Post by Robert C. on Jan 14, 2010 20:25:50 GMT
"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...and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too."
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is an American drama film directed by Academy Award Winner Best Director, John Ford. It was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939), written by John Steinbeck. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck.[1]
The film tells the story of the Joads, an Oklahoma family, who, after losing their farm during the Great Depression in the 1930s, become migrant workers and end up in California. The motion picture details their arduous journey across the United States as they travel to California in search for work and opportunities for the family members.
In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film opens with Tom Joad (Henry Fonda),released from prison and hitchhiking his way back to his family farm in Oklahoma. Tom finds an itinerant ex-preacher named Jim Casy (John Carradine) sitting under a tree by the side of the road. Casy was the preacher who baptized Tom, but now Casy has "lost the spirit" and his faith. Casy goes with Tom to the Joad property only to find it deserted. They meet up there with Muley, John Qualen, who is hiding out there. In a flashback, he describes how farmers all over the area were forced from their farms by the deedholders of the land, including a striking scene where a local boy Irving Bacon, hired for the purpose, knocks down Muley's house with a Caterpillar tractor. Following this, Tom and Casy move on to find the Joad family at Tom's uncle John's place. His family is happy to see Tom and explain they have made plans to head for California in search of employment as their farm has been foreclosed by the bank. The large Joad family of twelve leaves at daybreak, along with Casy who decides to come along, packing everything into an old and dilapidated 1926 Hudson "Super Six" sedan adapted to serve as a truck in order to make the long journey to the promised land of California.
The trip along Highway 66 is arduous and it soon takes a toll on the Joad family. spoiler After Tom becomes personally idealized by what he has witnessed in the various camps, he describes how he plans to carry on Casy's mission in the world by fighting for social reform. Tom goes off to seek a new world, and he must leave his family to join the movement committed to social justice.
Some analysts believe the "myth of the Okies", helped created by John Steinbeck's novel, is a mistake. As such, they argue the film's story rings false. Keith Windschuttle, writing for The New Criterion, wrote, "In the film of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's statement that people owned their land not because they had a piece of paper but because they had been born on it, worked on it, and died on it is given to the half-crazy character Muley Graves. His sentiments, and the injustice of the dispossession behind them, resonate throughout the drama. Again, however, these remarks bear very little relationship to the real farmers of Oklahoma."
The movie was banned in the Soviet Union (USSR) by Josef Stalin after being shown in Poland because of the depiction that even the poorest Americans could afford a car.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath_
"The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) is the iconic story of young Tom Joad and the Okie farmers who were forced off the Great Plains of the Oklahoma & Northern Texas panhandles by big business's industrialized farming, and Mother Nature's "great dust bowl" of the 1930's.
It's a very emotionally stirring film--Woody Guthrie's famous ode "Red River Valley" accompanies the narrative throughout--I watched it the other morning and I get a little choked-up everytime I see the Joads bury "Grandpa" on the side of the road on their way out of Oklahoma. And I can't believe that Henry Fonda didn't win the Academy Award best that year. Correct me if I'm wrong--ronnierocket--but Fonda not winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the now infamous Tom Joad is one of the great travesties in Academy Award history.
I'm also quite familiar with Steinbeck's original novel if anyone wants to discuss the differences between the two. The novel ends a bit differently as Tom Joad's sister Rosie (aka Rose Of, per novel) Sharon and her baby play a bigger role in the finale.
One of the first films ever inducted in the American Film Archives: it's one of the great politcal, and populist statements from that time period. Here's a great video review from the NYT ops..