Heart of the Confederacy (downloaded from Google Video).

This Department of the Interior film from the 30s can’t seem to decide if it wants to be a conventional CCC-in-the-state-parks film or a silly newsreel featurette. It has the usual stuff about two different state parks in the Montgomery, Alabama area, and the CCC working on improvements in them, but it keeps getting sidetracked by things like a dog who was trained by its owner to answer the telephone and ride a tricycle, or Southern belles in clean overalls posing with baby chicks, when you know that their aristocratic lil’ Southern hands usually never dirtied themselves with such things, as they had folks of another skin color to handle them. They’re called “farmerettes” here, and their only purpose seemed to be to look pretty in front of the camera. Silly-sounding music accompanies these lighter scenes, and somehow this all highlights, although in a clueless fashion, the racism of that time and place, since the silly scenes, as well as the scenes of people frolicking in the state parks, all involve white people, while black people are only shown in scenes that show hard labor. One of the sillier, and yet more historically interesting, of the Department of the Interior state park films.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.