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News Headlines Los Angeles Flood Pick-A-Back Airplane Dc-4 Airplane (1938)

1938 · Short film · 13 min

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Synopsis

Made for the home market in the 1930s, this silent film draws from Pathe Newsreels and is called “News Digest”, with a focus on the year 1938. It had been produced by Pathegrams (:09). The first section of the film is about the Los Angeles flood of 1938 (:19). This disastrous flood was one of the largest in history and occurred due to two major storms blowing in over the Los Angeles Basin. In a matter of a few days it produced about a year’s worth of rainfall. 20,000 had been forced into homelessness due to the flood (:28). Black and white footage follows with a view of outside the California market (:41) as well as a group of citizens peering out from their porch (:46). Toppled trees and poles lay into the street (1:05). Houses as well as cars also lay damaged by fallen trees (1:20). A hurricane had driven a whale into the shoreline in a ship graveyard (1:32). Men stretch themselves out at arm’s length to show the length of the beached whale (1:39). The film switches to a dust storm showing two people walking slowly through the dust cloud while holding onto a fence for guidance (2:09). Moving over to Europe, the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg (2:55) was forced to allow Austria to become a German state by the Nazi’s in 1938 although he was strongly opposed to doing so. The next section focuses on the Douglas DC-4 “Sky Giant” which was to be the largest transport plane (3:31). Men move around the inside (3:41) and slowly push the engine into place (3:58). The Douglas…

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Details

Running time
13 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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