Riding the Rails

Filmmakers Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell take a documentary look at American adolescents in the 1930s, male and female, who took to the road, hopping freights and hitchhiking across Depression America. Interviews with some of these aging “road kids” reveal that their reasons were many—from poverty and abuse at home to a simple urge to get out and see the world—but the experience is clearly one they’ll never forget, and it’s strange to see the sparkle in their old eyes when they talk about even the most dismal experiences of 60 years ago. Uys and Lovell divide their time between these interviews and archival footage including newsreels, home movies and scenes from the 1933 drama Wild Boys of the Road—a cautionary tale that had the ironic effect of glamorizing the hobo life.