Alex Brendemühl in The German Doctor (2013)

Pre-Great Depression, Great Depression, post-Great Depression in film.

I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round, Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town. And the police make it hard wherever I may go And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod; Rich man took my home and drove me from my door And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor; My crops I lay into the banker's store. My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor, And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn I been working, mister, since the day I was born Now I worry all the time like I never did before 'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see This world is such a great and a funny place to be; Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor, And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

I Ain't Got No Home" by Woody Guthrie

Times Are Rough (The Great Depression in film)

After the end of World War II, the Ciné-club Objectif 49 was founded in Paris. Its members, including Jean Cocteau, Henri Langlois and, as honorary member, Orson Welles, had taken up the cause of propagating a new cinema avant-garde. They were supported by several writers, filmmakers and critics who had joined together under the label of Nouvelle Critique, including André Bazin, Raymond Queneau, Jean Grémillon, Alexandre Astruc and Roger Leenhardt. This loosely-bound group devised a plan to stage an independent festival in Biarritz in the summer of 1949; it was to roll out the red carpet for Cinéma maudit, in a nod to Mallarmé's term poètes maudits, the accursed poets.

With this festival, the established representatives of Nouvelle Critique intended to “measure, with purity and frenzy, the current battle lines on the field of cinematographic intelligence and sensibility”. They were also aiming for an exchange of ideas with a group of young cinephiles whose names were known to very few at the time: François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jean Douchet. The announcement of the event, which was to be both urbane and confrontational, was akin to a cult promise: Biarritz would become a test site to roam with one’s accomplices, in order to track down a new spirit in film, which didn't necessarily have to reveal itself only in the current production. What were the films maudits, the accursed films of 1949? A glance at the programme provides information: Kuhle Wampe by Slatan Dudow, Lumière d'été by Jean Grémillon, Fireworks by Kenneth Anger, films by Jean Renoir, Clifford Odets, Jean Rouch, John Ford and Helmut Käutner, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne by Robert Bresson, Ride the Pink Horse by Robert Montgomery and L'Atalante by Jean Vigo, plus some ten additional films. Many of these titles and names have long since become indisputable standard works in film history.                                                                                                                                                                                                        Movies that are not on IMDb: Roger Livet - Une regrettable affaire (1927)

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ICM Forum Year-by-Year Poll: 1941 (full nominated films list)

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