Cast: Russell Collins, Elia Kazan, Elman Koolish
Director: Ralph Steiner
Country: USA
Genre: Short , Comedy
The following review is a continuation of Matthew Blevins’ Subversive Saturdays series.
In an unlikely combination of one of America cinema’s most influential filmmaker’s and one of the fathers of avant-garde films, Elia Kazan and Ralph Steiner combine forces to create a wonderfully subversive short titled Pie in the Sky (1936), where there might not be enough pie for everyone here but thems the breaks and if you follow the rules you might just get “pie in the sky when you die”. In its 22 minute runtime, Pie in the Sky manages to attack organized religion and its false promises (of pie specifically, far more pragmatic than promises of eternal salvation to the starving bellies of the American Depression), the death of the American welfare system, and the death of the American Dream as nothing remains but a wasteland of the leftover pieces of a burgeoning industrial nation in a land of desolation where nationalism and religion are equally useless to a starving man with no lines for free soup anywhere to be seen.
The demands of hungry bellies request silence from the preacher’s impotent sermonizing and want the pie that lured their damned souls into the house of salvation.
The lack of synchronized sound gives no objective context to the tumultuous realities of America during the Great Depression, but we are instead given a happy-go-lucky song of impending prosperity and American optimism. This song would do nothing to incite the hearts of the derelicts forced to sleep in gutters as they shuffle to a Lenin-esque man of god who surrounds himself by the propagandistic catchphrases of religion as he delivers droll platitudes to a bored audience, only there because they were promised the free pie of Christ. The demands of hungry bellies request silence from the preacher’s impotent sermonizing and want the pie that lured their damned souls into the house of salvation. Unfortunately even the pie of Christ is subject to availability, and two poor souls are left wanting when the pie inevitably runs out. They are offered condolences from the preacher as “the lord will provide” for their needs, he happened to run out of tickets for salvation at that particular venue.
The two venture out of the church into the desolate wastelands of Depression era America. Unopened film canisters are tossed aside as useless artifacts of a bygone age; who’s got time for art in times such as these? Sin becomes relative when a man’s life becomes devoid of food and creature comforts, and religion was just that one place down the road that didn’t deliver on their promise of free pie. The twosome may be smoking butts in a landfill but at least they have laughter and blind optimistic hope as they have the time of their lives amidst the rubble of an America in ruins. The door from the long gone welfare department offers tragic hilarity as the two laugh like madmen as they pretend to enter the non-existent building, knowing that salvation is futile and the only chance for tangible pie might be in the great hereafter.
Sin becomes relative when a man’s life becomes devoid of food and creature comforts, and religion was just that one place down the road that didn’t deliver on their promise of free pie.
Pie in the Sky offers an unseen look into the destitution of America in the rebuilding stages following times of unprecedented economic strife during the Great Depression. It is bittersweet in its satire as the story of the two dejected transients was the story of many at the time while cinema relished in the lavishness of Busby Berkeley or merely romanticized the plight of the times like Frank Borzage with the contrived beauty of his Hollywood-lit shantytowns. This cinema laughs at the plight of the times because to avoid desperation laughter can be the only recourse. There is no romance or gallantry here, even as the characters dress themselves in the garb of the junkyard and dance in irreverent tribute to what seems to be the passing of human civilization. Hopefully they’ll get pie in the sky when they die that they were promised in the song.
[notification type=”star”]85/100 ~ GREAT. Pie in the Sky offers an unseen look into the destitution of America in the rebuilding stages following times of unprecedented economic strife during the Great Depression. It is bittersweet in its satire as the story of the two dejected transients was the story of many at the time while cinema relished in the lavishness of Busby Berkeley or merely romanticized the plight of the times like Frank Borzage with the contrived beauty of his Hollywood-lit shantytowns.[/notification]
