This film is a strange mixture of a documentary and a political pamphlet. Ivens first shows how thousands of courageous workmen toiled for years to give Holland new fertile soil to grow wheat on. When you see the first harvest, you think the film is over, but suddenly the tone changes dramatically: "but we all know wheat isn't grown for eating, but for speculating". The last ten minutes of the film are a strident accusation against the industrialists who rather burn wheat or throw it into the sea than lower the price so poor people can afford to buy it. At the time millions of people in Europe and America were ruined because of the economic depression and there was also a famine in Manchuria. Ivens shows images of hunger marches in New York and London and corpses of starved Manchurians, accompanied by the endless repetition of the word of an anonymous industrialist: "We stikken in het graan" (we're smothered by wheat). A very effective movie, also thanks to the vigorous music by Eisler, and very useful in reminding us that destroying good food while people are starving was, is and will always be plain murder, whatever the economical reasons behind it may be.
Review of Nieuwe gronden
