Watching the 1930s get weird with The March of Time

Is this for you?

If you find yourself stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole of old, grainy archival footage at 2 a.m., you’ll probably dig this. If you need a movie with a traditional three-act structure or actual human characters to care about, stay far away. This is pure, condensed history as seen through a lens that’s moving way too fast.

It’s barely 20 minutes long, but it packs in more anxiety than a modern three-hour blockbuster. The narrator talks like he’s trying to beat a world record for syllables per second. It’s relentless. Exhausting, really.

The Lunatic Fringe

Watching the segment on Gerald Smith, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend is wild. They look like they’re shouting from the pulpit of a basement radio station. It’s odd how these guys—who were basically the influencers of their day—get treated with this weird, detached authority by the narrator.

The pacing here is jagged. You jump from a massive tidal power project in Passamaquoddy to political agitation, then suddenly you’re watching a guy pour milk into a machine. It feels like the director just dumped a bunch of film reels on the floor and decided to edit them in the order he picked them up.

The Milk Thing

I know, I know. A segment on milk? But honestly, the cinematography of the bottling plant is hypnotic. There’s something bizarrely satisfying about those glass bottles rattling along the conveyor belts. It’s much more engaging than the political stuff, strangely enough. 🥛

It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in I'm No Angel, though obviously in a completely different genre. The world was just moving differently back then. Everything feels like it’s on the verge of collapsing or being replaced by a better, shinier machine.

There’s no room to breathe. No silence. Just music, yelling, and more music. If you want to see how people in the 30s were told what to think about their breakfast and their politicians, this is it. Just don’t expect it to make sense as a single story.

It’s a time capsule that doesn't care if you understand it or not. Kind of refreshing, in a weird way.