The Grapes of Wrath 1940
The Grapes of Wrath to me has always been a book. I was not that aware of the movie, but it has a lot of acclaim for its director, John Ford, as well as the cast, which stars a young Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. In AFI’s original list of the best 100 American movies of all time, it finished at number 21. The movie sort of breezes through the book, so there isn’t much time for many of the characters to be developed as we move quickly from one challenge to the next during the Joads' move from Oklahoma to California. Maybe realistically, there isn’t one bad guy or one big challenge to be overcome, but tons of smaller ones. I was glad there were also people who showed kindness to the migrants, and the scene at a diner is a highlight of that. You end up getting exposed to a lot of different challenges faced by familes, in particular how the California landowners used local law enforcement to crack down on migrant workers. Set towards the end of the Great Depression, many of the migrants wound up doing pretty well later on in wartime industries, which neither the book’s author, John Steinbeck, or any of the filmmakers knew. That is one neat thing about the movie, that it was made just a year after Steinbeck’s book was released, and concerning events that were still going on at the time. The movie isn’t as dark as the book and ends more hopefully with a brave speech by Ma Joad, so it easier to watch. While it could have easily been made into a three hour epic (or more), it was kind of nice that it was right at two hours, though it does feel like we are skimming the story. Henry Fonda does a great job fleshing out Tom Joad, maybe the only character that you get to know. Fonda’s voice is just great to hear. Not all of the lines are easy to make sound natural which afflicts Jane Darwell as Ma Joad at times, though she won an Oscar for her trouble nonetheless. Hers is a great role featuring a strong matriarch, but even so she is mostly just reacting to the things around her. The movie makes a great post-Western, showing what happened to some of those pioneer and cowboy families years or generations later, but is also a little mechanical and at times a little preachy, so I can’t give it an A.
Written: 14 Sep 2021
Owned on: Digital