Brother Can You Spare A Dime? (DVD)

Brother Can You Spare A Dime? is the chronicle of an unforgettable piece Depression history - twelve crazy, painful see-saw years, from the Wall Street crash to Pearl Harbor.By juxtaposing contemporary news and documentary footage with extracts from Hollywood classics such as 'Golddiggers,' 'Lady Killer' and 'Wild Boys of the Road,' director Philippe Mora offers us an immediate, intricate and evocative scrapbook of the 1930's. Somehow there are uncanny echoes of some of our current preoccupations: strikers at Ford's, mass unemployment, breadlines, vigilante gangs and failing fortunes...Two heroes emerge: James Cagney, the rough diamond, hood-with-a-heart-of-gold star of the Movies, the little man who won't be beaten, and Franklin D. Roosevelt himself: tough yet benign, stepping into the breach with confidence and determination, yet imperceptibly crumpling under the weight of responsibility as he leads America through her most difficult years until the final humiliation of Pearl Harbor