Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

* * * *
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.

Countdown To Oscar: How Green Was My Valley

* * * 1/2
Best Picture, 1941

Director: John Ford
Starring: Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara

How Green Was My Valley often gets a bad rap, being as it is the winner of Best Picture in the year that Citizen Kane was also nominated. There are a number of people who like to huff and puff about this and declare it the worst Best Picture win ever, as if the Academy doesn’t have an overwhelming tendency to reward stately, well-constructed epics over subversive films that are ahead of their time (Seriously. When has this ever not happened?). Judged strictly on its own terms as a film, How Green is a fine achievement, a family saga and an elegy to a way of life in the process of fading away.

The events of the film are narrated to us after the fact by the grown Huw Morgan (played superbly by Roddy McDowell), filtered through the gauzy veil of childhood perceptions and memories. Huw grows up in a picturesque Welsh valley, where the majority of the men work up the hill at the coal mine, including his father, Gwilym (Donald Crisp) and his five older brothers. The work is hard, but everyone is happy, albeit in a formal Victorian way punctuated by strict Victorian manners. When I saw the film for the first time, I was actually quite distracted by the rigid quality of the relationships between members of the family and chalked it up to a shortcoming on the part of the actors. As the film progressed, however, I realized that the formality has more to do with the particular cadence of the people in the valley and by the end I didn’t even notice it. Still, it is something that you have to get used to.

When the mine owners begin to lower wages, the problems in the valley begin. Gwilym is prepared to accept the change, confident in his belief that a man will always be able to earn what he’s worth. His sons, however, begin talking about forming a union and quickly gain the support of other workers, who agree to a strike. The strike is long and divisive and many people turn against Gwilym, who had opposed it. When the matter is eventually resolved, not all the striking workers are able to return to the mine, their places having been given to others. Two of these men are Huw’s brothers, who decide to set off for the US and thus begin the dissolution of the Morgan family. In time Huw’s eldest brother, Ivor, will be killed in the mine and his two remaining brothers will find themselves out of work and setting off for foreign lands, leaving only Huw, his parents, and Ivor’s widow Bronwyn (Anna Lee) and her baby.

Though the film is primarily concerned with the way that changes in industry and production have impacted the family unit, issues of class and manners are also at the forefront. Huw has a sister, Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) who is in love with the local preacher, Mr. Gruffyd (Walter Pidgeon). Because he has little money, he won’t pursue a relationship with her and encourages her to accept a wealthy suitor. She marries the wealthy man and moves with him to New Zealand, only to return to the valley alone. Gossip spreads through the valley about her relationship with Gruffyd, rooted less in their behavior towards one another than in the jealousy of the wealthy family’s servants towards the miner’s daughter, and the blood-thirsty attitude of other members of the parish who are ready and willing to heap scorn on anyone who doesn’t conform to social rules. That the two people at the center of the storm in this case are a "social climber" and a preacher who likes to espouse new/liberal ideas only makes them more eager to ostracize them. Class and manners come into play again when Huw has the opportunity to attend a fancy school where his origins make him a subject of mockery by both the other students and his teacher. Huw excels as a student and Gwilym, sensing the way things are fundamentally and irrevocably changing, encourages him to pursue a career as a scholar to get himself out of the valley, though Huw wishes to stay and work in the mine like the rest of his family.

Directed by the great John Ford, the film is well-paced and surprisingly compact given all that happens in it. The story comments on a number of social issues, but does so with a great deal of subtlety, suggesting more than it says and not bashing you over the head with a series of blunt points. Before seeing it I thought that it might be hokey, but it ends up being very effective, particularly in its sad final act. This is a really well-made film in both its artistic and technical aspects and while, in hindsight, not the correct choice for Best Picture, it is nevertheless a fine achievement and a fine example of Ford's skill as a filmmaker.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Searchers (1956)

Director: John Ford
Starring: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood

Westerns in general fight an uphill battle because there exists an attitude towards them that they’re “B” movies, films made for entertainment and not as art. This is especially true of John Wayne movies, even though he made most of them with one of the greatest artists of his own or any other time: John Ford. I know people who’ve avoided John Wayne movies, thinking that they’re all the same, that they’re “genre” films in the most confining sense of the word. I myself was one of them until I saw The Searchers. Anyone who doubts the ability of a Western to really mean something – and anyone who doubts John Wayne’s ability to act – should see this film.

The story centers on Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a Civil War veteran who returns home shortly before most of his family is murdered in a Comanche raid. The only survivor is his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood), who has been kidnapped by the Comanche, and whom Ethan and his pseudo-nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) will spend the next decade searching for. As they finally come near to finding her, Martin realizes that Ethan is planning to kill her because by now she’s been assimilated and become one of “them.” He (and we, the audience) doesn’t know what will ultimately happen when Ethan and Debbie are finally reunited.

John Wayne is generally thought of as an archetypal all-American hero whose films framed him in the same way, even thought the evidence doesn’t always support that. Ethan is the protagonist and he is a hero in the classical meaning of the word, if not in it’s more modern meaning. By classical I mean heroes of the type found in Homer and Virgil, the Greco-Roman archetypes who fought as heroes, but were deeply flawed as human beings. In many ways he fits the archetype of the classical hero. Like Odysseus, he returns home from war years after the fact and is at once an insider and an outsider (note the way the film consistently frames him in doorways – he belongs “out there” not “in here”). By modern conceptions of the terms “hero” and “villain,” this is a character that skews more toward the latter than the former. He’s racist and cruel and hateful (one of the most memorable scenes in the film is him shooting out the eyes of a dead Comanche because, he says, they believe that without their eyes, their spirits are destined to forever wander the earth). But what’s important about this film is that it knows that about him. If the film wasn’t commenting on Ethan’s racism, it wouldn’t stand out so much. He’s not a perfect character, he’s not “good” in a traditional sense, but that doesn’t automatically mean that he isn’t a hero or that he isn’t capable of doing good.

There is a lot of complexity to the character of Ethan, and Wayne shades it in nicely. When he returns home (his brother’s home), it is clear that he’s in love with his sister-in-law – Wayne makes it clear through his eyes, the feature of his to watch in this film. When the family is murdered, he and Martin are off with a posse. From a distance, they can tell that all is not well at the Edwards home and everyone rides back towards it except Ethan. He knows it’s too late, that they’re too far away to help, and he stays behind to rest his horse for the long journey back. You can see everything written on his face in this scene.

Adding to the complexity of Ethan is his relationship with Martin. Martin was raised by Ethan’s brother and sister-in-law, but Ethan refuses to let Martin call him “Uncle Ethan” like the other children do. Martin is part Native American, enough to make him one of “them,” and Ethan treats him that way through most of the film. But what, exactly, is it about “them” (Martin included) that Ethan hates so much? There’s a sexual connotation to Ethan’s racism made explicit by his determination to kill Debbie once he realizes that she’s become a concubine to the Comanche Chief Scar (Henry Brandon). But there’s also a sexual connotation to his relationship with Martin. Consider this: in his meeting with Scar, Ethan comments that he speaks English well. When Ethan says something in Comanche, Scar comments that he speaks that well. If the implication is that Scar learned English from Debbie, then who are we to suppose that Ethan learned Comanche from? And why is it that Ethan’s brother and sister-in-law took Martin in and raised him as their own? If Martin is Ethan’s son by a Comanche woman, Ethan’s racism takes on a new dimension, stemming at least in part from his own self-loathing for having engaged in something he thinks taboo.

The Searchers is both literally and figuratively a journey. It’s a journey across the West to find Debbie, but it’s also a journey of the soul for Ethan, who travels from being a man would kill his niece after she’s lived as one of “them,” to being a man who can take that same girl in his arms, saying, “Let’s go home, Debbie.” But, ultimately, for Ethan there is no home. He doesn’t fit – or he’s not fit for – home and it’s not long after he’s brought Debbie back that he goes away again, back to the wide-open spaces of the American West. It’s the perfect ending to a film that is unequivocally a masterpiece of this or any genre.