.jpg "THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)") |
| THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) |
Director: John Ford
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Screenplay: Nunnally Johnson
Cast: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin, Dorris Bowdon, Russell Simpson, O.Z. Whitehead, John Qualen, Eddie Quillan, Zeffie Tilbury, Frank Sully, Frank Darien
So?
'If there was a law, they was workin' with maybe we could take it, but it ain't the law. They're workin' away our spirits, tryin' to make us cringe and crawl, takin' away our decency.' (Tom Joad)
When I read 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck some years back I was emotionally stunned and unable to get over what I had read, about the plight of the Joad family during the Great Depression, I went on to read more about this time period just to make sure it was all real.
Being born in England and raised in our school system we have enough of our own history to plow through before looking to America but I did know from documentaries, film stock and literature what happened during that time yet it wasn't until this book that the full horror hit home. The poetic prose of Steinbeck's epic novel stamped this tragic era forever on my brain, it left such a haunting and lasting memory that I came to this adaptation by John Ford with slight dread in my heart. At best I'm not one for adaptations, I believe it's either a book or a film, not both. Of course this is a blog about film and I should leave comparisons with the novel aside, which isn't going to be easy I know but I'll try, however any one wanting to compare the two should look here, where these lovely people have done the thinking for us.
John Ford is a giant of a director and has left such a lasting catalogue of great films that he has more films on this list than any other. The turnaround of the fabled studio system enhanced Ford's technique and he was able to stamp his authority, authorship and style on his pictures the longer his career went on. It was this quick turnaround that saw Steinbeck's classic novel come to the screen only one year after it was published, something that's not totally unthinkable today, think Harry Potter, but that a book was so critical and analytical about the contradictions and inequalities of the American Dream was made at all does take some beating. Hollywood producer Daryl F. Zanuck knew that it had to be made and purchased the rights for the novel within one month of publication for a whopping $75, 000.
The Grapes of Wrath focuses on the Joad family during the Great Depression that swept America in the late twenties which lasted right up until the second world war. I believe the film captures the period honestly and realistically, recreating the socio-economic impact, as well as the mid 30's drought, through one representative family, the Joads. Thrown of their own land the Joads, along with thousands of families, take to the road in search for work, food, shelter and their dignity. The hollowness of the American Dream is laid bare by the oppression the family meets along the way, from being turfed out of their home by a faceless bank to being forced to work for next to nothing by a plethora of unscrupulous employers taking advantage of the migrants desperation.
The style in which The Grapes of Wrath is filmed, quasi-documentary, only adds to the seriousness and accuracy that Ford was attempting to achieve in adapting Steinbeck's Pulitzer winning novel. Playing the story straight and by not pulling too many punches (accept for the novel's famous ending) Ford achieved a rare and beautiful thing with this adaptation by capturing the personal and the political in one swift and linear moment. The Grapes of Wrath is played to perfection, the performances by the excellent cast is almost reduced to a side note, and it remains a film that each new generation should watch, hopefully taking a lesson or two from it's sorry tale and applying them to the modern day.
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