An American Romance

Despite lacking the necessary 25 dollars, Czech immigrant Stefan Dangosbiblichek manages to wrangle his way through Ellis Island in 1898 to enter the United States. He walks from New York to Minnesota, where he gets work in an iron mine under the name Steve Dangos. Schoolteacher Anna, his later wife, teaches him to read. Moving to Chicago, he works his way up to foreman of a steel mill. Dangos ultimately achieves great wealth as an automobile manufacturer in Detroit, albeit at the expense of workers’ rights. That prompts his youngest son, Theodore Roosevelt Dangos, to take up the baton and fight to organise the labourers in his father’s factory … King Vidor was a third-generation immigrant; his family originally came from Hungary. With its very first shot, the film portrays the US as the paradise at the end of the rainbow, although most of the work is done by immigrants. Vidor’s ode to the value of hard work and industry – a mixture of family chronicle and economic documentary – covers the period up until the attack on Pearl Harbor. An American Romance is the quintessential tale of advancement – from strip mining to production, from making bombers to defending the American dream.