The Grapes of Wrath
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Movie Reviews of The Grapes of Wrath
Movie Review: Ford and Fonda do justice to Steinbeck
Summary: 5 Stars
Take John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Novel. Turn it into a movie and let John Ford direct it, and get Henry Fonda to star. In 1940 you could hardly find a more certain recipe for a cinema classic.As good as the film is, it really should be a companion-piece to Steinbeck's original masterpiece, and if you haven't read it I recommend setting aside enough time to read one of the greatest pieces of American literature ever written.
That being said, the medium of the cinema allows for a visual impact that can't be matched with the written word.
The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family during the great depression. That period of economic hardship hit the farmers in Oklahoma a little harder than the rest of the world, at the time of the dust bowl the "Okies" were at the end of their ropes, financially speaking.
Thousands of Okies packed up the house after being foreclosed and moved out to California - many winding up around Bakersfield, at the California end of old US Route 66. (Merle Haggard's family did so and the "Okie from Muscogee" wrote about it in songs like "California Cottonfields".)
Anyway, this is the historical context of the movie. The theme of the movie, and of Steinbeck's book, is the ability of the human spirit to remain intact in these worst of times. The Joads suffer terrible humiliations, one after another, most of them because of their desperate financial status. But as the story proceeds we see that they are fundamentally decent, hard-working people, and every time life knocks them down they get back up, brush the dirt off themselves, and keep moving forward. As a national characteristic, this was an important trait because this was the generation that produced the hard-working, high-minded individuals who did important things like win World War II, followed by America's greatest financial flourishing and the Baby Boom. Tom Brokaw called them "America's Greatest Generation".
The cast is picture-perfect, with Henry Fonda as the spirited Tom Joad and John Carradine as the former preacher with a new social consciousness. Jane Darwell won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Award as Ma Joad, and the remainder of the cast is in every way equal to the story and the film.
Movie Review: "Mine eyes have seen the glory..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Once in a while there comes a film that completely moves you. THE GRAPES OF WRATH is one of those films. The movie has three major components that make it an excellent film, a story based on the classic novel by John Steinbeck, the magnificent cinematography, and the historical significance in terms of American history. The film undoubtedly defines the unending relevance of the American dream and manifest destiny, and John Ford depicts those themes with the Joad family's cross-country trek from Oklahoma to California seeking better opportunities further west after losing their land.
John Ford shows how far the American Dream has come. The film is a reflection of the workingman and American society during the Great Depression as well of the results of the New Deal - the revitalization of the American landscape. However, the film is about one family and their perseverance to survive in an ever-changing society, but always keeping the past in mind. Ford shows the Joad's unfortunate circumstance from a family who owned their own land to a nomadic family who became migrant workers; their story represents more than a thousand families' experiences.
The film has its defining moments. In one of the scenes mother Joad (Jane Darwell) is preparing to leave her homestead in Oklahoma and discards a few mementos she has collected over the years from a newspaper article and a postcard depicting the Statue of Liberty, but she happens to keep what looks like a porcelain dog that commemorates the St. Louis Expo of 1904. Another defining moment is the last few minutes of the film. It is one of the most legendary and empowering scenes in American film history, which shows Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) making his most moving soliloquy.
THE GRAPES OF WRATH will tug at the heartstrings. Although some may refer the film as out-dated, the story is a part of American history, and it brings an understanding and realization of the hardships that those who owned and lived on farms from the Midwest and dust bowl states experienced during the late 1920s and 1930s in order to continue to live the American dream. It is not a film that should be missed in one's lifetime.
Movie Review: A visually moving and emotionally stirring picture of hope and perseverance.
Summary: 5 Stars
This review is for the 2003 Twentieth Century Fox DVD.
The movie opens with Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returning home from prison due to killing a man who stabbed him in a dance hall fight. When Tom returns to his home community in rural dustbowl Oklahoma, he learns that the banks are running off all the families who have worked on their farms for several generations. Joad's entire extended family plus a friend, Casey (John Carradine), are left with no choice but to journey west to California since it appears to be the land of opportunity. So they pile everyone and everything they own on an old dilapidated truck and head west. The rest of the movie shows the trials and tribulations of this arduous trip as well as the obstacles they face in California.
The cinematography of this film is gripping, not because of visual beauty - far from it - but for the realism of the filthiness and poverty. But even beyond the squalor, the story masterfully reveals in poignant fashion the life and death hardships and day-to-day hope for survival. The acting is great, especially by Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) who won an Oscar for her performance. The movie is a bit heavy-handed with some obvious communist propaganda depicting privately owned farms as tyrannical and fatally oppressive, while government sponsored camps appearing utopian in every aspect. But overlooking the political overtones, the best message to take from the movie is the importance of family and the will for survival.
As for the DVD, the picture was restored, but not perfectly restored, since some deterioration is still visible, but the overall presentation is very adequate for a film made in 1940. The sound is very good too, but at times seems to have a hollow sound to it. There are plenty of bonus features on this double-sided DVD. A nice package overall.
Movie: A
DVD Quality: A-
Movie Review: "I'll be there every time a cop is beatin' a guy up..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Directed by John Ford and adapted from the famous novel by John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" is a gloomy masterpiece that challenges many of the assumptions we have about capitalism. Indeed, had Franklin Delano Roosevelt not come to power, social revolution would have been a very real possibility during the 1920's.
The reason this film is not as celebrated as, say, "Citizen Kane" or other of the AFI films is because it exposes poverty in America for what it is: as bad as anywhere else. We see the Joad family, a family that could be ours' very easily with a few alterations in time and space, suffering unimaginably.
Tom Joad, played flawlessly by Henry Fonda in a sort of Zen simplicity of growing realization, is the youngest man in the Joad clan. Having served 4 years for murder (justified homicide), he returns to the home in California which no longer exists. The suffering of his parents and two younger siblings is so grievous that he no longer thinks about drinking, dancing so much--his mind is on something much bigger. The powers that be.
Every frame of this film is smothered with misery, heat, and oppression. Perhaps now more than ever we should understand Joad's character and remember his words at the end of the movie to his saintly mother: "I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."
Movie Review: JOHN FORD'S CLASSIC B/W VERSION
Summary: 5 Stars
The Grapes of Wrath
US 1940 128mins. bw
AFTER THE DUST BOWL DISASTER OF THE THIRTIES, OKLAHOMA FARMERS TREK TO CALIFORNIA IN THE HOPE OF A BETTER LIFE. A SUPERB FILM WHICH COULD SCARELY BE IMPROVED UPON. THOUGH THE ENDING IS SOFTENED FROM THE BOOK, THERE WAS TOO MUCH HERE FOR FILM-GOERS TO CHEW ON. ACTING, CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION COMBINE TO MAKE THIS AN UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE. GREAT QUOTES FROM THE FILM WHICH I CHERISH:
(1) TOM(HENRY FONDA): THIS HERE'S WILLIAM JAMES JOAD, DIED OF A STOKE, OLD, OLD MAN. HIS FOLKS BURIED HIM BECAUSE THEY GOT NO MONEY TO PAY FOR FUNERALS. NOBODY KILLED HIM. JUST A STROKE, AND HE DIED.
(2) MA(JANE DARWELL): Rich fellas come up, an' they die, an' thier kids ain't no good, an they die out. But we keep-a-comin'. We're the people that live. Can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, because we're the people.
MA: Well, Pa, woman can change bettern a man. Man lives - well in jerks. Baby born or somebody dies - that's a jerk. With a woman it's all one flow, like a stream - little eddies, little waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it that way.
A GENUINELY GREAT MOTION PICTURE. ACOORDING TO DAD, " THE MOST MATURE MOTION PICTURE THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE, IN FEELING, IN PURPOSE AND IN THE USE OF THE MEDIUM." PERSONALLY I FEEL THAT IT IS A SEERING AND SINCERE INDICTMENT OF A MAN'S CRUEL INDIFFERENCE TO HIS FELLOWS. IT RECEIVED ACADEMY NOMINATIONS FOR BEST PICTURE(Nunnally Jhonson) BEST ACTOR(HANK FONDA). IT WON BEST DIRECTOR: JOHN FORD and BEST ACTRESS: JANE DARWELL.