The sprawling film celebrates international workers movements along six major rivers: the Volga, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Amazon and the Yangtze.
The musical score is by Dmitri Shostakovich, with lyrics written by Bertolt Brecht, and songs performed by German communism's star Ernst Busch and famous American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson who also narrates.
[3] After World War II, Ivens spent several years in East Germany, where he edited Song of the Rivers, which is said to have been seen by 250 million people in communist countries.
A tribute to international trade unionism, the film combines images of life along six great rivers: the Mississippi, the Ganges, the Nile, the Yangtse, the Volga, and the Amazon.
Unlike the intimacy of "Power and the Land," another Ivens film, abstract grandiloquence is the keynote.