This classic film about the Dust Bowl has been one of the most widely praised and studied documentaries to be produced in America. Its masterful use of music, repetitive blank verse, and edited images were to influence a generation of nonfiction filmmakers.

Photographically, The Plow that Broke the Plains ranks with the best work of Resettlement administration still photographers Walker Evans and Dorthea Lange. Shots of the sun-baked earth, deeply etched with the shadows of idle people and farm machinery, are both beautiful and moving in their simplicity. These images serve as a short-hand that expressed a massive social problem on a more intimate and human scale.

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