User Reviews

Considered a ground-breaking documentary in its time, and still highly respected (though mostly forgotten), "School" was a novelty by 1939 standards of the genre, as it avoided the off narration and allowed the subjects of the film to tell their own story, not by making statements in front of the camera, but re-enacting their experiences as students and teachers of the Hessian Hills School, in the state of New York. Besides it was then and it is still today a very interesting liberal school experiment: we see the children being encouraged by their facilitators to train themselves to become their own "life managers" in a future community, in order to make the democratic society grow and develop. Sometimes pupils and teachers decidedly recite their obvious previously rehearsed scenes, but it is still fresh and, as a 1939 product, very innovative. There is an obtrusive element, though, and it is the musical commentary that is really unnecessary (some sequences are even better watched in the silent mode). Somebody who is not credited made a medley of children's song that sometimes collide with what we see on the screen (as "London Bridge Is Falling Down", when the kids are being constructing). Director Lee Dick is one of the few pioneer American female documentary filmmakers, whose next work, "Men and Dust" (made with her then husband, photographer Sheldon Dick) was included in the US National Film Registry. Take a look at it, it is fast and short, and you will not regret it.