Lowell Thomas and the strangest travelogue editing ever

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have ten minutes to kill and a high tolerance for 1930s newsreel whiplash. If you like history, sure. If you get annoyed by movies that don't know what they want to be, stay away. It feels like a fever dream of a travel channel exec.

The whole thing starts on a roof in New York. We're looking at a beauty parlor. It’s bizarre to think people were getting perms while looking at the skyline in the middle of the Great Depression. The camera work is stiff, but the hats on the women are absolutely wild. 👒

Then, without any warning, we're suddenly petting rabbits. We’re watching someone make cloth out of Angora fur. It’s oddly hypnotic, watching the spinning wheel go, but I found myself wondering if they just ran out of footage for the first segment. It’s a jarring shift. Kind of reminds me of the weird pacing issues in Frenzied Film.

Lowell Thomas has that voice—you know, the one that sounds like it’s lecturing you about how to behave in polite society. He doesn't seem to mind that we just teleported from a hair salon to a farm. He just keeps on talking. It’s almost impressive how little he cares about a smooth transition.

The Beijing footage is the real meat here, I guess. The Temple of Heaven looks massive, even in this grainy black and white. It’s a shame we spend so little time there. I would have traded the rabbit farm for another five minutes of those courtyard shots.

Random Observations

• The transition from New York to China is basically a jump cut across half the planet.
• The rabbits look way more relaxed than the people in the beauty parlor.
• There’s a weird sense of detachment throughout the whole thing.
• It’s a lot less charming than the scenery in Honolulu: The Paradise of the Pacific.

I kept waiting for a punchline that never came. It's just a series of things happening. You look at a roof. You look at a rabbit. You look at an emperor’s old house. Then it stops. 🎬

It’s not a film you analyze. It’s a film you just sort of absorb until you realize you’re bored. Still, it’s a weirdly honest look at what passed for entertainment back then. No fluff, just random clips stitched together by someone with a microphone.