The Old South

THE OLD SOUTH is a MGM pseudo-documentary dramatic short that was made in 1940 at the height of "pre release" GONE WITH THE WIND fever (although GWTW premiered in Atlanta in 1939, it did not go into release until well into 1940 and was not in full release until early 1941). The short tells the story of how the dirt-poor, land-rich American South zoomed into prosperity in the late 18th and early 19th century thanks to cotton, originally seeds imported from India which quickly flourished in the sunny, productive fields of the American South to create a worldwide demand for this American export. I disagree with the reviewer who says the film somewhat condones how the South became affluent via slavery. This short is quite unflinching in the ugly side of this American dream with slaves shown being captured and occasionally thrown to their deaths from ships to avoid the crew's possible arrest for being caught by the British as slave traffickers. A plantation owner is shown quite unsympathetically as he barks his demand for more slaves to work his fields. The movie seq ways into the growing outrage of the North over the South's slavery (one reader is shown throwing UNCLE TOM'S CABIN into the fireplace in disgust at it's revelations) which ultimately climaxed in the Civil War which devastated the South. The movie manages to end on an "up" beat as the South rebuilds it's cotton empire although one can't help but note the film shows black people still having to work as field hands in the late 19th century "new South". Despite a tasteless watermelon gag in one dramatic scene, this is a well made, rather solid little history lesson,