' ].join(''); if ( adsScript && adsScript === 'bandsintown' && adsPlatforms && ((window.isIOS && adsPlatforms.indexOf("iOS") >= 0) || (window.isAndroid && adsPlatforms.indexOf("Android") >= 0)) && adsLocations && adsMode && ( (adsMode === 'include' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) >= 0) || (adsMode === 'exclude' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) == -1) ) ) { var opts = { artist: "", song: "", adunit_id: 100005950, div_id: "cf_async_2165c09d-6bf8-4eaf-8ce4-e13015b653f3" }; adUnit.id = opts.div_id; if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)}; } else { adUnit.id = 'pw-2165c09d-6bf8-4eaf-8ce4-e13015b653f3'; adUnit.className = 'pw-div'; adUnit.setAttribute('data-pw-' + (renderMobile ? 'mobi' : 'desk'), 'sky_btf'); if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => { adUnit.insertAdjacentHTML('afterend', kicker); window.ramp.que.push(function () { window.ramp.addTag('pw-2165c09d-6bf8-4eaf-8ce4-e13015b653f3'); }); }, { once: true }); } } tag.remove(); })(document.getElementById('script-2165c09d-6bf8-4eaf-8ce4-e13015b653f3'));
Synopsis
The Picture with the Most Exciting Story of Our Time!
By the start of World War II, Paul Robeson had given up his lucrative mainstream work to participate in more socially progressive film and stage productions. Robeson committed his support to Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz’s political semidocumentary Native Land. With Robeson’s narration and songs, this beautifully shot and edited film exposes violations of Americans’ civil liberties and is a call to action for exploited workers around the country. Scarcely shown since its debut, Native Land represents Robeson’s shift from narrative cinema to the leftist documentaries that would define the final chapter of his controversial film career.
' ].join(''); if ( adsScript && adsScript === 'bandsintown' && adsPlatforms && ((window.isIOS && adsPlatforms.indexOf("iOS") >= 0) || (window.isAndroid && adsPlatforms.indexOf("Android") >= 0)) && adsLocations && adsMode && ( (adsMode === 'include' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) >= 0) || (adsMode === 'exclude' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) == -1) ) ) { var opts = { artist: "", song: "", adunit_id: 100005950, div_id: "cf_async_1b81866c-5951-49a3-b3d2-61de8e7dbe67" }; adUnit.id = opts.div_id; if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)}; } else { adUnit.id = 'pw-1b81866c-5951-49a3-b3d2-61de8e7dbe67'; adUnit.className = 'pw-div -tile300x250 -alignleft'; adUnit.setAttribute('data-pw-' + (renderMobile ? 'mobi' : 'desk'), 'med_rect_atf'); if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => { adUnit.insertAdjacentHTML('afterend', kicker); window.ramp.que.push(function () { window.ramp.addTag('pw-1b81866c-5951-49a3-b3d2-61de8e7dbe67'); }); }, { once: true }); } } tag.remove(); })(document.getElementById('script-1b81866c-5951-49a3-b3d2-61de8e7dbe67'));
Directors
Directors
Writers
Writers
Editors
Editors
Cinematography
Cinematography
Studio
Country
Language
Alternative Title
Theatrical
11 May 1942
-
USA
USA
More
-
The reviews on here do not pass the vibe check. This classic filmed by Paul Strand and narrated by Paul fucking Robeson is a legendary anthology following the daily struggles of everyday American workers in the face of powerful industrial employers (and their private armies) in the early 20th century. The blending of fiction and nonfiction, documentary footage and Strand’s cinematography, is, in that time, maybe rivaled only in literature by John dos Passos.
It unfortunately makes sense that a film about labor struggles is today viewed as boring or as “union propaganda”. The film is a testament to a time when ordinary people could challenge the power of that time’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks, something we can’t even…
-
Turns out a 75 year old propaganda piece on unions is exactly as exciting as it sounds
-
This started a bit too pro-America jingoistic propaganda until I realized this was made in 1942. So, I get it even though any sort of nationalism rubs me the wrong way. Then it turned into pro-union propaganda and I was fine with it because unions generally benefit society.
-
Native Land wants so badly to be a narrative film, which it easily could have been while still getting its point across, but opts out of that decision and instead manifests a wobbly narrative vignette structure for whatever reason. Nothing here suggests that Native Land must be a documentary other than to be a documentary for the sake of it, because, in truth, this does nothing as a documentary film that a narrative film couldn’t, which wouldn’t be such a huge issue were it to have gone full-on documentary rather than throwing amateur actors in its superficial narrative bits in order to appear more “real” and “like you;” not to mention there are certain stretches which feel borderline propagandist. I admire a lot of the ideas this film offers, but this type of execution is hardly convincing.
-
A brave picture from a time when such political pieces weren't the norm in the US. Really makes this union propaganda stand-out when you see it along with it's contemporary environment. Sure, it's preachy. Sure, it's structure is all over the place. But sure, it was important as well. And that's how I felt watching Native Land (1942). I really fell under the spell of Paul Robeson voice.
-
53/100
Still dismayingly relevant, though I suppose that'll likely always be true of a documentary about the struggle to unionize. (Title's oddly misleading.)
(Rest of the review, along with everything else I write, available via ultra-cheap subscription. Seriously, it’s as little as $1 a month and for now that pays my rent.)
-
Say what you will about the fractured and uneven structure of this dated 1942 early documentary/political propaganda film, I would still listen to Paul Robeson narrate paint drying for 8 hours and call it a masterpiece.
-
I watched this out of pure interest and not because it is required for my film history class or anything like that.
-
A rough, but dazzling collage of documentary montage and pseudo-fictitious recreations of labor drama.
A fine achievement even if it isn’t as perfectly realized. I wish Frontier Films could have continued on, working on a radical filmmaking. But momentum was dying and the war became everything. And from there the US only amped up their fight against radicalism.
-
Never seen a man take a crowbar to dozens of eggs before.
-
Cross between Plow That Broke the Plains and Strike, where the silent material is probably better than the scenes with questionable acting, but enough sequences in this film are beautifully realized. As a documentary, it’s highly outdated and hardly makes a good case for the plight of the work (the deck is very stacked), but what’s being worked out by these scenes is a convincing portrait of what Americans deserve under their freedoms. Some sequences, such as two men being gunned down along a road, show the principles of Soviet Montage at work. It’s the kind of film that’s almost better by being dated in retrospect, because you look at it more for its aesthetic ambitions than its political ambitions and see a type of documentary filmmaking that’s quite the opposite of what you get today, using small vignettes to tell the story of a country’s push toward true freedom. Unquestionably liberal propaganda, but absolutely compelling within the moment.
-
I fundamentally disagree with this film's thesis. It argues that labor unions and left-wing values stem from the Bill of Rights and are under attack from fascist corporations. In reality, I'd say our system is working exactly as intended. That America's fundamental structure is antagonistic to labor organizers and socialists; and the constant violation of its so-called principles is because our country does not actually stand by them, nor will it ever. We will not become a free society by "correcting" the Constitution or ensuring America "lives up to its aims." We will only be free when this settler-colonial state is dismantled. This film refuses to recognize that truth, and in doing so constantly appeals to values that are antithetical…
