"Inspired by the Headlines of Today," as its opening title proclaims, Our Daily Bread has an overtly political theme so rare in classic-era American filmmaking that it brought condemnation as both "Communistic" (from the Hearst newspapers) and "fascistic" (from Experimental Cinema). King Vidor's study of Depression-era cooperation and survival on the land is his best-known though not his best film, burdened as it is by a gee-whiz performance by B Western player Tom ("That's a humdinger!") Keene. But no one can fault the film's daring. After the project was rejected by every studio, Vidor turned to his savings and a mortgage on his home. A young couple, at the end of city job options, are lent a parcel of unworked land and determine not to let their ignorance of farming prevent them from making it go. As they pick up fellow refugees from the city, the family farm is transformed into a cooperative. While the film includes one notable entertainment compromise-a disruptive blond bombshell-it grapples with social issues barely touched by Hollywood until Ford's The Grapes of Wrath six years later. And the climactic digging of an irrigation ditch for the parched crops is a tour-de-force of rhythmic cutting worthy of Eisenstein. Generally seen in dupey 16mm, Our Daily Bread will be shown tonight in an original 35mm print. In a prologue, directed by David Shepard, Vidor looks back at his film and its social context from the vantage of his-and the century's-eighties. Scott Simmon