To Render a Life
| Year | 1992 |
| Starring | Alan Cheuse, Alex Harris, Frederick Wiseman, James Hubbard, Robert Coles, Ruth Behar, Ted Rosengarten |
| Director(s) | Ross Spears |
| Runtime | 88 min |
| Producer(s) | Ross Spears, Silvia Kersusan |
| Editor(s) | Grahame Wienbren, Ross Spears |
| Writer(s) | Ross Spears, Silvia Kersusan |
In 1936, during the depths of the Great Depression, on an assignment from Fortune Magazine, the writer James Agee and the photographer, Walker Evans, traveled to Hale County, Alabama, to document the lives of three families of desperately poor cotton tenant farmers. Agee and Evans spent two months living with three families of white sharecroppers, whom they called the Gudgers, the Ricketts, and the Woods. Agee and Evans became so deeply involved in their project that it wasn’t until 1941 that the results of their work were finally published by the Houghton Miflin Co. as the book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
To Render a Life is the first feature film to be made about Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Its release coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of publication. Central to the film is a portrait of a contemporary poor rural family living under similar conditions to those the cotton sharecroppers of the Depression faced in 1936. The filmmaker, Ross Spears, and writer, Silvia Kersusan, spent more than three years filming in the rural South with the family of Alice and Obea Glass, who love near the edge of survival in one of the richest counties in America. The result is a detailed and dramatic portrait of a family seen through the eyes of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It is a portrayal unique in cinema history.
Like the sharecroppers of Agee and Evans’ book, the family of To Render a Life is near the socio-economic bottom of society. For the very poor, life has changed little since the Depression. Although the Glass family is not homeless, their homemade shelter is without water or plumbing, full of fire hazards, vermin, and discomforts, extremely hot in the summer, and rotting around them. Although they are not jobless, their work is hard, with uncertain hours, very low wages, and no benefits or security. Like the sharecroppers of 1936, they have and intact family, which is nevertheless beset by poor diet, poor teeth, poor health, poor education, unemployment, depression, petty feuds, and car troubles. Nonetheless, they persevere. The plant flowers, they have family gatherings, they put up Christmas trees. They maintain their self-respect, determination, and dignity against considerable odds.