When you don't know the history of your own medium... https://twitter.com/PhilNobileJr/status/1289221080083660802

Remember when Carol Lombard and William Powell didn't make a movie about rich and poor people during the Great Depression? I sure don't.

Or when Mervyn LeRoy and Busby Berkeley didn't make a movie about struggling actresses in 1933?

Or when Lloyd Bacon definitely made a musical that wasn't about the Depression?

Or when Lewis Milestone didn't make a movie based on a John Steinbeck novel about farm workers in 1939?

You know what was really popular in the '30s? Social problem films, generally dealing with crime, prostitution, the rise of the mob, the divide between rich and poor, poverty, and homelessness.

Yes, people also went to see swashbucklers, westerns, comedies, and high-society musicals (but the latter two often dealt with Depression issues, like the struggles of chorus girls, actors and actresses, and exploitation by the rich).

One of the most popular films of 1934 is It Happened One Night, in which a poor little rich girl travels the backroads of America with a newspaper reporter. In one scene, a woman passes out from malnutrition and the pair give away the last of their money to feed her.

Many of these films extolled the qualities of the "Average American," who struggles to find food and work, over the pampered, privileged classes who survived the crash. They explicitly and implicitly address the Depression via America's class hierarchy.

Another example: The Marx Brothers, who consistently joke about financial ruin, starvation, poverty, and the upper classes. A running gag is that they never have enough to eat. In 1931, they played impoverished stowaways on an ocean liner.

I shalt not go on, but this is why it is not only foolish but damaging for critics and editors to have limited or solely anecdotal knowledge of film history. It pushes a view of the past that directly informs our present.