Film Festival and grand prize after Lorentz.

Some may consider Lorentz a hypocrite. While his writings had been very critical of Hollywood films, his films weren't 100% straight-forward and accurate either. He shot the films the U.S. government told him to, and emphasized the political agendas of the then-current administration. Know as FDR's filmmaker he was more realistically FDR's lapdog. While many of his films were beautiful to look at and listen to, he was guilty of many of the same crimes he was so critical of other filmmakers for committing. His films used various techniques to manipulate the audiences (such as the frequent "mickey mousing" in the scores) and would pass off staged shots as being real. On several occasions, he would "censor" is own beliefs in order to create films that would fit in with the government's agenda.

Sometimes his borderline-propaganda films were no better then much of the scripted Hollywood "junk" he was so quick to criticize. Still, "the 'art' of documentary is... only the by-product of an interpretation well and deeply done" (Hardy 289). While the ideals expressed in his films were not always his own, Lorentz's movies were undoubtedly well done. Overall, and despite his faults, Lorentz created beautiful, artistic movies that have withstood the test of time.

References

Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Print.

Barsam, Richard. Nonfiction Film. New York: E.P. Dutton &Co., 1973.Print

Hardy, Forsyth. Grierson on Documentary. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1966. Print.

Rosenthal, Alan. The New Documentary in Action. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Print.