Great Depression Movies

Threatened with separation, two young brothers escape from an orphanage and make a perilous journey from New York to Boys' Town in Nebraska.

Three people live together in the maintenance shed at Central Park as an alternative to living on the streets.

A documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power...

Mel Schwartz escaped the Great Depression on a bicycle adventure he'd remember for the rest of his life... until Mel lost his memory to Alzheimer's....

Showcases incidents based on the life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This mostly accurate privately produced biography of FDR is a cinema and...

Two waiters in Depression-era Arkansas get involved in the numbers racket.

A virtuous and innocent young woman uneasily gives in to the lavish attentions of a "sugar daddy" but then finds true love with a newspaperman her...

A dedicated and compassionate policewoman risks her job by offering refuge to a young mother with mob associations. Crime drama.

In the grip of the Great Depression, unemployed men and women joined an unlikely WPA program to document America in guidebooks and interviews. With...

Two men, one timid and one aggressive, make out as comical criminals.

January, 1947. The public receives the news of Al Capone's death with indifference, although twenty years earlier he had ruled Chicago's crime...

Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers...

This film takes us into the harsh realm of BC's early coal mines, canneries, and lumber camps; where primitve conditions and speed-ups often cost...

For twelve years he stood as America's 32nd President, a man who overcame the ravages of polio to pull America through the Great Depression and WWII....

Guy and Ellen are desperate to find a way to get food and medicine for their sick child. Jobs are very hard to come by during the Great Depression...

At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the...

A film documenting work shortages during the Depression of the 1930s and the attempts to deal with the unemployed, in particular young men. The film...

During the Great Depression, vaudeville has fallen on hard times. The Palace Theater may have to close its doors, unless the proprietor, William...

Exploring the devastation of the 1930s, Lisa Jackson shapes amateur-shot archival film from a South Dakota town and audio interviews of residents who...

Black and white evokes nostalgia for The Great Depression. Things were so cheap, including lives. We see daredevils (desperate people) compete for...