Movie Review

Wonders of the world produce marvelous benefits, entail immense costs, require awesome and sometimes unwitting commitment. So it was, and is, with Hoover Dam, aptly designated "an American pyramid." Stephen Stept, writer, producer, and director of this American Experience film, captures the drama of the undertaking and the price of monumental success. Why build the behemoth? Imperial Valley farmers wanted a dam to control flooding on the Colorado River. Los Angeles boosters wanted power. Out-of-work Americans wanted jobs. Engineers and entrepreneurs wanted to prove they could do it, on schedule, and reap the rewards. We are told that Hoover Dam changed the West, and that some consider it "a colossal environmental mistake," but we do not see how or why. The filmmakers perforce point out that we have since come to doubt the wisdom of drowning places like the Black Canyon of the Colorado, and they give us gorgeous images of the wild river's muddy mad majesty, but the environmental tale is another story. Here, the emphasis is on the will, the skill, and the human sacrifice in every cubic foot of concrete.

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