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Rating:  - Still a Fantastic Film.
For years "The Grapes of Wrath" was considered the best American film ever made. Now, according to the American Film Institute, it's #21. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by John Steinbeck, the movie is directed by John Ford and stars Henry Fonda giving one of the best performances in the history of cinema. "The Grapes of Wrath" is, in many ways, still the greatest American film in the sense that the film is about America, at a certain time and captures the feeling of The Great Depression better than most any other movie. Fonda plays Tom Joad, one of the most legendary characters of all time. After serving four years in prison for manslaughter, Tom is paroled and returns home to Oklahoma to see his family. On the way home, Tom encounters a former preacher named Casy (John Carradine) and the two travel to Tom's family's farm together. When they get there, they find out that Joad's family has been "tractored off the land." When Tom finds his family, they are packing up to head to California. Turns out there are some jobs for picking fruit, 800 people needed. So the Joad family sets off on the peril-laden trip to California, where they find that California might not be much better than what they left behind. Obviously, in my synopsis I've left many characters out including Ma Joad (Jane Darwell, who deservedly won an Oscar) but I figure if you're reading this then you've likely seen the movie anyway. One of the key elements of the films' success is the cinematography, by the legendary Gregg Toland (cinematographer on "Citizen Kane"). The film is in black & white, which has aged a lot better than color would have and features a lot of night scenes. In many scenes, characters are illuminated by a mere candle. "The Grapes of Wrath" has astonishingly not dated over the years; it's still as fresh and entertaining as I imagine it was upon its release. The film has legendary dialogue (the "I'll be there" speech) and a number of other things that make it so great. Saying a movie is a masterpiece is one thing, but getting people to see it is another. With people flocking to garbage like "The Grudge 2" and "Stomp the Yard" how many people actually see "The Grapes of Wrath" anymore? Not many, from my perspective. This is a terrific film that should be seen by any lover of film.
GRADE: A
Rating: - John Ford + John Steinbeck = Amazing
"Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people."
The history of the Dustbowl Era is one that looms large in the minds of most of my family. The mere fact that some of us were born in Washington to people that came from Kansas and Oklahoma explains volumes about what it must've been like in those places back in the day when you could have a wonderful crop one year, and the next year you could be turned out of your house and home.
John Ford's 1940 film version of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" is a flim like none other. Listed on many critics film lists as the best ever made, at least prior to "Citizen Kane" showing up in that position starting in the late 1950's, it tells the story of the Joad family, uprooted from their home in Oklahoma and sent hurtling into a new life in California.
As the family travels to California, they deal with many setbacks, including the deaths of two of their clan. When they finally reach California, they find that a glut of cheap labor has led to depressed wages, meaning that for a whole day's work they earn barely enough to scrape by.
Eventually after many trials and tribulations, the family reaches a camp run by the government (with a camp superintendent played by a man who actually did run such a camp in reality). There the family finds a safe place to live, decent wages, and a hopeful future... at least until the past catches up with one family member.
While Henry Fonda plays the protaganist in this movie, the real stand-out star is Jane Darwell, who played Ma Joad. From her first real scene, where she expresses concerns her son might've turned "mean" while in prison, to a touching farewell to her possessions when she tosses them into a stove before leaving, to the end, where she has one last dance with her son then gets the last words in the film (those at the start of the article), every moment she's on the screen is incredible. It's a movie worth seeing for performance alone. Women like her are, to a great extent, what this country is built on.
This was also a very political film. It was one of the first films to show poverty, true, soul-crushing poverty, in the United States. Most of are fortunate enough not to know what it's like to nearly starve to death (heck, put all the family together and we'd start to influence the tides), but in the not-so-distant past people were starving, dying, on the streets of our nation. Not because they were lazy, or foolish, but because they were being destroyed by a system that had left them to fend for themselves.
It also explored, somewhat obliquely, ideas of Communism that were floating around at the time. There was a large, simmering, vocal minority that believed only Communism could save the workers of the world from exploitation at the hands of big business. Looking at the way the world was then, one begins to sypathise.
All in all, this is a very personal film that's also quite epic. You see the sweeping panoramas for which Ford is rightly famous, but then you also get the small strokes, the tiny personal touches, such as when the children see flush toilets for the first time. It's a must-see for anyone interested in history, and anyone interested in film.
Rating: - Realism at its apex
My parents survived the depression because they were farm folks. According to the way they described it, the Grapes of Wrath displays it as closely as my imagination could envision it. My parents saw the movie and described it as accurate but only about one-tenth as bad as it really was.
Rating: - The Grapes of Wrath
The movie was in good shape as delivered, and the quality of the disk is excellent.
Rating: - A poem of a film!
When Darryl Zanuck announced that he intended to produce a film version of John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel, Grapes of Wrath, the industry was stunned... They were all the more surprised when the resultant film, directed by John Ford, proved to be one of Hollywood's finest achievement...
This story of a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers who leave the oppressive poverty of the Dust Bowl in hope of finding a better life in Californnia was told with all of Ford's considerable artistry, and it featured compelling performances by Jane Darwell as the matriarch of the clan and Henry Fonda as the son who is driven to radicalism by the intolerable conditions that grind his family down...
"The Grapes of Wrath" is a superb motion picture which could scarcely be improved upon... Acting, photography, direction combine to make this an unforgettable experience, a poem of a film...
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