# The River (1938 film)
**The River** is an American documentary short film written and directed by Pare Lorentz for the United States Farm Security Administration (successor to the [Resettlement Administration](https://www.edgepedia.org/resettlement-administration)), tracing the [Mississippi River](https://www.edgepedia.org/mississippi-river) and the human and environmental damage done to its valley, from deforestation and soil erosion to repeated floods, and closing with the flood-control work of the [Tennessee Valley Authority](https://www.edgepedia.org/tennessee-valley-authority). It premiered in New Orleans on October 29, 1937, was copyrighted that same day, and carries the 1938 date under which the Library of Congress and other collections catalog it.[1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) • [2](https://www.archives.gov/research/motion-pictures/highlights/the-river)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Written and directed by | Pare Lorentz, for the Farm Security Administration/Resettlement Administration[2](https://www.archives.gov/research/motion-pictures/highlights/the-river) |
| Premiere | New Orleans, October 29, 1937; copyright registered the same day (LP7702)[3](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/river2.pdf) • [1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) |
| Running time | About 31 to 32 minutes; black-and-white 35 mm[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) • [5](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/72272--the-river/) |
| Principal credits | Music Virgil Thomson; narrator Thomas Chalmers; photography Floyd Crosby, Willard Van Dyke, and Stacy Woodard; editors Lloyd Nosler and Leo Zochling[1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) |
| Budget | $50,000, plus additional funds for shooting flood sequences[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) |
| Award | Best Documentary, Venice International Film Festival, 1938, against 70 competing films[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) |
| Recognition | Selected for the National Film Registry[1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) |
## Spoilers
### Subject and structure
The film opens with a spoken prologue that frames its method: "This is a story of a river, a record of the Mississippi: Where it comes from, where it goes; what it has meant to us, and what it has cost us."[2](https://www.archives.gov/research/motion-pictures/highlights/the-river) The Library of Congress summarizes it as a Depression-era documentary chronicling the exploration and exploitation of the [Mississippi](https://www.edgepedia.org/mississippi) from the Civil War through the 1920s, and its catalog headings cover soil erosion, agriculture, logging, floods, and flood control in the Mississippi Valley.[1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) ACMI's collection notes describe a graphic portrayal of the consequences of sharecropping, soil degradation, unchecked soil erosion, and flooding, tracing life in the valley across roughly 150 years before the American government legislated for flood control.[5](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/72272--the-river/)
The narrative treats the river itself as the main character. Water gathers from cloud-shrouded mountains and a thousand hillsides into the tributaries that form the Mississippi, and the film's sequences, usually separated by fades to black, move from that natural abundance to the damage wrought by cutting the forests and plowing the grass cover, which accelerated erosion and made floods worse.[6](https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/03/77/75/00001/studyofrhetorica00iddi.pdf) • [4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) The closing coda turns from diagnosis to remedy: a map of the valley narrows to the [Tennessee River](https://www.edgepedia.org/tennessee-river), where the Tennessee Valley Authority had begun taming floods, controlling navigation, and planning power distribution, an ending the film historian Richard Dyer MacCann described as a positive affirmation of man's political ability to plan.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river)
## Narration, music, and photography
**Verse narration.** Lorentz wrote the commentary as a kind of [American frontier](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-frontier) poetry, read by the stage actor Thomas Chalmers (1884–1966). Twice the film gives a rhythmic recitation of the names of the major rivers in the Mississippi system, once for the spring waters and once for flood. Lorentz had first tried the device in a McCall's magazine article, and the volume of reader mail convinced him to adapt it for the film.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) A scholarly study of the film's rhetoric credits the poetic diction of the narrator, the evocative music, geographical facts presented on a map, and place names carrying American history with forming an integrated flow that softens the obtrusiveness of the voice-of-God narrator.[6](https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/03/77/75/00001/studyofrhetorica00iddi.pdf)
**Score.** Lorentz turned to the composer Virgil Thomson, and the picture and music were developed together rather than the score being added to a finished cut. Thomson's music mixed his own themes with traditional songs and occasional quotations, including from [George Gershwin](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-gershwin); the composer [Aaron Copland](https://www.edgepedia.org/aaron-copland) called the result "a lesson in how to treat Americana." Alexander Smallens conducted, with uncredited orchestration by Henry Brant.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937) • [8](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029490/fullcredits)
**Cinematography.** With a larger budget than his first film, Lorentz hired several cameramen, relying mostly on [Willard Van Dyke](https://www.edgepedia.org/willard-van-dyke) and the young Floyd Crosby, who had shot F.W. Murnau's *Tabu* (1931); Stacy Woodard also photographed, and Lloyd Nosler and Leo Zochling edited.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937) • [1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) MoMA notes that, as with Lorentz's earlier film, he sought out the finest cameramen working in documentary, and that striking photography and rhythmically insistent editing carry the story of the river and its floods.[9](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/299849)
## Production and release
The film was shot between October 1936 and March 1, 1937 along the Mississippi River Valley, beginning in [West Virginia](https://www.edgepedia.org/west-virginia) and concluding in New Orleans, on a budget of $50,000 plus additional funds for flood sequences.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) It followed *[The Plow That Broke the Plains](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-plow-that-broke-the-plains)* (1936), Lorentz's earlier documentary for the same [New Deal](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-deal) agency about the overplowing of midwestern land and the dust storms that resulted; unlike that film, *The River* was fully funded and promoted by the Roosevelt administration.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) • [9](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/299849)
To publicize the film, Lorentz held its premiere in New Orleans, where the Mississippi meets the sea, and then went from one river town to the next along the Mississippi and its tributaries.[2](https://www.archives.gov/research/motion-pictures/highlights/the-river) At the New Orleans premiere, the audience rose silently to its feet during the Tennessee Valley sequence.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937) The film did well enough in its New Orleans run that Paramount picked it up for national distribution, unusual reach at a time when documentaries were mostly shown at sponsored events.[7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937)
## Reception and influence
Critics responded strongly. Frank Nugent in *The New York Times* called the film "poetic, stirring, and majestic," Gilbert Seldes gave it a special write-up in *Scribner's*, and Howard Barnes in the *New York Herald-Tribune* praised its "brooding beauty and impact." Theater managers reported to Paramount that it drew audience applause at every showing. Some critics called it New Deal propaganda, a charge Lorentz would have agreed with, since its purpose was to promote government programs.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) • [7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937) At the 1938 Venice International Film Festival it competed with 70 other films and won the documentary prize.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river)
The film's success had institutional consequences. Due in part to its international reception, President Roosevelt established the United States Film Service in August 1938 and made Lorentz its head.[3](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/river2.pdf) • [7](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937) In that office Lorentz hired Robert Flaherty for *The Land* and [Joris Ivens](https://www.edgepedia.org/joris-ivens) for *Power and the Land*; appropriations for the Film Service were denied in 1940.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river)
**Afterlife.** The film was selected for the [National Film Registry](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-film-registry), and the Library of Congress also holds a book, *The River* by Pare Lorentz, with the text taken verbatim from the film.[1](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/) For many years it was a popular 16 mm rental for classroom use, and it remains a standard reference point for the documentary style of the 1930s.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river) Later documentary scholarship places it as a canonical example of the expository mode, in which voiceover narration and evidentiary editing dominate, noting that Lorentz added nuance through forceful editing and poetic narration within the technological constraints of his day.[10](https://offscreen.com/view/jean-rouch-the-camera-as-theoretical-instrument)
## References
1. [The River, Library of Congress Online Catalog](https://www.loc.gov/item/2007640253/)
2. [The River, 1937, National Archives](https://www.archives.gov/research/motion-pictures/highlights/the-river)
3. [The River, National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/river2.pdf)
4. [The River, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers via Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/river)
5. [The River, ACMI collection](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/72272--the-river/)
6. [A Study of Rhetorical Systems in the Documentary Mode, University of Florida](https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/03/77/75/00001/studyofrhetorica00iddi.pdf)
7. [The River (1937), Turner Classic Movies article by Glenn Erickson](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1267530/the-river-1937)
8. [The River (1938), Full cast and crew, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029490/fullcredits)
9. [Pare Lorentz. The River. 1937, MoMA collection](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/299849)
10. [Jean Rouch: The Camera as Theoretical Instrument, Offscreen](https://offscreen.com/view/jean-rouch-the-camera-as-theoretical-instrument)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Individual documentary short films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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