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Pare Lorentz, a thirty-year-old movie critic, had never made a film himself. Now he got his chance. Working under a Farm Security Administration contract, in 1936 Lorentz released his first documentary film, The Plow that Broke the Plains. Using dramatic footage, Lorentz showed how farmers had ravaged the Texas Panhandle. Viewers saw lines of tractors advancing across virgin grasslands to the sound of military marches, like tank columns through Europe during the First World War. Easterners could almost smell and breathe the clouds of windborne dust blowing off the southern plains. The film's message, driven home with all the delicacy of a baseball bat, was clear. The plains would only support people if they respected the land and lived in harmony with it.

–Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl,
Albert Marrin

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