Touches You

A lot of fun.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I like it that one reviewer likened this to a Rooney/Garland musical, for it really is, even including the big "production number" for a finale! I showed it to my American lit class today as part of our discussion of naturalism. I could have picked other, better films, but this fit neatly into the 75 min. period. Anyway, it got some applause at the end! There are obviously Soviet-style overtones, especially in the photography and editing of the final sequence, but the film is also explicitly Christian and pro-private ownership (John retains the deed to the farm). What saddens me is that the "survivalists" of today are mainly concerned with their own bug-out-dug-outs and stashing them with goods for their immediate families but no one else.Despite its naiveté and occasional bad acting (Tom Keene?) it remains an entertaining period film and instructive as well. John Qualen. He was so great in so many movies, including The Grapes of Wrath!

Our Daily Bread could only have been made in the Thirties, the great reformist decade in American history when all kinds of social experimentation was being tried to save our economy. This was the decade of the New Deal, but also the decade of Share The Wealth, The Townsend Plan, Social Credit, all kinds of ideas and plans that were going further than government and the men that run it were willing to go.Karen Morley and Tom Keene play Mr.&Mrs. Average Americans who are doing their best not to sink into poverty during the Great Depression. Not getting anywhere in the city, they go out to the country though neither of them know a thing about farming. Still Morley and Keene move into an abandoned farm and become squatter's. Pretty soon all kinds of folks are moving in with them and a collective of sorts is established. You might remember 26 years later something along the same lines was established in Spartacus from all the men and women freed from the gladiator school and then other places. All contribute their talents and the collective in Our Daily Bread, they even find work for a music teacher, just like Kirk Douglas found work for Tony Curtis, a minstrel.Addison Richards becomes a true believer in the work and he makes a real sacrifice which I cannot reveal, but it's a timely one.Our Daily Bread did not fare so well at the box office though with no really big stars involved, I doubt too much notice was taken. It got taken later by all kinds of investigative bodies like the House Un-American Activities Committee. Karen Morley's politics were truly reflected in Our Daily Bread, she ran for public office in New York State on the American Labor Party ticket.Watching it now I think the collective could be best compared to the kibbutz in Israel. When they started a lot of city dwellers came to live on them, but they learned the agricultural skills which are truly universal.King Vidor got good performances out of his cast which expressed the hopes and optimism of the common people. Frank Capra couldn't have done any better. Best scene in the film is the sheriff's sale on the abandoned farm where outside bidders are 'encouraged' not to bid and destroy what the people have started.Of course as Preston Sturges observed in Sullivan's Travels a little sex always helps at the box office. That's supplied by Barbara Pepper who plays a poor man's Jean Harlow (no pun intended considering Our Daily Bread's subject matter) who makes a play for Tom Keene.Our Daily Bread is incredibly dated, but still it's most reflective of certain attitudes in the decade it was made.

OUR DAILY BREAD is an interesting curio--a historical oddity--but nothing more. I was really surprised when I saw that it currently has a very respectable IMDb score of 7.1 despite being a rather silly and difficult to watch film.The film begins with a poor couple who are living in the city. Unfortunately, he's out of work and without much drive and they are about to lose their apartment. So they move to the country to try to make a go of it on a dilapidated old farm (which you ASSUME they owned but it turns out they didn't). Once there, they realize the going will be very tough, as they know nothing about farming and the place is in pretty bad shape. Then, luckily, a real farmer and his family just happen to have their car breakdown outside the property and they decide to pool their resources and work together. Realizing the power of multiple hands to run the farm, they decide to invite practically anyone to come there and form a collective society--sort of a small utopia.From a historical viewpoint, this is a very interesting film because it shows the desperation of the Depression--something rarely seen in films of the era. In fact, despite a huge number of people out of work, Hollywood often featured films about rich folks and exotic places--not out of work homeless people. Aside from the later and much more famous film, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, this is one of the few films to really deal with poverty and a sense of disgust with the American capitalistic system. In fact, the film has very strong enlightened socialist/communist themes running throughout. Considering people were hungry, these sentiments are understandable--but also very strange when seen by many viewers today.Now had this film been well made, then it would have had more than just a historical oddity. However, unfortunately, the film is occasionally very silly--both for it's wide-eyed idealism (some hope is great, but this was like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a Broadway quality show in their uncle's barn) and some really silly plot elements. The worst plot element involved a very slutty and cheap looking "dame" who arrives on the farm. While she seems nothing like any of the collective workers and is totally uncommitted to doing ANYTHING positive (looking like a gangster's moll twenty years and 50 pounds past her prime), she is welcomed in and proceeds to naturally destroy everything. This was silly and impossible to believe--and she seemed like a plot device and not a real person. Why would the farmer leave his lovely wife for such an unpleasant person?! It would be like Michael Douglas dropping Catherine Zeta-Jones for Phyllis Diller!! While this is a bad movie, I still do recommend it for the curious as well as history and economics teachers. It is fascinating and gives a side to American life few today would realize existed--a life of poverty and desperation.By the way, I am NOT against doing films about poverty or collectives. After all, one of my very favorite Italian films was MIRACLE IN MILAN--a truly wonderful film. My problem with OUR DAILY BREAD was with the awful and heavy-handed writing. Despite being a noble effort, it was just bad.

Heard my grandparents speak about the depression and how hard it was to live in any big city trying to find work and food. This film clearly shows in great detail all the difficulties people experienced trying to find work and hold a job and turned their ambitions into the rich farmland of the Mid-West. King Vidor showed the poor conditions that people had to live in and how the weather seemed to work against them with droughts and dust storms. The scene I liked the most was when all the men decided to do something about getting water for their corn crops and working day and night to get their corn fields filled with water. Some of the people jumped and rolled in the dirt, mud and went simply crazy at the sight of water flowing on their land. This was a great realistic film about the depression days years ago.