Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

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Director: John Ford
Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine

That it's taken me this long to finally see The Grapes of Wrath is kind of inexplicable. The novel is one of my absolute favorites, and John Ford is one of my favorite old-school directors, so it's a major oversight on my part that I let it go this long, particularly in light of the fact that it's a film that more than lives up to its reputation. A major work from one of the greatest American directors of all time, The Grapes of Wrath is a moving piece of work, even if it isn't as politically rich or as bold as the novel on which it is based. Still, it's difficult to believe that the novel could ever be adapted better, though Steven Spielberg is reportedly set to try.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

Director: Sergio Leone
Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Jason Robbards, Henry Fonda

This is a film that requires patience because director Sergio Leone is determined to make you wait. It begins with three men riding up to a lonely railroad station in the middle of an arid wasteland. They lock up the station agent and then they wait. A long period of silence follows. The train stops briefly and then begins to move on. The three think that the man they’ve been waiting for hasn’t shown up… and then they hear the harmonica being played on the other side of the track. The train departs and we meet Harmonica (Charles Bronson), one of the many loners and misfits we’ll meet through the course of the movie. He asks if the men brought a horse for him. They laugh and remark that they’re one short. “You brought two too many,” Harmonica corrects. Thus begins one of the best Westerns ever made.

After Harmonica has disposed of the three henchmen, we meet the other three important characters of the film. Cheyenne (Jason Robards), Jill (Claudia Cardinale), and Frank (Henry Fonda). Jill is a newlywed bride who comes to the little town to start her new life only to discover that her husband and his children have been ruthlessly gunned down. Frank and his gang are the culprits, but everyone points to Cheyenne, an infamous outlaw. The townspeople are shocked to learn that Jill is already Mrs. McBain, having married her husband in New Orleans before coming to town. This fact throws a wrench into the plan of which Frank is a part. The railroad is coming through, and the McBain land is prime real estate to be developed. Frank looks for a way to get rid of Jill, and Cheyenne is determined to stop him, not only because he doesn’t like being framed, but also because he quickly develops a soft spot for the widow. Harmonica is after Frank, too, for reasons we don’t understand until the very end of the film.

Watching these four characters and the way that they interact with each other completely makes the film. Harmonica and Cheyenne are prototypical Western anti-heroes – one the strong, silent type (Harmonica), the other charmingly roguish (Cheyenne). Both visit Jill when she’s alone at the McBain house, before Frank and his gang come after her. Both approach her with menace – the threat of rape is always hanging in the air in this film overloaded with aggressive men whose choices seem to come down to shooting something or screwing something – but ultimately mean her no harm. Cheyenne seems to fall in love with her, even as it becomes apparent that she’s fallen for Harmonica. The final scenes between Cheyenne and Jill are beautiful, especially coming out of a film that’s been so markedly violent. These scenes are contrasted with the final showdown between Harmonica and Frank.

Jill is a really interesting and compelling character. In a genre where women are generally absent or relegated to the sidelines, she’s the central figure and a strong one. During her initial meeting with Cheyenne, he alludes to what he might do to her, and she responds: “No woman ever died from that. When you’re finished, all I’ll need is a tub of boiling water, and I’ll be exactly what I was before – with just another filthy memory.” What makes Jill stand out is that this isn’t just talk. She’s a very tough character and her attitude comes in handy later in the film when she and Frank share what is easily one of the most perverse sex scenes ever filmed. Frank, too, is an interesting character; one of the great screen villains played by an icon of American goodness. Frank is totally ruthless, seeming to enjoy gunning down everyone from men to women to children. If a job needs getting done, he’ll do it by putting a bullet in someone. “People scare better when they’re dying,” he explains.

A lot of blood is shed in this film, but it isn’t strictly a shoot ’em up, and it isn’t a revenge film either, even though revenge is the driving force behind Harmonica’s relentless quest. This is a film about the death of one way of life and the birth of another. All through the film, railroad tracks are being laid across the landscape, coming closer and closer to the McBain land, where a station and other buildings are quickly being built and will make Jill wealthy beyond her dreams. Jill and the McBain station and the railroad itself are signs that the West is about to be civilized, and this means that there will no longer be a place for Cheyenne or Harmonica or Frank or others like them. These figures who already exist on the fringes are about to be pushed out – by death or otherwise – and soon will disappear completely because there won’t be any undeveloped land left for them to roam in. This is an elegy to a life that is passing, and we realize at the end that the urgency that has been underlying the film stems from the knowledge of these outlaw men that they have to settle their business now because the train tracks are coming ever closer. The film ends with the tracks being laid across on the McBain property and Jill playing the role of entrepreneur. Two of the three men are dead, and the other has disappeared into what remains of the West – already forgotten in the marching of time.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

Director: William A. Wellman
Starring: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan

The Ox-Bow Incident is William A. Wellman’s short but powerful condemnation of mob mentality and vigilante justice. In recent years, it has seemed especially pertinent for the way it examines the harm done by Shoot First, Ask Questions later attitudes and knee-jerk reactions which demand the rounding up of someone - anyone - for punishment in order to satisfy society’s need for immediate justice. This is an angry film which examines an ugly subject.

It begins with Gil and Art (Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan) who drift into the little town just in time for the announcement that a local farmer has been murdered and his cattle stolen. The Sheriff is out of town and the Deputy decides that instead of waiting for him, he'll form a posse and find the rustlers himself. The Judge (Matt Briggs) objects to the idea, but in the face of a gang of bored, rough and tumble men, this ineffective authority figure is easily over-ruled. Gil and Art go along, partly to avoid being accused of being the rustlers themselves through their dissention, but also as two of the handful of people who are going specifically to see that things don’t get out of hand. This handful ultimately proves to be futile against the rest of the mob. Three men are found, determined to be the rustlers and hanged without trial or proper examination of the evidence.

What’s great about this film is the way that it dissects mob mentality. We see the posse as it is forming, it’s members riled up and ready to deliver justice, but there’s the sense that what this is really about is a gang of bored people (all men, save one) who are excited about the chance to do something, don’t really take the matter as seriously as they should, and aren’t thinking about the fact that they’re excited about the prospect of maybe getting to kill other human beings. When they find the three men – which includes Dana Andrews as Donald Martin – their eagerness is still clear, though beginning slightly to ebb, especially as it becomes more and more apparent that the three men will be hanged without being brought back to town for trial. When the moment finally comes and the three men, nooses around their necks are placed on horses, Major Tetley (William Eythe) has a difficult time finding volunteers to get the horses off and running. No one really wants to be responsible for these deaths, which at some level they know to be unjust. Eventually the act is carried out and the three men die. The Sheriff rides up shortly thereafter, is horrified by what he sees and reveals that the farmer who was supposedly murdered is actually alive and that Martin’s story is true: he had bought the cattle, fair and square, which means that all three have been murdered to satiate the bored bloodlust of the town.

The dejected posse returns to town and sentiment begins to turn against Tetley, who is seen as having been the leader. There’s a suggestion that he ought to be hanged. “You sure are one for hanging,” Gil says with disgust. They’ve learned nothing. They still believe that there’s no problem that can’t be solved at the end of a gun or in the center of a noose. It is only when Gil reads the letter that Martin had written to his wife, which includes the lines: “They don’t seem to realize what they’re doing. They’re the ones I feel sorry for. ’Cause it’ll be over for me in a little while, but they’ll have to go on remembering for the rest of their lives. A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurting everybody in the world,” that the real weight of what has happened begins to settle upon the town.

The characters are well-drawn. There are clear leaders and clear followers who will never have the courage to turn against the leaders – at least not unless everyone else is doing it, too. There are also the men who stand against the mob, which include Tetley’s son, who is coded as being potentially gay and certainly “weak” in the eyes of his father, and who is forced to come along by Tetley’s belief that it will make a man out of him. Some of the characters, like Tetley and his son, Gil and Art, Davies (Harry Davenport) the leader of the dissenters, and Jenny Grier (Jane Darwell) the lone woman in the posse, stand out, but this is ultimately an ensemble film and the size of the cast is always prominent in order to foreground the danger of a group of people who insist that you’re either with them or against them.

The Ox-Bow Incident is a short film, running just over an hour, but the economy of its storytelling is part of its power. This all happens fast, which is part of the film’s critique, because justice shouldn’t be fast – trial, arrest, execution in under an hour – it should be measured and certain. The focus is on the horrible act of the mob, but there are also hints about life outside this incident. There’s a woman Gil came back to town to see, whom he learns has run off and gotten married. They see each other briefly and he meets her new husband. The scene has nothing to do with the central story, but it does provide Henry Fonda with the opportunity to make one of the best The Hell? faces ever captured on screen. There are also suggestions throughout the film about Tetley, about his military experiences and his marriage. We never know the full story, but these vague suspicions help to cloud our view of him and suggest reasons other than the hangings for his own suicide at the end.

Made in 1943, this is a timeless work of art. It will always be relevant but seems especially so today when we read about injustices excused by the fact that a war is being fought on terror. Consider the scene where the posse questions the three men, going at them until they break down and give the answers the mob wants, even if it’s not the truth. “There’s truth in lies, too, if you can get enough of them,” Tetley states. This is a story that continues to echo in our own time.

100 Days, 100 Movies: 12 Angry Men (1957)

Director: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Henry Fonda

Social issue movies always run the risk of being so dry and didactic in their eagerness to make their point, that the entertainment value of the films can get lost along the way. Sidney Lumet is a filmmaker who has always been able to find the right balance between the message and the medium, expressing what he has to say about the given subject without sacrificing his narratives to the level of tutorials. In 12 Angry Men he examines a facet of the justice system - namely how a jury renders its verdict - casting a critical eye on something we take for granted as being fair and just, when in truth it can be anything but. He also creates a riveting film experience out of just twelve characters - the jurors in a murder trial - and one room, proving once and for all that sometimes less really is more.

The trial in question is never seen and the defendant is seen only briefly in the opening moments. What we know about the case we learn in the jury room as it is debated and discussed. To eleven of the jurors, it’s an open and shut case and the deliberation is little more than ceremonial, something in which they will half-heartedly participate before rendering a guilty verdict. For Juror #8 (Henry Fonda), however, this will not do and he refuses to vote along with the rest, eventually making a deal with them so that they will discuss the case. He’s motivated less by the belief that the defendant is innocent than the belief that it is their duty as jurors to actually discuss the evidence rather than make a hasty pronouncement. Slowly but surely, he breaks down the prosecution’s case, turning one juror after another against a guilty verdict.

There are a number of memorable scenes in this film. In one, Juror #8 recreates the shuffling walk of a witness who claims to have seen the defendant fleeing the scene. In another, he produces a switch blade that looks exactly like the murder weapon, which the prosecutors have claimed is unique and could only belong to the defendant. In one of the most powerful scenes, Juror #10 (Ed Begly) makes a virulently racist speech about the defendant’s obvious guilt, throwing around phrases like “those people” as the other jurors, one by one, stand from the table and turn away, refusing to listen to him. The film deftly explores issues of race and class with regards to the justice system, and its success in this lies in the fact that it doesn’t go the obvious route of making the defendant the sympathetic protagonist, but rather by showing the prejudices and assumptions brought to the trial by people who’ve never even met the defendant. We don’t know exactly what is referred to by #10’s “those people,” but our brief glimpse of the defendant shows someone who is vaguely “ethnic” looking in a very general sense. There is also the presumption amongst many of the jurors that as someone from an impoverished family, the defendant is accustomed both to experiencing and perpetuating violence. Many of the jurors are ready to believe that the defendant is guilty simply because he appears to fit the mould of a “dangerous person” as determined by the dominant ideology. This attitude of course begs the question of how the defendant is supposed to get a fair trial by a jury of his peers when the jurors don’t consider themselves his peers, but see him very much as part of “them” who is in contrast to “us.”

The film’s strength lies not only in it’s message, but also in the way that it’s filmed. It begins with the jurors filing into the jury room on a hot summer day. The fan isn’t working and the room seems to swelter as Juror #8 holds out and begins making his case and most of the others fight him, refusing to be swayed. Watching, we feel how hot it is in that room just as we feel the tension that’s ever rising. There is a degree of intimacy in the way this is filmed that is heightened by the set itself. As the film progresses, the room seems to get smaller, more claustrophobic.

This film, which looks simple on paper, is amazing in its complexities, and in Juror #8, Fonda creates on of his many great characters, but the other eleven actors are also worthy of high praise. While they’re sequestered, we never get to know any of the jurors’ names, but we truly get a sense of each and everyone of their personalities, some of them are strong and determined to hold steady, while others easily succumb to a herd mentality and are afraid to speak up if they disagree, and one just wants to get the verdict over with so that he can make it to the baseball game in time. By showing us these people, the ways that some are swayed to change their minds, and the ways that others make up theirs, and the way that evidence can be presented without really being considered, the film makes a strong and critical commentary on a deep flaw in the justice system. The power of the film lies not in whether or not the defendant is guilty or innocent, or in whether #8 proves the defendant’s innocence, but in how the jurors come to the conclusion of their verdict. And that’s what makes a simple story about twelve men in one room so memorable.